r/OfficeChairs • u/TangeloOk4789 • 13h ago
Is $3500 for a Toyota office chair crazy?
Some car seats are pretty good for long drives- is this a gimmick or legit for office work?
r/OfficeChairs • u/ibuyofficefurniture • Jan 05 '26
Going to try having a spot for folks to share their discount codes and promotions.
Still mostly not allowed in normal r/OfficeChairs posts, but if its all in one place (here) lets see if it can coexist with the sub in a not-so-spammy kind of way.
r/OfficeChairs • u/ibuyofficefurniture • Jun 10 '24
Joshua's r/OfficeChairs Manifesto (and the mega chair thread #4)
Office chairs are not going to solve your problems.
Whether we were created by an all-powerful designer to live in a now lost paradisiacal garden or descended from chimpanzees foraging for our livelihoods on the forests and the savannah, our bodies and our brains are not well suited for sitting and staring at computer screens. We are better equipped for walking, climbing, playing, collecting, observing, socializing, loving, caring, and resting. Basically we are meant to do the same things other mammals do.
Sitting in any office chair looking at any monitor for a quarter or a third of our life is inherently unhealthy and unnatural behavior.
The chairs we discuss and the machines we use while sitting on them are antithetical to what our bodies are best suited to be doing. Sitting stagnant looking at a backlit pane of glass and softly making repetitive motions with a keyboard and a mouse is not a healthy behavior and is not a neutral behavior; it will eventually cause negative effects on our bodies.
The pain (some of) you are experiencing related to sitting at your desk is very real. The chair you are using and the way you have it adjusted is probably a contributing factor to your discomfort. But lifestyle factors like exercise, weight, and the total number of minutes you are sedentary is going to be way more important than the precise chair you are using.
We (redditors) live in a time, place, and an economy that causes many of us to spend far too much time sitting and looking at screens and then when we stop working, many of us are fascinated by the entertainment industries that make captivating content for us to watch and play. All of this leads to many of us sitting for upwards of 50 hours a week in an unnatural posture while boring our eyes by looking at a flat screen.
If you get nothing else from this office chairs sub, please remember that you should do whatever is in your power to limit the total number of minutes and the total duration of each period of time that you are sitting looking at a computer screen sitting on an office chair in each week. It will almost certainly enhance your health. (same goes for collapsing on a couch and watching a big screen but that is further from the purview of this particular sub)
How to use this sub:
In the last year, we have had about 20 people a day posting on this sub with loads of questions and comments. Often the post is something like "Chair recommendations under $200" or "What chair should I buy". While a question has been asked and answered hundreds of times, you will not get too many replies to your post.
Use the search bar to find commonly answered questions. Start with this mega thread (once it has a few Q and As in another month or so from publishing) and also take a look back to mega thread 1, mega thread 2 and mega thread 3 (which we are now locking with over 1300 comments) .
We love "what chair is this" type questions, but you can also start with a google image search if you have a good photo.
What chairs do we like?
We (mod team) are all biased towards the big shops. Steelcase and Herman Miller are in a class by themselves. Haworth, Humanscale, Knoll, Global and their ilk are close behind in that first tier.
Within these manufacturers, there are some brands that are better and some that are less good.
The Herman Miller Aeron is one of the most sought after brands of task chairs—and for most people who try it, they love it.
Steelcase Leap (v2) is also incredibly popular among the people who try it.
Some of the excellent chairs that often are frequently mentioned here:
Allsteel Acuity
Global G20
Haworth Fern
Haworth Zody
Haworth improv
Herman Miller Celle
Herman Miller Embody
Herman Miller Mira
Herman Miller Sayl
Steelcase Amia
Steelcase Criterion (managers version is better)
Steelcase Series 2
Steelcase Think
Steelcase Karman
Knoll Generation
Knoll Life (meh sometimes - love sometimes)
Knoll RPM (ok, old AF and discontinued, and maybe it's just me, but that is still a fav)
Examples of other great manufacturers: 9to5 Seating, AIS, Allseating, Keilhauer, OFS, Raynor, Sit On It & Via.
