Sit up straight - High-backed chairs and sofas are back in fashion

It's high time restaurants took a stand against low-slung furniture

After what seems like an age of Japanese-influenced, Zen-style low-slung chairs, sofas and coffee tables, it comes as a relief that design is now reverting back to the vertical. After all, hauling yourself off a sofa six inches from the ground after one too many Mojitos is not an easy feat.

High-backed chairs and sofas, tall screens and booths are currently in fashion, and with good reason. It's not just the comfort factor, nor the aesthetics, it's also the function that highbacked furniture can perform: namely that of providing dividing ‘walls' to break up space. At the luxury end of the market there are the likes of Christophe Pillet's ceiling-height South Beach chair for Tacchini (as seen at the Sezz Hotel in Paris) and Samuele Mazza's Siegfried sofa bench by Visionnaire.

For a kitsch take on the look, check out the clubby private booth by Private Dining, LLC, as seen at the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago this year. You too can ‘enjoy private dining in the middle of the busiest restaurant', goes the claim. The idea is simple. Unlike an open booth, it offers privacy from the rest of the restaurant, yet unlike a private dining room, you're also still in the centre of the action. Costing just $5,200 plus $700 shipping (around £3,000 all in), the booth is made of solid birch and birch veneer with a cherrywood finish.

At its highest point, it is 1.65m (5ft4) tall, with space enough to comfortably seat eight people.

Watch out for any matching accessories you choose; however, the risk with super-sized furniture is that everything else looks like doll's furniture beside it.

privatediningbooth.com