What height should a changing room bench be?

Probe specifies three seat heights: Infant at 350 mm for nursery and Early Years, Junior at 400 mm for primary age, and Senior at 475 mm for secondary-age pupils and adults. Low-seat benches are 1000 mm overall, and every coat-hook or overhead-rail bench is 1840 mm overall.

What are the different styles of changing room bench?

Five: benches with coat hooks, benches with an overhead rail for hangers, benches with baskets, benches with a continuous undershelf, and low-seat benches. Each is available single-sided against a wall or double-sided as an island unit.

Where can I find cheap changing room benches?

Not here, and it is fairer to say so. This is commercial-grade Probe furniture and the cheapest orderable configuration in the range is £971.06, with a median entry price of £1,110.43. There is no budget tier within the range, so a few-hundred-pound budget is better spent elsewhere.

Are the bench seats wooden or plastic?

Both are available on every range: hardwood slats, specified as beech, or black polymer. Beech is the better seat in a dry room and the worse one in a wet room, so poolside, wet-side changing and shower lobbies are polymer environments, while classroom cloakrooms and dry-side club changing rooms suit beech.

Are floor fixings supplied with the benches?

Floor-fixing brackets are included with every bench, but the bolts or anchors themselves are not. The correct fixing depends on your floor construction — a screeded concrete floor and a suspended timber floor need different anchors — so order them alongside the benches.

Can I match the benches to a locker run?

Yes. The lockers and the benches come from the same manufacturer, Probe, so frame and carcass colours can be matched across both. Seven frame colours are available on every bench range at no price difference: red, yellow, blue, green, white, silver and black.

What lengths do changing room benches come in?

Across the 22 Probe ranges on this page the published lengths are 1000, 1200, 1500 and 2000 mm, but they are not evenly available. All 22 ranges are made at 2000 mm and 18 at 1500 mm. Only 12 ranges go down to 1000 mm and just two of those are single-sided, so a metre-long bench is usually a double-sided one. 1200 mm exists on only two listings in the whole catalogue, both double-sided. Bear the depth in mind when a short length pushes you to a double-sided bench: a single-sided frame is 310 mm deep and a double-sided one is 710 mm. Probe manufactures to order, so ask us to check a length the listings do not publish.

Changing Room Benches & Cloakroom Benches

Q: How wide is a changing room bench?

It depends on the format. Our single-sided benches with an undershelf or baskets are 310 mm deep; single-sided benches with coat hooks, an overhead rail or a low seat are 375 mm deep; and every double-sided configuration is 710 mm deep. Lengths are 1000, 1200, 1500 and 2000 mm depending on range.

Q: Are changing room benches with hooks a different height?

Yes. The plain and low-seat benches sit on a 1000 mm frame, while every coat-hook and overhead-rail bench is 1840 mm overall because the frame has to carry the hanging rail above the seat. Note one thing before ordering a hanging bench for young children: the size options list 1840 mm as the overall height for the Infant, Junior and Senior versions alike, so the age designation changes the seat height and not the hook rail. Ask us to confirm the hook centre height against the manufacturer's drawing, or specify a low-seat or undershelf format where reachable storage matters.

Changing Room Benches & Cloakroom Benches — 22 Probe Ranges, 1,400 Configurations

Every changing room bench on this page is UK-manufactured by Probe. The range runs from £971.06 to £3,743.18 across 22 bench types and 1,400 orderable configurations — every combination of length, seat height, frame colour and slat material. The median entry price is £1,110.43. There is no budget tier here: the cheapest configuration in the whole range is £971.06, so if you are working to a few hundred pounds a bench, this is the wrong catalogue and no amount of shopping within it will change that.

Changing room benches, cloakroom benches, locker room benches and changing room seating are the same product under four names. Cloakroom bench is the term UK schools and manufacturers use; changing room bench is what gyms, leisure centres and sports clubs search for; locker room bench is the American form, common in corporate and hotel specifications; and changing room seating or bench seating is how architects and fit-out specifiers write it on a schedule. A bench for a changing room and a changing room bench seat are the same thing too. All of them describe what is on this page: a slatted seat on a steel frame, floor-standing, with or without a hanging superstructure.

Where the phrasing does point at a real difference, it is the superstructure. Changing room benches with hooks are the coat-hook ranges, at 1840 mm overall. Wooden changing room benches means beech slats rather than black polymer — both are offered across the range, and the choice is a wet-side or dry-side decision rather than a cost one. Gym changing room benches are usually the polymer-slat basket or undershelf formats, for the same reason. What we do not have is the plastic moulded or all-polymer bench some suppliers list under the same words: every frame here is steel.

