Office chairs, and how to avoid buying the wrong one
A chair is the only piece of office furniture that touches someone for eight hours a day, and it is the one most often chosen on looks. Work Furniture Direct stocks the full range, from task and operator chairs to executive chairs, and the pattern is consistent: the chairs people complain about are the ones bought without sitting in them.
Adjustment matters more than material
Mesh, fabric and leather are a preference. Adjustment is not. A chair needs seat height, back angle and lumbar height at minimum, and seat depth if it is being shared between people of different heights.
A cheap chair with real adjustment beats an expensive one with a fixed back every time. If you only change one thing about how you buy chairs, make it that.
Which type suits which role
- Task and operator chairs for anyone desk-based all day. This is where the budget belongs.
- Ergonomic and posture chairs where someone has a specific need or an existing problem. Get the assessment first, then buy to it.
- Executive chairs for offices where the chair is partly a statement. Available in leather, fabric and mesh.
- Visitor and conference chairs for rooms people sit in for an hour, not a day. Comfort matters less than stacking and footprint.
- Stacking chairs for spaces that change use. Count the storage space before the chairs.
- Heavy duty chairs where a standard weight rating is not enough. Check the rating rather than assuming.
Mesh or fabric
Mesh backs breathe, which matters in warm offices and south-facing rooms. Mesh task chairs and mesh office chairs are the default for most modern fit-outs for that reason.
Fabric is warmer, quieter and usually cheaper to reupholster. Fabric task chairs and fabric office chairs still make sense in cooler buildings and in rooms where you want the seating to disappear rather than announce itself.
Buy the spares with the chairs
Castors and gas lifts are the two parts that fail, and both are cheap. Keeping a couple of each on a shelf turns a broken chair into a five-minute fix instead of a replacement, and chair spares and parts are stocked for exactly that.
It is also worth checking the warranty period against how long you expect to keep the chair. A five-year warranty on a chair you will replace in three is not worth paying extra for.
Ranges we stock
Eclipse and Chiro cover the everyday task chair requirement, Cosmo and Brunswick sit a step up, and Desire runs through the leather executive side. Carter and Carmen turn up across the visitor and conference range.
Ask us for a sample before committing to a floor. We would rather send one chair out and have it come back than have twenty arrive that nobody likes.