Floor protectors for skinny chair legs: Metal caps ok? Other options?

October 16, 2019 7:55 PM

I have some nice vintage wood dining chairs with slender legs (3/4" diameter where they meet the floor). The chairs are on a wood floor that I naturally want to protect from the chairs moving and being sat on over the years. I haven't been happy with the options I've found for this for various reasons (see below). Are there other, better options out there?

The chairs originally came with round nail-on metal caps on the feet, a type of "floor protection" that is common. Common it may be, but my wife and I were dubious that the floors would really be safe with this: it seemed like the caps would scrape and possibly even dent the floor over time. Still, my first question is: are wood floors actually okay long-term with small metal cap floor protectors? Or does wear show up on the floor over time?

We switched the caps out for adhesive round felt pads. The problem with these is that they slip and pop off the bottoms of the legs all the time; the adhesive on such a small pad is just not enough to keep the pads in place through sitting and such.

SO I need a pad, or slider, that is mechanically fastened to the bottoms of the chair legs. There aren't many available in that small 3/4" diameter size we need. The only options I've found (including on the Home Depot website, which has an enormous inventory) are the slider type (not a pad), which is fine, but they are WHITE. White is not ideal, since it would stand out so much against the warm brown wood of the chair legs and the floor. A brown or a black, or even the right kind of gray, would be much better.

posted by Mechitar to Home & Garden (14 answers total)

I have used epoxy to secure felt pads to the bottom of chair legs with good results, after the factory adhesive on the pads failed as you have experienced.
posted by exogenous at 8:18 PM on October 16, 2019

Best answer: These should work
posted by supercres at 8:20 PM on October 16, 2019 [2 favorites]

Would you consider chair socks?
posted by entropical punch at 8:29 PM on October 16, 2019 [3 favorites]

I recently discovered nail-on chair pads and they're life changing. supercres linked a good option. There are also these glides (I don't think glides are as good an option as pads, personally), or these screw on ones (that sounds like a lot of effort to install, but would also be very sturdy once you finished.
posted by brainmouse at 8:54 PM on October 16, 2019

We’ve been happy with chair socks after going through so many stick-on pads. I was always worried about whether screws or nail-on pads or glides would mess up the legs. Or they’d fail somehow and then I’d have a worse problem. Chair socks that I ordered (with a subtle argyle stripe) blend in well. They have an internal grip that seems good and so far are holding up well. They’ve been on about 8 months.
posted by amanda at 8:59 PM on October 16, 2019

I think what you want is probably plastic or rubber chair leg caps.
posted by amtho at 9:28 PM on October 16, 2019 [1 favorite]

I had great luck with chair socks too. I have brown ones on brown wood, and I think they look nice. They've held up well (definitely longer than the stick-on pads).
posted by bighappyhairydog at 10:03 PM on October 16, 2019

I've made my own chair socks by cutting the fingers off of old gloves.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 3:43 AM on October 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

We had to refinish our floors recently due to a ton of scratches from those plastic glides you nail on. The floor refinisher said they are the worst option and you should really do the felt, so we've gone back to those.
posted by advicepig at 7:12 AM on October 17, 2019 [2 favorites]

I used clear silicone chair caps. Have lasted years thus far.
posted by tilde at 7:41 AM on October 17, 2019

Fwiw I've never been to a house that uses chair socks where half of them aren't missing and/or strewn around the dining room. Could easily be a small sample bias (2-3?) but it's enough to warn me off of them. ymmv ofc
posted by supercres at 8:15 AM on October 17, 2019

I had exactly this problem, except with metal legs. Metal or hard plastic discs on the bottom of the legs definitely scratch wood floors (or worse, make divots), and the felt ones collect a lot of fluff, hairs etc unless you vacuum vigilantly. I tried gluing the felt caps on with epoxy as mentioned above but they fell off eventually - there's a lot of sideways drag when a weighted chair is dragged back and forth. I ended up buying soft plastic caps, the kind that slip tightly over the end of the leg (in grey, I think they also had brown) from Allglides - a much better range of sizes than Home Depot. The glides themselves are cheap compared to shipping so I got a bunch of different sizes to be sure of getting a tight fit. They have solved the problem for me.
posted by ogorki at 8:41 AM on October 17, 2019

I have these and love them, you can get them in your size. It's felt on the bottom and it hugs the bottom of your chair like a cup, ours have never come off.
posted by juniperesque at 9:03 AM on October 17, 2019

Response by poster: The type suggested by supercres above looked to most closely fit what I had in mind, so I ordered some. They were indeed just what was needed. Smaller sizes for a perfect fit to the slim chair legs; various colors including a brown one that blended in with our wood chair legs; nail-on, so the pads have effectively stayed on (and the caps were easy to nail onto the chairs); and with a sturdy felt surface to protect the floor, which has worked beautifully. After months of use I can say with confidence that this product was a great success, and probably the best option out there. Thanks for all suggestions, but special thanks to supercres for a suggestion that worked great.
posted by Mechitar at 1:04 PM on February 22, 2020