Burrow Vesper Review: A Modern Lounge Chair for This Century

Burrow’s flagship lounge chair mixes mid-century looks with modern sensibilities.

Published August 4, 2023

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Updated January 9, 2024

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Burrow has not been around all that long. The direct-to-consumer furniture brand first started shipping its flagship modular sofa, the Nomad, to customers back in 2017. But in just over half a decade in existence, Burrow has quickly risen through the rankings to become one of the first names in internet furniture. The brand’s affordable price point, cool mid-century-inspired aesthetic and easy DIY assembly (all its furniture ships in boxes for you to put together yourself, often without tools) have created a perfect storm for popularity in the 2020s.

As a result of its internet darling status, Burrow has wasted no time in expanding its offerings beyond sofas and couches. In 2023 alone, Burrow debuted its first-ever outdoor collection in Relay, and launched its first sleeper sofa, the Shift. But the Burrow product that most intrigued me was its first lounge chair, the Vesper, which debuted in 2022. As a borderline fanatic when it comes to mid-century modern furniture designs, I’ve long desired to own a classic lounge chair like the Eames Lounge from Herman Miller or Knoll’s Womb Chair. But those chairs cost anywhere from $7,000 – $10,000 or more — money I decidedly do not have for furniture. Then I saw the Vesper.

The chair is not a knockoff of any famous design but rather is thoughtfully designed itself. The chair proudly wears its influences from the Eames Lounge, Womb Chair and Hans Wegner’s smiling Shell Chair on its sleeve while still aiming itself squarely at modern customers with modest bank accounts. But could the Burrow Vesper lounge chair satisfy my designer furniture cravings? I got one myself to find out.

Burrow Vesper Lounge Chair: What We Think

Burrow Vesper Lounge Chair

$799.00 at Burrow

Pros

Great-looking design
Comfortable
Pretty unbeatable for the price
The upholstery is great at repelling damage from pets

Cons

It's harder than it should be to put together
The pillow and ottoman, which greatly increase comfort, each cost extra
The gap between the back and seat is a black hole for whatever's in your pocket

The Vesper is an excellent lounge chair, especially for the price. It boasts an attractive original design that takes some subtle inspiration from a few mid-century icons but could one day become a classic in its own right. Its performance fabric shrugs of cat scratches like no upholstery I’ve ever seen, and it’s extremely comfortable — provided you spring for the ottoman and lumbar pillow — and it’s competitively priced, even when accounting for those add-ons.

But the chair still has a few issues. The chair has an awkward gap between the back and seat that seems to draw out whatever you’ve got in your pockets, exiling them to the floor. But the biggest problem with the Vesper is that there is a flaw in its design that makes it difficult, if not impossible, to put the chair together as intended. This hasn’t affected my experience with the Vesper post-assembly, but it’s definitely worth noting.

The chair looks great

The design of the Vesper is as if Burrow took a Womb Chair, Eames Lounge and Shell Chair, put them all in a blender and then shipped off the result in boxes for customers to assemble. The chair has the overall cozy aesthetic of Saarinen’s Womb Chair — right down to the lumbar pillow — along with that chair’s four thin metal legs. It’s made from bent plywood like the Eames Chair (you can even get a version in black leather with the plywood exposed to really amp up the Eames vibes) and has a similar fixed recline. And it has the head-on happy grinning profile of the Shell Chair from Carl Hansen & Søn.

Even the chair’s name, Vesper, exudes a certain mid-century cool, as it was undoubtedly taken from James Bond’s alluring Casino Royale flame (and subsequent cocktail). It all adds up to a chair that wouldn’t look out of place in a mid-century modern home but still has enough contemporary flair — like the exposed black powder-coated steel frame — to stand on its own as something most definitely from the 21st century.

the burrow vesper chair in a living room — The stylish Vesper cuts quite the figure.

It’s very comfortable, but you need the pillow and probably the ottoman

Without question, the Vesper is a comfortable chair. Its loungey tilt invites relaxation, and its sides curl to envelop your body in a comforting embrace. It’s nicely cushioned but not overly so, and it’s at a low enough height that it’s easy to get in and out of. I love kicking back in it to read, play video games or watch TV, and it’s quickly become “my” chair. However, I do think both the ottoman and pillow are necessary add-ons to maximize your comfort — especially the pillow.