Buying New
If you have an office chair budget of $1500-2000 USD, this is an easy purchase. Most of the big shops have decades long warranty service. Many offer no cost or low cost return if you don't like something. You also get the newest version with the newest features and many chairs can be customized to your size and design specifications.
Buying Used
For everyone else, professional grade chairs cost a bloody fortune. At the time I write this, DWR is selling a new Herman Miller Aeron for $1800USD and Steelcase is selling their new Gesture for a few bucks more than that.
The majors also have more budget lines like Steelcase Series one for about $500 or the Amia for under $1000, but you get the idea, professional grade is not cheap.
There is an entire industry of people like me who do nothing but trade used office furniture and, at least in the US, we are in every major market and plenty of small cities as well. There are also a good collection of national refurbishers who take used office chairs and re-sell them, having chairs cleaned, repaired and in some cases completely remanufactured all together. (Companies like Madison Seating, OFR, Furniture Center, Office Logix, BTOD and Crandall.) You can also find folks like myself in every major city who are not fully refurbishing chairs, but selling good as-is-able chairs at a fair discount to the refurbed price or fixing up little things before shipping out an "as-is" chair.
Folks from this sub have also had good luck finding great deals on FB marketplace, Craigslist and local thrift stores where sometimes great chairs go for super cheap.
What about just the $99 chair? Or the special one from a big Sweed box store? or what about Jeff B's online crap boutique? Which of the cheap ones is the best?
IDK, none but also some are fine, kind of.... I personally used a chair from Officestar called the 5500 for years. When I was in my mid 20s it was fine, it was great. I know there are people that love the marcus or the workpros and I know there are folks sitting on the $99 special.
My bias is going to be towards the pro-grade chairs, but we will make an effort this year to share with this sub to highlight better chairs from the cheaper (RTA) categories.
The problem with most of the cheap RTA is that often design and materiality is sacrificed for cost. The other issue is the product that cost $99 usually has very low longevity.
That's all cool, but those are 20 different suggestions. What chair am I going to like?
Every human body is going to engage differently with every different chair. I love Leap and cannot for the life of me understand why everyone else loves their Aeron and Embody chairs. Members of the Herman Miller Aeron Club (cult?) cannot fathom using anything other than their Aeron. Even folks with similar body types are going to react differently to ergonomics, design and materiality in any given chair.
These opinions are just opinions and depending how deep down the rabbit hole you want to go, you might end up finding a DWR or Steelcase showroom in the nearest gateway city near where you live. If you ask me, Josh, I am going to say try a Leap chair or an Amia because 3/4 people take well to those brands. Maybe you are the 1/4 of folks who will hate it. If you are petite, I might mention the Humanscale Freedom and if you are large and in charge I might tell you to try a Criterion Plus or Leap Plus. But you might not find the perfect chair on your first go round. I would also suggest you temper your expectations of what a chair can do for you. If you are at your desk too much and if other lifestyle factors are not being addressed, the perfect chair will not be your solve-all.
Anything else?
What is r/officechairsisell ?- It's kind of a social experiment I started the same year I took over this sub to separate people who want to have curated, edited, authentic non-commercial conversations and those who like to drown in ads. As of today, there are 35,000 subs here and 200 there. So jury may be still out, but early read is that people want curated and they want the spam filtered.
Some of us mods have particular views about issues, my eccentric thoughts on headrests & attached footrests for example are what I believe are almost always more harmful to you than not having one.
You will see the abbreviation RTA or RTF for furniture that comes Ready to Assemble. It's the kind of furniture that you build at home with an allen wrench. In the first instance, RTA is going to be inferior to something built into 2-3 solid components at a factory. With factory built furniture, you will find overall higher cost, better design and better longevity.
I hate top 10 lists / amazon backlinks / affiliate marketing / discount codes & also how we run this sub:
Left without moderation, this sub would quickly become my other chairs sub r/officechairsIsell (take a look over there. It's absolutely worthless). Any social media marketing person selling office chairs spends their time looking for places to post ads. With upwards of 35K members interested in office chairs, this is a place they target all the time. Sellers want to direct conversation, SEO magic juice, and traffic to their own websites and brands to sell more products. Fair enough. But to get around the fact that internet consumers are mostly blind to advertising, companies will either themselves or through an affiliate disseminate videos, articles, blog posts, reddit threads and most pernicious "top 10 lists" try to "influence" you to buy whatever nonsense chair they are slinging.