What follows is the specification detail that decides which bench you order — dimensions, seat heights, the single-versus-double arithmetic, and the two things that go wrong on delivery day. If you want the broader planning discussion — circulation space, bench-to-locker ratios, how many benches a room needs — that sits in our changing room bench buying guide. This page is the catalogue detail; that page is the room plan.

The Dimensions, Published in Full

Probe benches are specified as length × depth × height in millimetres, and each of those three numbers is a separate decision.

Length

Four lengths are orderable across the range: 1000, 1200, 1500 and 2000 mm. Not every bench type offers all four — the 1200 mm option appears only on the double-sided undershelf and double-sided basket benches. Most ranges run 1000 / 1500 / 2000 mm, and the single-sided undershelf and basket benches are 2000 mm only.

A correction worth making, because it is in our own product copy: several descriptions state lengths of "typically 1000 / 1500 / 1800 mm". There is no 1800 mm bench in the range. The orderable lengths are 1000, 1200, 1500 and 2000. If you have been planning a wall run against an 1800 mm module, re-measure against 2000.

Depth

This is the number most often got wrong, because a double-sided bench is not twice the depth of a single-sided one:

Single-sided, undershelf or basket — 310 mm deep.
Single-sided, coat hook, overhead rail or low seat — 375 mm deep.
Double-sided, every configuration — 710 mm deep.

So a double-sided island seats two rows within 710 mm, where two single-sided runs on opposite walls need 750 mm of bench plus two separate circulation zones. That, rather than the seat count, is the real argument for going double-sided in a narrow room. It is also the direct answer to the question searchers ask most on this term — how wide is a changing room bench? Ours are 310, 375 or 710 mm deep, depending on type.

Height — and the seat heights nobody publishes

Probe describes its benches as Senior, Junior and Infant. Those words are doing real work, and the millimetres behind them sit in the size options rather than the description:

Infant — 350 mm seat height. Nursery and Early Years.
Junior — 400 mm seat height. Primary age.
Senior — 475 mm seat height. Secondary age and adults.

Those figures apply to the plain, undershelf and basket benches, where overall height and seat height are the same number. Two other height classes exist: low-seat benches are 1000 mm overall — a low seat beneath a full-height superstructure — and every coat-hook and overhead-rail bench is 1840 mm overall.

The 1840 mm Question: Age Sizing Changes the Seat, Not the Hook Rail

This is the specification detail that matters most on a school order, and no competing retailer publishes it.

On the coat-hook and overhead-rail benches, the size options list 1840 mm as the overall height for the Infant, Junior and Senior versions alike. Read literally, the age designation on a hanging bench changes the seat and leaves the hook rail where it is: a nursery bench and a secondary-school bench are both specified at 1840 mm overall.

If your reason for buying an Infant-height bench is that four-year-olds need to reach their own coats, ask us to confirm the hook centre height against the manufacturer's drawing before you order. We publish what our product data states; we will not invent a hook height it does not. Where reachable hanging for small children is the priority, the low-seat and undershelf formats — storage at or below seat level — are the safer specification.

Single-Sided or Double-Sided: the Arithmetic, Not the Advice

Eleven single/double pairs run through this range, and the uplift for going double-sided is not one number. It depends entirely on how much furniture the second side has to duplicate:

Low seat, plain — £971.76 to £1,050.80. +£79.04
With coat hooks — £1,056.04 to £1,146.86. +£90.82
With undershelf — £999.79 to £1,099.43. +£99.64
Low seat with undershelf — £1,007.03 to £1,453.68. +£446.65
With overhead rail — £1,146.02 to £1,601.99. +£455.97
Low seat with baskets — £1,030.42 to £1,505.46. +£475.04
Hook with undershelf — £1,063.40 to £1,549.74. +£486.34
Hook with baskets — £1,086.79 to £1,601.52. +£514.73
Overhead rail with undershelf — £1,121.42 to £2,004.86. +£883.44
Overhead rail with baskets — £1,147.32 to £2,056.64. +£909.32

The eleventh pair does not fit the list above, and it is the one worth reading. Single Sided with Baskets is listed at 2000 mm only, at a flat £1,097.41. Double Sided with Baskets is listed at four lengths — 1000, 1200, 1500 and 2000 mm — and its 2000 mm configuration is £1,773.22. Compared at the same length the double-sided basket bench is +£675.81, the second-largest double-sided uplift in the range. Its £971.06 figure, which is also the lowest price in this whole collection, is the 1000 mm bench — a metre of double-sided seating, not a cheap full-length bench.