Without the ottoman, your feet will kind of hang over the edge, and because you’re tilted back at such an angle, it may not be terribly comfortable if you’re very short. The chair was definitely designed to put your feet up, though it is still large enough to comfortably curl up if you want to go sans ottoman. But I wholeheartedly either getting Burrow’s $60 lumbar pillow or using a pillow you already own, because the angle of the chair — at least for me — leaves my lower back unsupported when I’m not using a pillow, which can cause some soreness after a while. This problem is literally nonexistent when using the pillow, but is pretty evident without it.

The upholstery is extremely durable

a dog sleeps on a burrow vesper lounge chair — No pet can resist the comforting curves of the Burrow Vesper.

This honestly is the most impressive thing to me about the Vesper. Burrow always brags about the durability of its fabrics — how they resist stains and are tested against cat scratching. Well, it turns out the brand isn’t blowing smoke. This fabric is amazing. My pets are constantly on the chair — my dog is literally lying between the back of the chair and the lumbar pillow as I write this — as they seem to like how its curves conform to their little bodies. But despite this, the chair doesn’t look any worse for wear.

The fabric hides fur extremely well, to the point where I’m always shocked at the amount that comes off of the chair when I vacuum it. It also shows no stains from my pets’ various bodily fluids, and it shows zero — seriously, zero — marks from my cats using it as a scratching post, which they have done on many occasions. It’s the first piece of living room furniture that hasn’t been ruined by my cats, and that alone is worth whatever Burrow is charging and then some.

Putting it together is kind of a pain

Burrow’s furniture is meant to be easy to assemble; it’s part of the brand’s identity. But the Vesper’s assembly definitely gave me some trouble. The chair ships without any tools, and Burrow says you don’t need any. Instead, it recommends using a quarter to tighten down the wide-headed screws that hold the chair together. This gets pretty painful when you’re digging into a quarter trying to tighten a stubborn screw, and I hope in the future Burrow starts including a small tool that provides some leverage and makes the job easier.

The Vesper also has, in my opinion, a flaw in its construction. Most of the chair is pretty easy to put together — one person can do it — but the problem comes when trying to attach the back to the seat. For one, you have to bend it quite a bit to fit, and it takes some strength to force it in. But once you do that, you’ll see that there are three holes on each side where you’ll need to attach the back to the seat with screws. All of the screws Burrow sends are the same length — all of them — but two of the screw holes, one on each side of the back, require longer screws. That’s because two holes on each side have a threaded metal extension that comes out of the hole to meet the screw, but the other hole on each side does not. So four of the six screws go in without issue, but I could not for the life of me get the other two in.

Thinking I had a defective chair, I contacted Burrow about the issue and was sent a new chair — I have to say, Burrow’s customer service is fantastic and turned what could’ve been an annoying situation into a pleasant one. Again, I ran into the same issue with the two screws not being long enough. I ended up just assembling the chair without them, and I’ve had no issues with durability or stability in the six months since.

Pro tip: Empty your pockets before sitting down

This is an extremely minor nitpick, but I wanted to mention it just the same. Where the back of the chair meets the seat, there is a decent-sized gap. This gap is somewhat covered up when using the lumbar pillow, but it’s still there on the sides — located just behind my pockets. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat in my Vesper only to have my phone slide out of my pocket and fall directly through this gap and onto the floor. I’ve trained myself to empty my pockets prior to sitting down on the Vesper, and I’d advise you to as well.

burrow vesper chair gap — The dreaded gap where phones go to die.

Burrow Vesper Lounge Chair: Alternatives

The Vesper offers a lot for a decent price, but that price varies a bit depending on how you configure the chair. For a plain fabric chair with no exposed wood, you’re looking at $799 with free shipping. You can then add on the ottoman for an extra $249 and the pillow for another $69, which comes to $1,117 before tax (this is my setup). At the highest range, a leather Vesper with exposed plywood, pillow and ottoman will run you $1,397.

This is still quite affordable, even at the high end, so if you’re looking for a lounge chair that’s in the same vein as the Vesper and around the same price, that means skipping the big-time design brands and sticking to Burrow’s chief competitors. First and foremost is Article, which offers dozens of attractive lounge chairs with mid-century vibes and a contemporary twist, like the bouclé-covered, peg-legged Gabriola that’s just $499. There’s also Castlery, which sells the Japanese-inspired Gable with performance fabric and ottoman included for $1,269. Finally, if you want to go upmarket a little bit, there’s Blu Dot‘s uber-cool Field Lounge Chair, which retails for $1,995, not including the $695 Field Ottoman.