How to Select the Office Chair That’s Right For You | WIRED

Overview

How to Select the Right Office Chair for Your Height and Shape

I spent years taking office chairs for granted. But when I began working from home six years ago, I learned quickly that the right office chair is the difference between pain and no pain. I prefer “no pain.” Turns out the human body was not designed to sit in the same position for long hours at a time. An ergonomic office chair can mitigate the strain on your back from long hours of sitting and help you keep good posture.

Details

But what’s the best office chair? The answer is not the same for everyone. (See WIRED’s guide to the Best Office Chairs to examine your options.) The highest-end chairs offer excellent adjustability for a wide range of heights and builds, but almost none will serve everyone—and some styles and builds tend to suit tall or short people better.

Here are the main questions and considerations when finding an office chair, in consultation with Kristianne Egbert, an ergonomist at workplace-injury company Briotix Health with two decades' experience in the field.

Office Chair Considerations for Larger-Bodied People

Office Chair Considerations for Larger-Bodied People

Top-end picks like the Herman Miller Aeron ($2,195)—a favorite of many WIRED reviewers over the years for its elegant design, wide-ranging adjustability, and breathable Pellicle mesh—can rival the price of a good mattress or sofa. The price buys beauty and comfort, sure, but also durability (and a 12-year warranty, in Herman Miller’s case).

Top-end ergonomic chairs are designed for people who expect to spend long hours in their chairs and at their desks. If you have the budget, WIRED’s favorite premium chair, the Steelcase Gesture ($1,510), is an investment meant to last for your entire working life—elegant and near-infinitely adjustable to your shape and frame.

The more average your build, the easier it will be to find a lower-cost chair that’s suitable. In the $200 range, you mostly just hope your body is the right size for the chair, not vice versa. The Staples Dexley (6/10, WIRED Reviewed), WIRED’s lowest-cost recommended chair, is a mesh chair with a seat depth of a little more than 18 inches—workable for people between about 5'4" and 5'10". The warranty is five years, and I wouldn’t assume it’ll last much longer than this.

Starting at around

The holy ergonomic grail for office chairs is to allow you to maintain proper posture for long work sessions. Strictly speaking, this means that your back is straight and fully supported by your chair. Your thighs are parallel to the floor. Your feet are flat on the floor. Your arms hang naturally at keyboard height, with your hands happily on the keyboard.

People are different sizes and proportions, so your chair often has to adjust a lot to accommodate this. Check below for how to make sure your chair's seat height and seat depth are right for you.

Your spine has a natural S-shaped curve. While a flat-backed chair supports your shoulders, it leaves your lower back to fend for itself and then complain loudly about it. If you're stuck sitting for more than a couple of hours, lumbar support allows the chair to mold to the snakey shape of your back.

“When you're sitting in a forward, hunched position and don't have that curve in your lower back, it increases the forces on the discs in your lower back, definitely resulting in discomfort,” Egbert told WIRED last year.

Look for lumbar support that’s adjustable both vertically and horizontally, so that it conforms better to your back’s individual curves. The Branch Ergonomic Chair Pro is among the most affordable chairs I've seen with two-way-adjustable lumbar support.

But probably the best lumbar adjustment on any chair WIRED has tested is the Anthros V2 (8/10, WIRED Recommends), which offers vertical and horizontal lumbar support that can adjust to the precise architecture of your back.

You can also jury-rig a solution with a low-cost lumbar pillow like this one from Love Home—which is also useful on trans-oceanic flights.

A goodly portion of chairs advertise 4D or 5D armrest positioning—tilting this way and that, rotating, moving wider or narrower. This is important, but not because you need armrests for good ergonomics. You don’t, says ergonomics expert Egbert. Your arms can hang naturally, by virtue of being attached to your shoulders.

"Most of us don't actually need—or use, for that matter—the armrests on our chair,” Egbert told me. “If I’m sitting correctly, my arm should be at the side of my body while I'm typing, right? I don't need to support them with armrests.”

Armrests can be nice when you're leaning back, and many people feel more secure when sitting in a chair with comfy armrests. But ergonomically speaking, armrests should mostly be able to be moved out of the way. They need to adjust low enough, or far enough back, that they don’t interfere with pushing your chair in or maintaining good posture.

“What happens, especially with the cheaper chairs, is that those armrests are big and in the way,” says Egbert. She often recommends armless chairs, though she acknowledges that some people take time to get comfortable with this and feel like they’re “falling out of their seat.” (Note: Most adults don’t fall sideways out of their office chair.)

