Tripp Trapp vs Antilop: 10 Things Nobody Tells You

1. The CHF 25 high chair doesn't cost CHF 25

The IKEA Antilop is famously affordable. But what arrives is a plastic seat with no footrest, no cushion, and a basic lap belt.

Most parents end up adding a footrest (CHF 20 to 30), a cushion or cover (CHF 15 to 30), and a silicone placemat for the tray (CHF 15 to 20). Some add bamboo leg wraps to make it look less clinical.

The "hacked" Antilop that fills TikTok feeds costs CHF 80 to 130. Still less than a Tripp Trapp. But not CHF 25.

The Stokke Tripp Trapp needs a Baby Set and harness for the high chair stage (from CHF 65), and an optional tray (CHF 55 to 74). A full setup runs around CHF 380. We bought our Baby Set secondhand and never bothered with the tray. But even at full price, everything is made by one manufacturer and designed to fit together.

2. Neither chair is easy to clean, and nobody admits it

Every review says the Antilop is "easy to clean." On the surface, sure. You can take it into the shower and hose it down.

But the tray is nearly impossible to remove. It has a raised lip that catches food and makes wiping awkward. Once dried porridge gets in there, you're scrubbing.

The Tripp Trapp has a different problem. Food works its way into the grooves where the backrest meets the side panels, slides down around the metal rods, and settles in places you can't reach without a screwdriver. The harness attachment collects grime underneath.

Another parent, who owns both, described the Antilop tray as "vvv hard to remove" with "a lip so not even easy to wipe off in situ."

Neither chair is the "just wipe it down" experience the marketing suggests.

3. The footrest isn't about comfort. It's about safety.

The Antilop has no footrest. The Tripp Trapp has an adjustable one built in.

Most comparison articles frame this as a comfort thing. It's more than that.

Paediatric occupational therapists and feeding therapists recommend what they call the 90-90-90 rule: 90 degrees at hips, knees, and ankles. Feet planted, not dangling. A baby who's stable in their seat can focus on eating. A baby whose feet are swinging is using all their energy just staying upright, and has less control when it comes to chewing and swallowing.

No footrest, no foot support. This is the Antilop out of the box.

That's why an entire industry of aftermarket Antilop footrests exists. Parents aren't adding them for the look. They're adding them because the chair doesn't support proper positioning without one.

4. You will trip over the Antilop's legs. Regularly.

Nobody warns you about this.

The Antilop has four legs that splay outward, creating a footprint of roughly 58 by 62 centimetres. Much wider than the seat. Those legs stick out at exactly the angle that catches your shins when you walk past.

We bashed into them constantly. You'd think you'd learn the route around your own kitchen. You don't.

The gap between tray and table. The legs splay wider than the seat. It never sits flush, and the chair takes up more floor space than it looks like it should.

The Tripp Trapp has a compact sled base that tucks under the table. It pulls right up to the edge. Four normal chairs and two Tripp Trapps fit around a small table without anyone needing to rearrange.

5. Your teenager will still be sitting on the Tripp Trapp

Our boys are still using theirs. One sits at the dining table. One is at our 8 year old's desk in his room. Visitors don't even clock them as high chairs. They just look like chairs.

Once the Baby Set comes off, the Tripp Trapp becomes a chair your child can climb into and out of on their own. No lifting, no help needed. They sit down for dinner, they get up when they're done. When they're doing crafts or homework at the table, the adjustable seat and footrest mean they're at the right height and actually comfortable. You don't think about this until you see a five year old kneeling on a regular chair for the third time in one meal.

Another parent mentioned their children at 19 and 24 still pulling theirs up to the family table. The chair is rated to 136 kilograms. It lasts decades if you let it.

The Tripp Trapp is almost a design classic at this point. It fits into most homes without announcing itself. I care about this more than I probably should, but I'm a designer and a homebody (by choice, and increasingly by necessity since having kids). My nervous system genuinely calms down in a room I like looking at. I don't want to spend years wishing away phases just so I can have my home back. Our home belongs to everyone in it, including me.

The Antilop does not have this quality. It lasts until around age 3, when your child outgrows the 15 kilogram weight limit or simply doesn't fit any more. Then it goes to the charity shop, the bin, or in our case, the basement. Where, frankly, it fits right in.

Cost per year over a decade, the Tripp Trapp works out at about CHF 38. The Antilop costs CHF 25 total, but you get three years out of it at most.

6. The secondhand market is on your side

One of our Tripp Trapps was bought new. The other I found secondhand from a family less than 500 metres away in Zurich for about CHF 70. I wasn't even looking hard. In Switzerland they come up constantly and sell fast. One parent described them as "gone within 15 minutes of being posted." (I grew up in Ireland where they're much harder to find secondhand. The Swiss market is unusually good for this.)