Which Lengths Actually Exist: the Constraint Most Buyers Hit First

This decides more orders than the single-versus-double question, and it is not visible until you open every listing and compare them. Across the 22 ranges the catalogue publishes four bench lengths — 1000, 1200, 1500 and 2000 mm — but they are not evenly spread, and the shorter you go the fewer formats you can have.

2000 mm — every one of the 22 ranges. If your wall run takes a full-length bench, nothing is closed off to you.
1500 mm — 18 of the 22 ranges. The four exceptions are Single Sided Low Seat, Single Sided with Undershelf, Single Sided with Coat Hooks and Single Sided with Baskets, which are listed at 2000 mm only. Those are the same four ranges that show a single flat price, and that is why: one length, one price.
1000 mm — 12 ranges, and only two of them are single-sided. Ten of the eleven double-sided ranges go down to a metre; on the single-sided side the only metre-long benches are Single Overhead Rail with Baskets and Single Sided Overhead Rail with Undershelf. The one double-sided exception is Double Sided with Undershelf, which starts at 1200 mm.
1200 mm — two listings in the entire catalogue, both double-sided: Double Sided with Baskets and Double Sided with Undershelf.

Two consequences worth acting on. First, if you have measured a 1000 or 1200 mm wall and cannot find a single-sided bench to fit it, that is not an oversight on your part — the short lengths are overwhelmingly published on the double-sided listings, so in a narrow room a double-sided bench can be the only way to get a short bench at all. Second, if a 1200 mm bench is what the room needs, you are choosing between exactly two products and both are double-sided, so settle the depth before the format: a double-sided bench needs 710 mm of floor, not 310 mm.

Probe manufactures to order, so a length the listings do not publish is a question rather than a dead end. Ask us to check a shorter single-sided length against the manufacturer’s current size list before you redesign a room around what the website shows — but we will not state a length our product data does not publish.

Doubling a bare seat costs about £80. Doubling a bench that also carries an overhead rail and baskets costs over £900 — because the second side duplicates the hanging and the storage, not just the seat.

The corollary inverts the obvious advice, so it is worth stating plainly: in a room wide enough for two wall runs, two single-sided rail-and-basket benches at £1,147.32 each come to less than one double-sided equivalent at £2,056.64 — and give you two circulation lanes instead of one. Double-sided earns its keep when floor width is the constraint, not when budget is. Browse them side by side: single-sided cloakroom benches (11 ranges) and double-sided cloakroom benches (11 ranges).

The Five Hanging & Storage Formats

Every bench in the range is one of five formats. Pick by how the room is actually used, not by the picture:

Benches with coat hooks (6 ranges, from £1,056.04) — the classic cloakroom format: a hook rail above the seat for coats, bags and PE kit. 1840 mm overall.
Benches with an overhead rail (6 ranges, from £1,121.42) — a high-level rail for hangers and longer garments, at the same 1840 mm frame height. Staff changing areas and sports pavilions.
Benches with baskets (8 ranges, from £971.06) — open baskets beneath or beside the seat, so kit is visible and nothing is locked away.
Benches with an undershelf — a shelf under the seat that keeps boots and bags off the floor, which is mostly a cleaning decision: a clear floor can be mopped in one pass.
Low-seat benches — a 1000 mm frame with the seat set low, used where the superstructure carries the storage and the seat is for changing footwear rather than sitting at length.

Baskets and undershelves are the two formats people most often confuse. An undershelf is a continuous surface; baskets are separated compartments. In a school, separated compartments cut arguments about whose kit is whose. In a gym, a continuous shelf is faster to clean and has nothing to break.

Materials, Colours and What Is Actually Included

The specification is consistent across all 22 ranges:

Frame — welded tubular mild steel, powder-coated.
Seat slats — hardwood (specified as beech in the options) or black polymer. The choice appears on every bench, and where the range includes hooks or baskets the same beech/polymer choice governs those components too.
Frame colours — seven, on every range without exception: red, yellow, blue, green, white, silver and black. Colour does not change the price.
Included — full ironmongery and floor-fixing brackets, on every bench.

The beech-versus-polymer decision is straightforward once framed correctly. Beech is the better seat in a dry room and the worse one in a wet room. Poolside, wet-side changing, shower lobbies and outdoor sports pavilions are polymer environments; classroom cloakrooms, staff welfare rooms and dry-side sports club changing rooms are where hardwood earns its appearance. This answers the "wooden changing room benches" searches directly: ours are beech-slatted, and beech is a dry-room specification.

