Before I had these stools I has purchased 400 dollar ones from another site. Long story short they got very dirty and they were hard to clean ( I have a 2 year old) and some screws were falling off after the first year. So i learned my lesson. I looked for something that would be easy to clean yet looked classy. These are perfect for my family. My 2 year old climbs on them, throws food and i just use a wet rag and clean quickly. Great buy