BoujeeKidsA plastic high chair from IKEA costs about £25. The Stokke Tripp Trapp starts at around £269, and before you have the pieces a baby actually needs it climbs higher. That gap looks indefensible until you ask the only question that matters with a high chair: not what it costs to buy, but what it costs to keep.
Stokke · in production since 1972, barely changed
Tripp Trapp
Solid European beech rated to 136kg, with a seat and footplate that slide and lock as the child grows. Not a high chair you replace, a chair you keep, then pass on with strong resale.
Check price at AmazonThe honest question
You can spend a tenner plus a few quid for the tray on an IKEA Antilop. It does the job, and most parents who buy one are perfectly happy. The honest question is what happens after. The Antilop is rated to roughly age three and 15kg, then it goes to the loft, the tip, or a charity shop. The Tripp Trapp asks a different question entirely: what if the chair never left?
Why this chair exists
The Tripp Trapp has been in continuous production since 1972, and the reason it has barely changed in over fifty years is that Peter Opsvik got the brief right at the start. The Norwegian designer was watching his young son Tor outgrow a traditional high chair while still being too small for an adult one, with nowhere natural to sit at the family table. His answer was a chair built from two side pieces shaped like an inverted figure seven, grooved so the seat and footplate slide up, down, in and out as the child grows. One chair, sized for an eight-month-old or a fully grown adult, at the same table, at something close to eye level.
The build, in real terms
This is where the price starts to make sense. Solid European beech, not moulded plastic, and Stokke rates the frame to 136kg, which is the point where cradle-to-adult stops being a slogan and becomes a literal load rating.
- Solid European beech, with an oak version also offered, not plastic or MDF
- Seat and footplate that slide and lock into the grooved sides as the child grows
- Rated to hold up to 136kg, so an adult can genuinely sit in it
- A seven-year guarantee on the wooden frame when you register it
- Flat-pack assembly, but the kind you do once and forget, not the kind that wobbles
What it is not
It is not cheap, and it does not pretend to be. The headline price is only the start. To use it from around six months you need the Baby Set, the back and side support that holds a smaller child safely, and that is sold separately. The cushion and the tray are extras too. By the time you have the parts a baby actually needs, you are well past the sticker price, and Stokke does not signpost this clearly. If your budget is genuinely tight right now, or your kitchen has no room for a wooden chair that lives at the table permanently, the Antilop is the honest answer and we would not talk you out of it.
Does it pay for itself
This is the heart of it. Used daily from six months onward, the Tripp Trapp is not a high chair you replace, it is a chair you keep. Strip the Baby Set off and it becomes a child’s seat, then a chair an adult can sit in. That decade-plus of use is the first half of the value. The second half is resale. Few baby products hold their price like this one. A used Tripp Trapp in good condition still commands a strong figure on Vinted and eBay, because the next buyer knows it will last them just as long. Buy one, use it for years, pass it on, and the true cost lands well below what the receipt said. A £15 plastic chair owes you nothing and returns nothing.
Where to buy
It is widely stocked at John Lewis, the Stokke site and Amazon UK, in a long run of colourways from natural wood through to bolder finishes. Prices move around, so it is worth pricing the chair and the Baby Set together rather than being drawn in by the lowest headline number.
The verdict
The Tripp Trapp earns its score not by being the cheapest thing in the room but by being the last one you buy. It is expensive against a plastic high chair and genuinely good value against fifteen years of furniture. That is the whole Boujee Kids thesis in one object: premium is not expensive versus cheap, it is expensive versus disposable, and almost nothing makes that case as cleanly as this chair. How we score
Score: 9.3/10. How we score.