A glider is one of the few pieces of furniture you use every single day, often for months at a time. Before you fall for a colour or a shape, it is worth being slightly systematic about it. Four things decide whether a chair earns its keep: the sit, the space it needs, the glide, and the fabric.
Sit in it before you look at it
Your feet should rest flat on the floor and your arms should land on the armrests without reaching or slouching. That sounds obvious, but it is the single thing people skip. A chair that makes you lift a shoulder to support an arm will tell you about it at three in the morning, not in the first five minutes.
Back height matters for the same reason. Our Joli is contoured through the back and armrests so the support follows the shape you actually sit in, while the Comfort Deluxe takes a softer, more cushioned approach with a tufted high back. Neither is better. They are two different ideas about what a long sit should feel like, and you will have a preference within about a minute.
Measure the corner, not just the chair
A glider needs a few extra inches front and back to move freely, so the footprint is always larger than the chair itself. Measure the corner where it will live, including that clearance, and remember the ottoman: on both of our sets the ottoman glides too, which is the point of it, and that means it also needs room to travel.
Judge the glide, not the description
A good glide is one smooth, continuous motion. It should not step, catch, or change character when you rock faster. Any chair feels fine for the first month; the question is what it does in year three, and that is decided by the mechanism and the frame underneath rather than by the cushions on top.
Both of our glider sets are built on a solid wooden frame for that reason. The Joli adds a detail worth knowing about if this is going in a nursery: it is finished with a lead-free wood polish.
Fabric and finish, in that order
Choose the fabric for how it will live, then choose the colour. A hard-wearing weave will look better in three years than a delicate one that photographs well now. Only then think about tone, and think about the room it will end up in rather than the room it is going into first — a nursery is temporary, a reading corner is not.
On the Joli the base is part of that decision: walnut reads warmer and more traditional, natural keeps the whole chair lighter and more Scandinavian. It is the same chair, and it looks like two.
If you are still deciding between those two, we wrote a longer side-by-side comparison. And if you are not certain a glider is the right motion at all, the glider and rocker comparison is the place to start.