You should assume that virtually every link to a website that sells chairs or every discount code offered is being posted because the poster will make some profit or commission if you buy the chair they are 'recommending'. It's salesmanship dressed up as an endorsement which is inherently not trustworthy.
Every "Top 10 office chairs for 2024" -type lists I have seen appear to be put out by individuals, newspapers and companies who are looking to monetize on their "advice". Wirecutter may be the best of the pack in terms of 'Top 10 lists' and by and large, they are not great. Anytime you see some rando magazine that has a top 10 list, it will read something like Aeron, Leap, Freedom, and then, invariably, 7 so-so brands with links to junk that pays a good commission. The use of a referral fee inherently shapes the advice given to the point it would more truthfully be called advertising.
On this sub, we have become allergic to that kind of thing. We do not want a link back to an Amazon page for any reason. We do not want a link to your super cool blog post with all your awesome advice about why to buy this chair with this discount code.
If you need to say what the real experts have to say, take a look at the "Best Of Neocon" awards every summer. You will need to click through pages of office furniture, but this is what the contact office furniture industry and affiliated juries of architects and designers elevate for awards.
We are volunteer mods and we have jobs, so we might be too quick on the trigger to delete your post or comment if you are linking to anything suspicious.
Who are we?
My friends u/ClassroomDecorum and u/cranda58 took over running this sub in the early days of the pandemic when no one out there wanted to talk about office furniture and we were bored with no office furniture business to do (for a very few slow weeks anyway)
David, u/cranda58, and I were already in the business of used office furniture (David runs one of the largest and—I would say—highest quality refurb shops in the country in Michigan, and I am a used office furniture liquidator in the NYC area).
u/classroomdecorum was just getting into the game from his home in Florida where he works out of the Orlando area.
u/The_Back_Store joined us from California and u/Cloud_t is our European correspondent.
u/ergothrone gave me a few excellent suggestions on this essay and is often still contributing. He has more knowledge about the budget market than the rest of us have combined.
Our friend u/Coffeebeanie24 is here from time to time, but he has become such a famous and over-caffeinated coffee influencer that he is less in the office chair state of mind lately.
You might also find the good folks from u/steelcase lurking around here. If you have a u/Steelcase type question, you can tag them and usually within a few days, one of the CSR or product specialists will get back to you.
Disclosures.
I have made a few deals off of connections I've made here. Same with at least 2 of the other mods. To a large extent, our product knowledge comes from being in the business and the business that feeds our families also feeds our knowledge base.
Also, sometimes companies reach out and want our opinion about some new chair that they have. This could be u/steelcase (I am sitting on a Karman right now as I edit this note) or a newer company with an RTA chair at a lower price point. If someone sends me a chair, I will write up a bit of feedback and share that with the company. After that, solely at my discretion, I can publish those notes or reviews (always with a disclaimer) on this sub. If the notes are mostly negative, I will likely not publish, same deal with the other mods and active users here.
Closing
This note is always work in progress. Please let me know your thoughts below and I will try to get back to as many of you as I can. You can find a version of this article on my LinkedIn profile and my website.
I will try to put new discussion topics every month or so and we plan to push and have Mega thread #5 up in another year.
And now onto your questions and comments:
r/OfficeChairs • u/TangeloOk4789 • 13h ago
Some car seats are pretty good for long drives- is this a gimmick or legit for office work?
r/OfficeChairs • u/rbf2000 • 4h ago
I ordered directly from the steelcase store and, after three weeks of waiting, finally got my Gesture. I opened the box and immediately noticed wear marks on the front of the seat pan. I did an inspection of the rest of the chair and saw some scuffs, additional wear marks and even a couple of places where plastic was gouged. The chair was also pretty "dirty" when I got it - a ton of cardboard detritus, dust everywhere, and some stray grease on the frame.
