Ergoqueen’s Weblog

Humans were never meant to sit all day. Sitting puts a lot of pressure onto the bones at the base of your hips and this results in stress on your spine. The wrong chair can both cause and exacerbate pain in a surprising number of places. Areas where the wrong chair can make you miserable include your bottom, hips, back, legs, thoracic (upper back), shoulders, necks and arms.

What surprised me is how huge a difference the right chair can make. I have no idea what statistics are, but I’m guessing most people sit in the wrong chair. There’s a lot of cheap junk out there. My old office chair at home was a real piece of junk. I thought I’d bought a nice chair because it was leather, but within months the locknut that hold the back in place stripped out so now the back wiggles. It’s also too big for me. Here’s the BodyBilt J757 I sit in at home now – Lori’s chair.

• Here’s a few tips on how to tell if your chair fits you.
  
  • Seat height - your feet should rest flat on the floor. Note this isn’t necessarily true if you’re at a higher workstation, in which case you need something to rest your feet on that accomplishes the same purpose. Use of a footstool, footrest, foot ring or a NextStep can all make a tall chair fit any person. If your bottom goes numb during the day, odds are your seat is too high. Either lower your seat or add a footrest.
  • Seat depth – your seat should be deep enough to fully support your thighs but should not touch the back of your knee. There should be a space of between 2-4 fingers width between the back of your leg and the front of your seat.
  • Seat back height – What matters here is whether or not the lumbar support is in the right place. Different people like different levels of support in the lumbar region, so ideally your chair has an adjustable lumbar support. Adjustable could mean height of the support, or actual depth of the support. Personally, I like chairs with an air lumbar as you can adjust those to fit your preferences.
  • Headrests – If your chair has one, it should hit you in a comfortable spot. Many chairs offer a height adjustment for the headrest but better chairs often add depth and sometimes even angle adjustments. The Foreaft headrest offered by BodyBilt is my favorite.
  • Seat Width – Your seat should be wide enough to fit your body, but not so wide your arms are too far from your body to be used comfortably. One way for a smaller body to cope with a wider seat is with arms that pivot inward like the Humanscale Freedom Chair or the Ergohuman chair. Pivoting are double pivot arms are also a great solution for those with wider hips and a narrower upper body.
  • Chair Arms – Ergonomists recommend against using any arms if your chair is being used for computer work. Your chair arms are meant to be used to rest between typing. The exception to this would be people who have shoulder or elbow issues who may need the added support. However Jon has said that if you’re pinky finger is getting numb, you’re putting too much pressure on the Ulner nerve and you need to stop leaning on your arms or seek out a softer, more padded chair arm.
    • This means that for most people, your arms should be adjustable and ideally can be moved out of the way, or easily removed. Humanscale’s chairs do this nicely as their arms can be adjusted very low which puts them out of the way. Other chairs offer swing back arms that flip out of the way such as the Via Voss Mesh Back chair, or arms that pivot outward as well as inward such as on the Ergohuman chair.
    • The one thing that is certain is that a fixed arm is not the best choice for most people.
  • Upholstery and cushions -Ergonomists and designers use software to measure how well a seat distributes body weight. The more evenly the weight is distributed, the fewer pressure points and the less likely a seat is going to cause pain or numbness. There are a number of different ways a designer can design a seat to better distribute body weight. The type of cushioning used, the shape of the seat pan, and even the fabric can all change the way a seat handles your body.
    • One popular solution is used on the Humanscale chairs. Humanscale offers the option of a gel seat on both their Freedom chair and Liberty chair. The science behind a gel seat is that it warms to your body and the custom contour created, more evenly balances your weight distribution. The gel seat is a great option if you sit for hours at a time, but will feel too hard if you’re up and down all day because it needs about 15 minutes to warm up and conform to your body.
    • Another popular way to improve a seat is to add contouring. Both BodyBilt chairs and Neutral Posture chairs offer seats with varying contours. Both companies also use multiple types of foam to provide both superior support and comfort, as well as optional memory foam top layers for softness. An extremely contoured seat does a wonderful job of eliminating pressure points and causes you to sit firmly back in your chair, preventing slouching but don’t allow you to vary your position.
    • Mesh chairs, like the Ergohuman chair, are extremely popular but how supportive is a mesh seat? Mesh seats can be very comfortable but don’t distribute body weight as well as many upholstered seats so most of the better chair manufacturers won’t build chairs that have mesh seats. A good compromise for the person who loves the air flow of mesh is a mesh back with an upholstered seat. Also some companies offer fabrics that provide airflow.
    • The fabric you choose can make a surprising difference and we’ve "sit tested" in our offices to prove it. A fabric that stretches 3 ways, like a sweater does, lets you feel the full "cush" of your seat cushions, making for a softer feel and allowing the seat cushioning to better absorb your body weight.

      3 fabrics that do this well:

      Humanscale’s Wave	BodyBilt’s Comfortek	Neutral Posture’s Cloud 9

  Price is not the best way to judge a chair though there are often advantages and good reasons to spend more on a good chair. I’ll cover those reasons in another post, however there are decent chair choices even in lower price ranges such as the Eurotech Apollo MT9400 which is under $250.