Your choice of pub furniture can have a big impact on the first impressions of customers when they walk through your door.
Most traditional pub furniture is made of wood, typically either of a dark or stained variety, and often featuring decorative bentwood backs on chairs or carved scroll work on table legs.
This gives it a sense of elegance, of timelessness, and - because of this timeless quality - can make your pub feel familiar and friendly, even to customers who have never visited before.
And in turn, that says a lot about you as the bar manager or pub landlord, whose role has always included the need to make customers feel like welcome guests.
Modern pub furniture
There are really two main approaches to pub furniture - the first, as described above, is to invest in bentwood chairs and scroll tables, and create a pub environment that draws on generations of tradition.
But the alternative is to go for a distinctly modern pub furniture set-up, and this may mean placing chrome or other metal tables indoors, rather than just using them as a weatherproof outdoor furniture option.
The advantages are that, if you are in an area with several well-established traditional pubs, you can set yourself apart and portray your establishment as the new alternative.
Not everybody will necessarily appreciate this, but it allows you to create a persona for yourself and your pub - and, in turn, to begin to cultivate the kind of customer base you would like to see frequenting your venue.
Comfy pub furniture
If chrome and hard wood seem a little unfriendly, there are upholstered alternatives, and these are proving popular in 'modern classic' pubs whose furniture combines the best of old and new.
The chairs here may still have a visible decorative wooden frame, but with upholstered cushioned seat and back, or the frame may be hidden from view inside the chair, in more modern styles.
Of course, for a sense of luxury and comfort at the same time, you could opt for leather armchairs, tub chairs and sofas, and these again can transform your venue from a 'pub' to a 'bar' in one fell swoop.