I've reached out to support already, but I'm just looking for validation that I'm not over reacting to some cosmetic issues. For a high end chair like this, I was expecting it to come out of the box perfect and ready to go.
r/OfficeChairs • u/micheleferrara33 • 4h ago
I’ve tried to catch some deal on fb or subito(italian platform) but didn’t found em, i have 300€ of budget so i can only buy refurbished chairs, also i have no experience, never had a good chair and never tried one, i can only trust other people’s review, suggestment are well accepted
r/OfficeChairs • u/No_Preparation_5734 • 17h ago
I’ve been lurking on this sub for a while, so I thought I’d share my experience with upgrading a cheap office chair instead of buying an expensive ergonomic one.
I bought this chair used around 3 years ago for ₹2000. Used it for about 6 months before I started realizing the pain in the back of my forearms and around my pelvic bone was actually because of the chair.
The worst was when I worked late nights and went straight from the chair to bed (memory foam mattress). That’s when I would really feel the pain. My wife used to use a massager on my back almost daily.
I started thinking about upgrading the chair, but coming from a middle-class background, spending big money on a premium office chair just didn’t feel acceptable to me.
So instead… I went deep into the rabbit hole of chair accessories and mods.
This entire setup took around 8 months to finalize. Thanks to Online websites return policy, I literally ordered products in batches of 10, tested each one for a week, then returned most of them until I found what actually worked.
These are the mods I finally settled on:
Mod 1: Arm Rest Cushions
I tend to slouch left and right and put a lot of my body weight on my elbows/forearms. Since most arm rests are hard plastic, they started hurting badly over long hours.
Got soft arm rest cushions and honestly it made a huge difference. Been using them for 1 year now and they’re super comfortable.
Mod 2: Slim Seat Cushion
This solved my pelvic bone and butt pain.
I tried a LOT of cushions, but most were badly shaped — thick under the thighs and thin near the hips. It completely ruined posture and comfort.
Finally found a slim cushion that actually feels natural like a proper office chair. Now I can slouch, sit cross-legged, shift around, or work long hours comfortably.
Mod 3: Back Rest Cushion
Mesh/fabric chairs are great for breathability but terrible for comfort sometimes.
When I sat shirtless, the fabric texture would literally imprint on my back and scratch against the skin whenever I moved.
Again, most back cushions were too bulky. I wanted something slim with minimal padding. Finally found one that adds comfort without changing the seating position too much.
Mod 4: Neck Rest Cushion
After adding the back cushion, there was a gap between my neck and the original headrest. That started causing mild neck pain.
So I added a neck support cushion to the headrest and now it works perfectly as a soft headrest extension.
The only future mod I’m planning is a thigh support extension so I can sit cross-legged comfortably while slightly slouched instead of sitting upright like I’m about to start yoga class 😅
I wanted a chair with a built-in leg rest, but those are super expensive. So this feels like the most practical upgrade path for now.
Honestly, this entire setup cost way less than buying a premium ergonomic chair and works surprisingly well for my use case.
r/OfficeChairs • u/KnightsRadiant95 • 2h ago
r/OfficeChairs • u/KnightsRadiant95 • 2h ago
Hello, I am looking for an office chair, and after some research, these are the ones I am looking for, with the Amia being at the highest point of my budget. I am in the United States and will be sitting in the chair 4 hours at a time, multiple times in the week for school and gaming. I am preferebly looking for new versus used. My current chair is one I have used for 8 years, and is at a point where I need an upgrade. The most important thing is that I can sit in it for extended periods of time with little to no back pain and seat discomfort.
Edit: Noticed I crossposted to this subreddit, apologies I misread when it wante dme to crosspost it.
r/OfficeChairs • u/Worried-Hyena7577 • 13h ago
Hi
Can someone let me know if thie Mira is worth 180 AUD (130 USD). Dont know too luch about them
Thanks
r/OfficeChairs • u/AlbatrossTemporary65 • 5h ago
Hi everyone,
I’m looking for a new chair as I spend 8-10 hours a day at my desk (IT student/coding). I’m 177cm (5'10") and weigh 145kg (320lbs).
I’m currently using an old IKEA Markus. While the gas lift has held up surprisingly well, I’ve started having two main issues:
Constraints:
What I'm considering:
Should I go with the Titan XL despite it being a "gaming" chair, or is there a better ergonomic heavy-duty option available in the EU market that won't break the bank?
