How many plates and bowls for four, six or eight

A large plate, a small plate and a bowl per person covers ordinary meals: dinner, a side or a starter, and anything with a sauce. Four seats is twelve pieces, six is eighteen, eight is twenty-four.

Mugs are separate, and a serving piece per four people is enough unless the table entertains often.

The sets here run from twelve pieces upward, and the piece count tells you the seats it was built for rather than the number of meals it serves. Of the 29 sets in the range, the larger ones cover six and eight seats in one box.

Buying one size up is the cheap insurance: the spare piece replaces the first casualty without a second order.

Six plates stack 3.3–5.1 inches and six bowls 8.4–13.2 inches, calculated from the stated sizes. A twelve-inch shelf takes one stack of each with room to lift them out. A nine-inch shelf does not.

Measure the shelf before the order rather than after. The planner on the site does the arithmetic if you would rather not.

Two sets of six beat one set of twelve when the patterns differ, because you end up with twelve patterns rather than twelve pieces of the same six.

Singles are for replacement and for odd sizes: the rectangular plates and the wide pasta bowls rarely come inside a set.

Bowls, every time. They hold cereal in the morning, soup at lunch and pasta at night, and two of them are always in the machine.

Buy bowls one size up in count: six bowls for four seats, eight for six. Plates rest between meals in a way bowls never do.