Five feet or six: six is still gaining

The six-foot bench was two thirds of our bench sales in 2019. It is five sixths now. The five-footer is shrinking, and it is worth knowing why before you specify one.

Wishbone Site Furnishings

·September 9, 2026·1 min read

67%
six-foot share of benches, 2019

84%six-foot share, 2026

23% → 9%five-foot share over the same years

We have written elsewhere about why six feet is the length that works: three adults, or two strangers who will share. What the year-by-year numbers add is that the preference is not settled. It is still moving toward six.

Featured

Six-foot benches across families

7 items

Rutherford Bench 5ft

RAL-5

Bayview Bench 6ft

BV-6

Parker Bench with Armrests 6ft

PKB-6

Skyline Bench 5ft

SLB-5

TENAJ Bench 6ft

TJB-6

Beselt Bench 6ft

B-6

Modena Wide Body Bench 6ft

MWB-6

Where the five-footers went

Five-foot benches sold 197 units in 2019 and 113 in 2026, while total bench volume rose. Some of that is sites that used to specify five feet to save money and stopped, because the saving is small and the bench is noticeably tighter. Some is that five-foot benches were the compromise for narrow sites, and narrow sites are increasingly getting a backless bench or a wall bench instead, both of which take less depth than a backed five-footer.

What to do with this

If you are standardising a park system, six feet is the length that will still match in ten years. If a site is genuinely too tight for six, the answer is usually a different form rather than a shorter version of the same one: backless, wall-mounted, or a chair. Specify five feet when there is a reason, and write the reason down, because the next person will otherwise assume it was a mistake.

From the archive