Office chairs! Exciting, right?
I work from home 2-3 days per week and have a decent "home office" setup in one of the bedrooms, but my office chair is terrible. Like I bought a super cheap one off Wayfair for like $50 shipped, can't even mount the casters, etc, etc. After a grueling 18 months of use, it's already falling apart, cylinder doesn't hold pressure for more than an hour or so, blah, blah.
Budget? Let's say up to $250..........any suggestions?
I don't have an answer but I always said somebody should build a "big guy" office chair.
Our chairs at work are designed for 120# ladies and not the bigger dudes like me.
Check your local used business furniture store. With business furniture, you should be able to find better quality, longer lasting for less than a consumer model would cost.
-Rob
We just bought chairs at work. I got to pick them out - Staples has these for around $250 and they are pretty solid. Ours were on sale in the local store for under $150. I put them all together and they don't have any obvious weak points. Pretty adjustable and pretty comfortable. I'm 5'-10" and 270. I've been sitting in it for a month and have no regrets on the decision.
Refurb Herman Miller Aeron.
/thread.
OK, it's above your budget - I think I paid about $400 for mine, but to me it was worth it. You can usually find some on FB Marketplace, and I've seen them close to your budget occasionally.
Beware the low end. Cheap pleather doesn't wear well with regular use.
As an office drone I'd really recommend avoiding pleather completely. I much prefer mesh chairs with both a mesh seating surface and a mesh back. Beware that at the cheap end a lot of chairs only seem to have a mesh back.
If you are going to be parked in it 8-12 hours a day, damn the budget and get the most comfy one you can find.
There's always this... for the lolo price of $2099.99:
I'm not sure I've seen something uglier in recent memory.
I'll second the used business furniture store. It will probably be in an industrial part of town.
When you're there, look for Steelcase or Herman Miller. Keep an eye out for both brands on Facebook Markets and Craigslist as well.
Steel Case makes some good ones.
I heard that office chairs are rated for "hours you spend sitting in them" or something like that. You want a chair rated for all day use.
Knoll International (KI) and Haworth are also worth looking for on the used market. I have a couple Haworth office chairs at home; mesh backs and upholstered seats. They are about 15 years old and have held up great.
rob_lewis said:Check your local used business furniture store. With business furniture, you should be able to find better quality, longer lasting for less than a consumer model would cost.
-Rob
This right here. I went to one and tried a bunch of chairs and found that the Aeron chair I thought I wanted was in 3rd place behind two others. I ended up with an almost new looking Herman Miller Embody at about 1/3 of the original retail price. It is excellent.
I had a Neutral Posture 8000 series chair in my old office and really really wanted to take it with me when I left. I did some work in their showroom in Chicago and it was given to me but the company I worked for thought it was theirs and it wasn't worth the hassle. Most comfortable chair ever.
edit: much exceeds your price but it held up for years and was ^ most comfortable chair ever
Find an old Recaro or similar and build your own?
https://www.instructables.com/id/Turn-a-Racing-Seat-Into-An-Office-Chair/
That said, I third the Herman Miller Aeron or one of the knock-offs.
Check your local area on the Goodwill's online auction site or the usual suspects like CL/FBM/Nextdoor/OfferUp, etc.
Datsun310Guy said:I don't have an answer but I always said somebody should build a "big guy" office chair.
Our chairs at work are designed for 120# ladies and not the bigger dudes like me.
I always figured that was intentional all for anyone in outside sales - they don't really want you in the office much anyway, right?
Hmm, sounds like I need to up the budget a bit. Not a problem, just have to wait another month or so.
Of course, that also depends on what the tree guy tells me later today.
Duke said:Knoll International (KI) and Haworth are also worth looking for on the used market. I have a couple Haworth office chairs at home; mesh backs and upholstered seats. They are about 15 years old and have held up great.
It's Kruger International that is KI. Knoll is a separate company and also worth a look. You want a chair from a Contract Furnishings company tested to BIFMA standards. They are designed and tested to be used 8-10 hrs/day, 5 days/week, for 10+ years and are waranteed for that. What that means is they will actually last. I worked at KI for a number of years. We had dozens of competitive chairs in our office.
The Aeron is a classic one.
The Allsteel #19 was one of my favorites.
At home I have a KI Altus. It's 12 years old and everything still works. It doesn't get heavy use but it is probably 10ish hours a week. It's comfortable and sturdy.
Some things to look for. I like the ones that tilt the base and back with a linkage. It was marketed as ankle pivot and the idea was you pivoted about your feet not your butt. Look for ones that can tip forward also. For engaged work it provides a comfortable position with your spine vertical but still provide back support. I like mesh backs, some hate them.
Used office quality is the way to go. I'm confident you can find a comfortable new chair for $250 but I would put money on you rebuying it in 2-3 years. You should have a furniture sales place in town. For large offices this stuff is custom, fabrics/paints, caster type. They may have something that was made wrong or lightly damaged for sale.
I third/fourth/whatever getting a higher end chair used. It's amazing what companies will get rid of just because they're changing the look of the office or moving. A used office furniture store would be a great use of an hour or two of your time. Even if you don't buy something there you can at least identify what you like in a chair.
A note on spending more for higher quality: It's kind of like some cars, in that spending more can cost less in the long run if you sell it when you're done. I had a used Eames Herman Miller chair that I paid the ungodly sum (to me, at the time) of $575 for about 25 years ago. I used it every day in the office for most of those 25 years and then when the leather finally wore out last year (at the ripe old age of 35!), I sold it as-is on eBay for $400. Plus shipping. So 25 years of using a nice designer leather chair cost me $175. Many of the Aeron chairs that are selling for $400 now are already 15 years old. They still work well. They'll still be worth a few hundred dollars in 5-10 years.
Not all chairs will hold that much value but they'll hold some. Compared to the Staples/Wayfair chairs that are literally landfill fodder after a year or two. It really is cheaper in the long run to have better furniture, especially something as frequently used as an office chair.
Oh, and they DO make "big boy" chairs. Many office chairs come in sizes; most offices just buy the default / cheapest option. I know the Aeron comes in multiple sizes.
What size people do "big boy" chairs accomodate? I have a standard Steelcase chair of some sort, and I can't even fathom the amount of weight I would need to gain for this chair to be too small for me.
I'm sitting in a Hayworth Improv HE right now with the swivel arm rests and wide ranging adjustability. It was manufactured in 2009 and looks new still.
I've tried Aeron chairs and do not like them at all (and they really don't hold up to long term use).
**Source: I work in a largish government facility and we go through a LOT of chairs. I've sat my butt in most of them and this Hayworth is my favorite.
400lbs was the standard. Not sure what it is now. Your looking for "Bariatric" if you want the very large stuff. Sizes usually deal with percentile. XL will be targeting like the 97% male. Generic stuff will be designed to accommodate the 95%. It doesnt sound like much but your looking at extremes of ergonomic bell curves so 1-2% at the fringe is a big change. Like the difference between comfortable for someone 6-1 220 vs 6-6 270.
In reply to nocones :
Thanks for the correction.
Thanks for all the suggestions regarding commercial/used furniture stores to go look.
That hadn't even occurred to me.
So what did you end up with?
With me working from home for the foreseeable future, I'm looking around too. $150-300 seems to get a good used or refurbished Steelcase Amia, or Gen1 Leap. A Gen2 Leap is what I have at work and I don't really have any complaints.
I have a decent home desk chair, but definitely not setup for 8 hours a day of use. The pleather is flaking off on one side, and non-adjustable arms makes it difficult to use with my desk, esp. with how I have my laptop placed :(
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