My colleague Julian Chokkattu’s favorite armless chair is the Humanscale Path (

Active chairs and crisscross chairs are like the barefoot shoe of the office chair world. Rather than offer support for long-term, “proper” ergonomic posture, these chairs encourage you to change position often—and make it easy to do so. If you're the sort that wants to treat your office chair like a yoga mat, just make sure your chair height is right for your desk and height.

Ergonomics expert Egbert laughed when I asked if too-supportive chairs were a form of trap, lulling you into sitting in the same position for unhealthy spans. Like most ergonomics experts, Egbert recommends getting up, moving, and changing position often. But she's less sanguine about the notion that a chair will “make” you move around more, if you're not already inclined.

"That is truly a behavior. You can't mandate it, realistically. My watch might buzz me every hour to say, ‘Hey, get up!' But I can listen to it or not listen to it … There are times when I've just got my focus on, or I've got back-to-back-to-back meetings, and I am not getting up in between. That's why I have my nice equipment.”

What’s the Right Seat Height for My Office Chair?

Nearly all office chairs these days, including the cheapest, come equipped with gas cylinders to adjust seat height in the range from 16 to 21 inches—which accommodates about three-quarters of people. But not all.

To find your ideal seat height, sit on a chair that lets you sit with your knees at a 90-degree angle, and measure the distance from the floor to the bottom of your knee. Everyone’s built differently. But in general, ideal seat heights fall into these ranges:

14 to 16 inches for people 5'2" and below (but see Desk Height, below.)

18 to 22 inches (or higher) for people above 6 feet tall

What’s the Right Seat Depth for My Office Chair?

A common sticking point for chairs is seat depth, which is not always adjustable on more affordable chairs. Ideally, you want your chair’s seat depth to support your legs but not push against the backs of your knees, which causes you to push away from your lumbar support.

Follow the rule of, um, finger: You’d like two or three fingers of space between the back of your knee and the chair. You can measure your ideal seat depth by measuring the distance from your tailbone to the back of your knee, subtracting an inch or two.

Ideal seat depth tends to track pretty closely to seat height, as follows:

For shorter people, Egbert notes, the problem is rarely that a chair won’t go low enough. It’s that the height of their desk won’t accommodate a natural seating position. An industry-standard, 29-inch desk is too tall for nearly all women and a goodly number of men. For reference, I’m 6'1", and 29 inches is just about perfect for me. This is why WIRED recommends a good adjustable standing desk, like our top-pick Comfort Edge from Vari.

Failing an adjustable desk, you’ll need to make sure your chair is able to rise enough so that your elbows are level with or slightly above keyboard height. If you’re shorter than your desk accommodates, you may need a good footrest like this one from Secret Lab.

Office Chair Considerations for Larger-Bodied People

A certain segment of the chair market caters specifically to bigger and taller people. But in general, here are a few points to think bout.

Avoid cheaper mesh chairs. Larger-framed people often have trouble with mesh chairs, Egbert notes. Larger people press their legs harder into the frame of the chair, which cuts off circulation. As a rule, larger-bodied people tend to prefer chairs with cushier foam.

Look for the weight rating. A number of chairs cut off at 225 or 250 pounds. Sometimes this is a matter of structural tolerances of the chair. But just as often, it means the chair’s foam is not thick enough to be comfortable for larger-bodied people.

Check the width. Know your width. Measure yourself if necessary. But especially, make sure your chair has a comfortable seat width for your body shape—and especially that the width between armrests will accommodate you comfortably so you don't feel like you're sitting in economy class all day.

This goes without saying, perhaps. But you’ll probably know the right chair when you sit in it.

Design and manufacturing considerations for chairs can also be astonishingly complex. I am WIRED’s chief office chair and home office reviewer, which means I’ve put in time testing chairs, reading dry ergonomics tracts, and talking with manufacturers about the delicate decisions that go into each chair’s design.

Kristianne Egbert is a certified professional ergonomist and is senior corporate ergonomist at workplace-injury company Briotix Health, with 25 years’ experience in ergonomics training, design, and risk assessments.

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Key Takeaways

• How to Select the Right Office Chair for Your Height and Shape

• I spent years taking office chairs for granted

• But what’s the best office chair

• Here are the main questions and considerations when finding an office chair, in consultation with Kristianne Egbert, an ergonomist at workplace-injury company Briotix Health with two decades' experience in the field

• Office Chair Considerations for Larger-Bodied People