Six years later, the two chairs look the same as each other. You genuinely can't tell which was new.

The Antilop has no secondhand market. It costs so little new that nobody bothers reselling one.

This changes the real cost. A Tripp Trapp bought secondhand for CHF 70 and used for a decade costs CHF 7 per year. Even bought new for CHF 249 and sold later for CHF 120, that's CHF 13 per year. The Antilop at CHF 25 total sounds cheaper, but you get three years and then it sits in your basement.

7. The mess radius is bigger than you think

If you're starting solids, food goes everywhere. Not just on the tray or the chair. On the floor, behind the chair, on the wall somehow, and in a radius you wouldn't believe possible from someone who weighs 8 kilograms and has no throwing coach.

"Weetabix, that's a bugger to get off."

Parent, MumsnetAfter breakfast. Two chairs, one meal, crumbs everywhere.

The Antilop's included tray is wider and catches more before it falls. It's also useful beyond mealtimes. You can put toys on the tray, attach suction cup activities to it, and move the whole chair to wherever you need your child to be for ten minutes. Unless you buy the separate Tripp Trapp tray, you don't get that. We never did. We just pulled the chair up to the table, which meant nearly everything landed on the floor. Many parents do the same.

The floor under the chair takes the worst of it. Almost no high chair review mentions this. We wrote about why a splat mat matters more than you'd think.

8. What goes under the chair matters more than you'd expect

Most parents figure out the floor situation after the first few meals of baby led weaning. Here's what people actually use.

Oilcloth. Shower curtain liners. Plastic tablecloths. Old towels. One parent on Mumsnet mentioned a large piece of cardboard, which is at least honest about the situation.

They bunch up and slide around. They look terrible in a dining room you've otherwise thought carefully about. Fabric mats soak through. Vinyl smells. Oilcloth tears under chair legs.

We make a floor mat, so take this with whatever grain of salt you like. The Tripp Trapp was actually part of what got me thinking about it.

When my first child arrived, I did what most parents do. Phases change fast, so I bought the cheapest option for each one and figured I'd deal with it later. By the time my second came along, I felt the full weight of that approach. The cupboards were full of single-stage products. Things used for a few months, then outgrown or broken or just too specific to be useful any more.

The churn itself became a kind of mental load, always researching the next thing, always replacing. Over the pandemic I became much more sensitive to the waste of it. My whole mentality shifted. I started looking for things that were less but better. Fewer objects, but more flexible, higher quality, open ended. The Tripp Trapp was already proving that this worked. I wanted to make something for the floor that followed the same logic: not tied to one phase, safe enough for the baby stage, and still useful years later.

Timeless dining table. Tripp Trapp, Eames chairs, Studio Huske mat on the concrete.

Photo: Anne Lutz

But the point stands regardless of brand. The floor under the high chair deserves the same thought as the chair itself. Something waterproof, wipeable, that stays flat and doesn't look like a medical supply will save you more frustration than most high chair accessories.

We wrote more about what to look for here: Best splat mat for under a high chair.

9. The Antilop is a good second chair

Here's something comparison articles never say: you don't have to choose one.

The Antilop is lightweight, the legs detach, and it fits in the boot of a car. It's a travel chair, a grandparents' house chair, a holiday rental chair. At CHF 25, you don't worry about it getting knocked around.

One thing worth knowing: the disassembly is fiddly. The legs snap in and out with enough force that I wouldn't want to ask my mother or any older relative to be doing it regularly. If you're leaving one at the grandparents' house, leave it assembled.

We kept ours for exactly this. It went in the car when we visited family. It did its job and we never worried about it.

If you can afford the Tripp Trapp for home and the Antilop for everywhere else, that's probably the most practical answer.

10. The right chair depends on what you're actually choosing for

The Antilop with a footrest is hard to argue with if you want the cheapest functional option for a couple of years. The Tripp Trapp is the one to buy if you're thinking longer term and care how it looks in your home. If you can stretch to both, that's what we did, and it worked.

And whatever you choose, think about the floor under it. Your future self, scraping sweet potato off tiles at 7 in the morning, will be glad you did.

So much junk comes and goes over a childhood. Plastic contraptions you use for four months. Gadgets that break. Things that solve one narrow problem and then live in a cupboard until you finally let them go.

But some things stick around. A Tripp Trapp with paint on the footrest from three children isn't damaged. It's just been used. It was there for the first meals, the homework years, the phases you thought would never end and now can barely remember.

I think the things that last become something like a family heirloom quilt. Passed from kid to kid, repurposed, worn in the right places. Not precious. Just there, through all of it.

That's what I had in mind when I started Studio Huske.