I want to show you my favorite recliner lift chairs, but there’s something we have to talk about first.
Do Not Buy a Recliner Lift Chair Before Reading This!
I cannot emphasize this enough about buying a recliner lift chair: you must have a battery backup on your recliner, so that you can get up if the power goes out.
I have literally spent hours looking for affordable, high quality chairs with the battery backup feature. There are so few of them out there!
Read recliner lift reviews, and you often see notes like this:
“THE POWER WENT OUT, I COULD NOT GET OUT OF THE CHAIR!”
There are Two Solutions, and One of Them Works Well
The solution that doesn’t work is to buy a battery backup transformer. These are aftermarket chair plugs that include battery power switchover. I cannot find a good experience on the internet of people using these devices. I can find bad reviews.
The solution that does work? Use a separate battery backup device with your recliner lift chair. Get the same kind of backup “brick” one normally gets for computers, but use it for your recliner.
Below I will show you some excellent recliner lift and battery backup choices.
This Solution Changes Everything
In the first three versions of this article, I recommended the Pulaski Montreal model recliner lift chair precisely because it has a battery backup device. I like this chair, and I don’t renounce it as a good pick. It’s just that you now have so many more choices in lift chairs if you assume you’ll buy the battery backup as a separate item.
Because if you insist on a chair that has the battery backup built in, there are only maybe two choices in the sub $800 range.
Let’s Focus on the Chair Size and Recline Angle
Without focusing on the battery backup, we can look for a chair that fits your needs. In my opinion, the two most important features in a lift chair are its size and how far it reclines.
This might seem very obvious, but I think it needs focus. Tall people need tall chairs, short people need short chairs, and large people need sturdier chairs. If you mis-size the chair to the user, the lift mechanism won’t work as well as it should, and the person’s comfort will suffer.
And you care about the recline angle because not all chairs lay completely flat. If you plan to use the chair for sleeping, whether for napping or after surgery, are you going to be comfortable in a chair that is leaning only halfway back?
Best Recline Lift Chairs
Rather than give you “the best recliner lift chair,” find the one among several high quality choices that fits your needs.
I believe recliners should be upholstered in fabric, not vinyl, leather, or fake leather. Some of the choices below are high quality chairs that break this rule. You might like them, and I chose them because they’re really good chairs. But I prefer fabric, because it’s not slippery, so I would only choose a fabric chair for myself.