What our product data does not state, and which we therefore will not: a steel gauge, a seat load rating, a warranty period, a lead time, or any BS/EN standard number. None of those appear anywhere across the 22 descriptions. If a competitor quotes a gauge or a guarantee figure on a Probe bench, it is fair to ask which document it comes from.

Two Things That Go Wrong on Delivery Day

Both come straight from the product data, and neither appears on the pages ranking above us:

Floor-fixing brackets are supplied — the floor fixings themselves are not. The brackets arrive with the bench; the bolts or anchors suited to your floor construction are a separate order, and the right fixing for a screeded concrete floor is not the right fixing for a suspended timber one. Nobody wants to discover this with eleven benches in a corridor.
These are welded steel frames, delivered assembled. A 2000 mm double-sided overhead-rail bench is a 710 mm deep, 1840 mm tall welded structure. Check the doorway, the lift and the turning circle on the route from the loading point to the room before the lorry books in — not after.

Benches and Lockers Are One Order, Not Two

Almost nobody buys a changing room bench on its own. The bench and the locker run share a wall, a colour and a delivery, and specifying them separately is how rooms end up mismatched.

Our metal lockers come from the same manufacturer as these benches — see the full Probe range — so frame and carcass colours can be matched across both. By format: standard metric lockers at 1800 mm and standard imperial lockers at 1780 mm (the imperial body exists to drop into an existing 1780 mm run without re-planning the wall), vision panel lockers, perforated lockers for ventilation, sloping-top and flat-top bodies.

Door count and width are the two variables that set the cost per person: 1-door, 4-door, 6-door, 8-door, 10-door and 16-door bodies, in single, double and triple width, plus wide-format lockers for bulky kit. The general rule is to buy width before you buy height — nesting compartments across a wider body brings the cost per compartment down far faster than stacking more doors.

Where devices need charging as well as storing, the PowerBox charging lockers and the USB-C charging lockers take mains, USB-A or USB-C. Locking on all of it is a Type A cam lock — there is no padlock hasp, coin-return or combination option on anything we stock, which is set out in our guide to locker lock types.

Who These Benches Are For

Schools — the Infant (350 mm), Junior (400 mm) and Senior (475 mm) seat heights exist for exactly this. Pair with our school lockers buying guide.
Nurseries and Early Years — Infant height, and read the 1840 mm note above before ordering a hanging bench.
Gyms, leisure centres and sports clubs — polymer slats wet-side, beech dry-side; see choosing gym and leisure lockers.
Industrial and warehouse changing areas — bench plus locker run as one specification; our staff and workplace lockers guide covers the duty-of-care side.
Healthcare and clinical facilities — polymer slats and a clear floor for cleaning regimes.

What We Do Not Sell, and Where to Go Instead

Four things people search for alongside these benches are not in this range, and it is quicker to say so:

Flat-pack and domestic hall benches. If the search that brought you here was for a home hallway bench, this is commercial changing room furniture starting near £1,000 a unit and it is the wrong product for that job.
Benches with integral lockers in one frame. We supply benches and lockers as separate items that share a colour and a wall, not as a combined unit.
Second-hand or ex-stock benches. Everything here is manufactured to the configuration you order.
Football-club dugout and team seating. A different product class with its own suppliers.

A Note on Our Own Pricing You Should Know About

Four single-sided ranges — Single Sided Low Seat (£971.76), Single Sided with Undershelf (£999.79), Single Sided with Coat Hooks (£1,056.04) and Single Sided with Baskets (£1,097.41) — currently show one price across every configuration. The reason is that all four are listed at 2000 mm length only: the options vary seat height, frame colour and slat or basket material, and none of those changes the price. Every range that does offer more than one length prices by length.

We are stating that plainly rather than letting it look like a bargain or a mistake: on those four ranges the figure shown is the figure, and if you are comparing a single-sided basket bench at £1,097.41 against the double-sided equivalent at £971.06 you are comparing a flat price to a range floor, not like for like. Ask us to confirm the configured price before you build a budget on it.

Related Storage

Changing rooms rarely sit on their own. If you are fitting out a wider welfare or works area, our workshop storage range covers cabinets and cupboards for the same buildings, and steel cupboards versus lockers sets out which of the two a shared space actually needs. For personal-issue storage decisions more broadly, start with how to choose metal lockers for the workplace, and for device storage the laptop charging lockers guide. Changing facilities themselves are a specific legal duty, not just good practice — Regulation 24 of the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 sets out what "suitable and sufficient" changing provision means.

Providing somewhere to change and store protective equipment is part of the PPE at Work Regulations 1992 — see our PPE regulations guide for the storage and training duties.