A seating chart and floor plan maker for weddings, events and classrooms. Tables to scale with real dimensions, keep-together and keep-apart rules, and a chart the venue can actually print.
Seating Chart & Plan Maker is coming soon to the App Store.
Leave 54 to 60 inches between table edges, and hold the full 60 for round tables. That is rim to rim at the closest point, and it has to contain two rows of pulled-out chairs, roughly 18 inches each, before any walking surface exists. The 36 inches repeated most often is a published minimum clear width for an aisle, which is the walking surface itself and a different object, so quoting it as a table gap leaves nothing to walk in. Measuring at a table, the International Building Code works from a line 19 inches out from the edge with 12 inches clear between two such lines, which puts a floor at 19 + 12 + 19 = 50 inches edge to edge.
Edge to edge and chair back to chair back differ by about three feet, not two, because there is an 18 inch chair allowance on each side. At a 60 inch gap, about 24 inches of clear floor is left between the backs of two pulled-out chairs.
| Table | Seats | Edge to edge | Clear floor between chair backs |
|---|---|---|---|
| 60 in round | 8 | 60 in | about 24 in |
| 72 in round | 10 | 60 in | about 24 in |
| 6 ft rectangle | 6 | 54 to 60 in | about 18 to 24 in |
| 8 ft rectangle | 8 | 54 to 60 in | about 18 to 24 in |
Those seat counts are editable starting points rather than capacities certified for your tables and chairs. No source supports a fixed difference between plated and buffet service, so none is applied. Clearance here is a planning convention and a configurable default. It is not a fire code figure, an occupancy limit or a safety standard, and what your room is required to leave clear comes from your venue and whoever signs off on its plans.
Planning is free and uncapped, with no limit on tables, guests or events. The app requests no permissions, has no account and makes no network connections of its own. Universal on iPhone and iPad, iOS 17 or later.
How much space between tables · How many fit at a round table · Banquet table sizes · Seating etiquette
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Leave 54 to 60 inches between the table edges, and use the full 60 inches for round tables. That gap has to hold a row of pulled out chairs on each side, roughly 18 inches each, before anyone can walk through it, which leaves about 24 inches of clear floor at the 60 inch setting. Below 54 inches a server cannot carry a tray between two tables that are both occupied.
No, and it is the most repeated wrong number in reception planning. 36 inches is published as a minimum clear width for an aisle, which is the walking surface itself, not the distance between two table edges. Two pulled out chairs account for the whole 36 inches on their own and leave nothing to walk in. The working gap is 54 to 60 inches, so the figure in circulation is short by about two feet.
Eight is the usual count for a 60 inch round, which gives each guest about 23.6 inches of table edge. A 72 inch round normally takes ten, slightly tighter at about 22.6 inches each, so the larger table buys two more covers and center space rather than elbow room. Both numbers move with the chairs the venue stocks and how much of the table the caterer needs for service, so confirm them with the venue before you draw a room around them.
The four you meet most often are the 60 inch round, the 72 inch round, the 6 foot rectangle and the 8 foot rectangle, seating eight, ten, six and eight respectively. Squares, ovals and head or sweetheart tables are common too but are not standardised in the same way, so measure what your venue actually owns rather than assuming a figure. There is also no reliable rule that a buffet adds a seat to a table or that a plated dinner takes one away, so do not plan around one.
In a grid of 60 inch rounds seating eight at a 60 inch gap, each table occupies a 10 foot square, which is 100 square feet, or 12.5 square feet per guest. A 72 inch round seating ten at the same gap takes an 11 foot square, 121 square feet, or 12.1 square feet per guest. Those figures cover the table zone only. The dance floor, bar, buffet and the queue in front of it, cake and gift tables and the circulation around all of them come out of the room before the grid is drawn.
It comes in two parts and only one of them is quick. Drawing the room is short work once you know the table count, the table sizes and where the dance floor, bar and buffet sit. Assigning people is the long part, and it is rarely one sitting: most charts are built in passes as RSVPs arrive, then reworked when a batch of replies lands near the end. Plan for revisions rather than one perfect session.
Build it early and expect to change it. Leaving a seat or two open at a few tables, rather than filling every chair, means one late yes does not force a rebuild of the room. Ask the caterer and the venue for the date they need a final count, and treat that date as your print deadline rather than anything earlier. Keep the unassigned names in one visible list until then, because a chart that pretends there are no stragglers hides the problem instead of solving it.
Only when the seat itself matters. The usual cases are a plated dinner where guests pre-ordered different meals and the serving team needs to know which cover ordered what, a head or sweetheart table with a fixed order, and a long banquet table where who sits beside whom is the point of the layout. For a buffet or family style service, assigning the table and letting guests pick their own chair is normal and saves a print.
A seating chart is one display at the entrance that lists every guest and the table they are at. Escort cards do the same job one card at a time, laid out alphabetically for guests to pick up and carry in. Place cards are a third thing: they sit on the table and assign a specific seat. One of the first two is enough at the entrance, and place cards are added only when the seat matters.
Alphabetical by last name whenever guests are the ones reading it. A guest knows their own name and does not know their table number, so an alphabetical list can be found in seconds, while a list grouped by table makes them read every name until they find themselves. Group by table for the prints the venue, the caterer and the serving team work from, where the table is the thing being looked up.
Planning is free, with no cap on tables, guests or events. Printing and export unlock once, as a single purchase rather than a subscription, so nothing renews and there is nothing to cancel. The unlock covers the to scale PDF chart, the alphabetical name to table list, the per table guest cards, the system print sheet and sharing the chart as an image.
No. There is no solver that fills the room for you, because the judgments that matter are not ones software should be making. What the app does is hold the rules you set, keep together and keep apart between two or more guests and optionally scoped to a named table, then flag any table holding a violated rule with a conflict badge and a running count in the toolbar. You seat people by dragging them out of the unseated tray, and the app tells you the moment a choice breaks something you asked for.
Neither. There is no account, no sign in and no server of ours, so nothing you type about your guests leaves the device. The App Privacy entry is Data Not Collected, and the app requests no permissions at all, since printing and sharing go through the system sheets. A venue basement with no signal changes nothing about how it works.
Yes, it is one universal app for both. iPhone runs in portrait, and iPad runs in every orientation and supports multitasking, which helps when the guest list is open in another window. It needs iOS 17 or later.
Not yet. The app is in the final stage before App Store submission, so the honest status is coming soon rather than available. The guides here stand on their own and need no app to be useful, and this page will carry the App Store link the day it is live.