How Many Stanchions Do You Need?
Almost every enquiry that arrives without a number gets the same reply from us, so here is the method we would walk you through on the phone. It takes about five minutes with a tape measure and it survives the layout being changed on the day, which most estimates do not.
1. Decide What the Line Is Doing
Guiding, blocking or framing. A queue at a ticket desk is guiding — people want to follow it. A closed-off area is blocking; it needs a post on every side including the one nobody walks past. A carpet or a photo area is framing, where the posts are part of what is being looked at and the spacing has to be even because people will notice if it is not.
2. Measure the Run, Not the Room
Walk the line the posts will make and measure that, in a straight tape along the floor. Not the length of the room, not the wall behind it. If the queue folds back on itself, measure every leg and add them together.
3. Divide by the Spacing
Belt posts go every 9 ft. Rope posts go every 4.5 ft, which is closer than most people expect. A velvet rope is meant to hang in a shallow curve; stretched flat between posts set too far apart it looks like washing line.
So a 36 ft belt run needs five posts: one at each end and three between them. Always one more than the number of gaps. That plus-one is the single most common thing left out of a first estimate.
4. Add a Post for Every Corner
A corner needs its own post whether the straight sections either side of it do or not, because the line changes direction there and something has to hold the turn. A closed-off square 10 ft on a side is four corners plus the mid-points, which is eight posts and not four.
Zigzag queues are corners almost all the way along. Count the turns first, then add posts for whatever straight sections are left over.
5. Add Two
One extra pair, always. The layout will change once between the order and the event — a doorway that has to stay open, a table that arrived bigger than the plan said, a fire route somebody points out at four o’clock. Two spare posts turn that into a thirty-second fix instead of a phone call.
Still Not Sure
Describe the shape rather than guessing at a number. A photograph of the room with a line drawn on it in a finger is enough for us to count from. Send it through the order form or ring. The quote comes back with the count already worked out.