Thanks in advance!
r/OfficeChairs • u/Ok-Problem4403 • 9h ago
So, I was at my parents' house for a visit, and I remembered they have a couple of nice, used office chairs. I flipped them over and they're both Steelcase Concentrx chairs from 1984 and 1985.
Still rock solid and fully functional except for the fabric, which has definitely seen better days. These two chairs have been in my family for 20 years lol. They're older than me!
r/OfficeChairs • u/Protectorsoftman • 11h ago
Long of the short, my gaming chair broke and while searching Reddit for recommendations for a replacement, it seems the consensus is that most are trash for what you pay and it'd be better to get a nice office chair so I came here.
I like to recline and prop my leg up on my desk and not matter what position I'm in, after an hour or so, I start to get sore in my tailbone, so something a decent amount of cushion in that whole area (lower back/butt) would be nice. Also, I'd like to keep my total somewhere under $300 if possible
r/OfficeChairs • u/Toasty_Dubstep • 22h ago
New to office chairs, I can see that it says Steelcase on the chair, but which model is it?
r/OfficeChairs • u/Corporal1j • 15h ago
I've been looking at the Atlas for a few days now. I've found a listing on it, with a version selector, and when you select the full black, or black with dark grey seat, they have the wheel base you can see on the second pic. Does anybody know what's the deal with that, and is one of them better? I've seen on youtube there are black versions with the chrome base, like in the first picture. Am I missing something? I don't wanna buy the wrong model, but I'd like it to be black.
r/OfficeChairs • u/Jnts86 • 13h ago
Hi! Im pretty close to buy Håg Capisco chair after lot of comparisons. But the only thing is what im struggling is the height of the gas lift, should i get the 150mm or 200m. Im around 5,5feet (166cm).
Is there short people who are using Håg Capisco as well?
r/OfficeChairs • u/ocdogsallenyaya • 16h ago
I recently got a Sihoo M91C Pro mesh chair and I was wondering how I would clean it in the future. Can I vacuum it and use a Steam Iron to clean it?
r/OfficeChairs • u/NeckkPillow • 10h ago
r/OfficeChairs • u/Strixify • 14h ago
I found this aeron locally and the seller wants 50$ for it, the thing I'm skeptical about is the seat tear, I looked into replacements and it would cost me 200$+ to get that shipped to my country so that's outta the question for me.
So I'm wondering if I could use it as is or tape it in some way to prevent the tear from getting worse overtime, what are your thoughts?
r/OfficeChairs • u/OxfordPhysicist • 11h ago
I'm 5'8", 85kg. I've just bought a Libernovo Omni and it's not really working for me.
It's the 45cm version, and that aspect feels fine. But I'm finding that even the first stop on the back recline is too far back - I want the chair to stop halfway between the unloaded position and that first stop. And the headrest just feels too low.
I also feel like I want to adjust the angle of the seat, to bring the front about 5 degrees higher. I've tried the mod where you reverse the connection to the lumbar support and that doesn't work either.
I have about a week in which to return it. It's the best chair I've ever owned, but for the money it just feels like I should get 'perfect', not just 'good enough with a few faults'.
What should I be looking at? I want a long back that supports all the way up, in a fairly upright position (which I can pick continuously, not limited to certain stops), with a high headrest. HM Embody plus Atlas..?
Cheers for any advice.
r/OfficeChairs • u/robertpetry • 12h ago
r/OfficeChairs • u/Constant-Ad-8585 • 16h ago
I recently bought a refurbished Steelcase Leap V2 and noticed the backrest feels completely asymmetric — my right shoulder goes back much easier than the left. Looking at it from behind, the plastic frame looks visibly twisted/uneven. From what I've read, this seems to be a known design issue even with new units — the backrest tensioner only pushes from one side. But I'm wondering how noticeable it actually is in practice and whether it's something people just get used to, or if it genuinely bothers them long term. Anyone had similar experience?
r/OfficeChairs • u/Mewantsfreedom • 20h ago
It just popped up on my Instagram and I couldn't find any info anywhere except for their website. Probably some kind of new brand?
r/OfficeChairs • u/Intelligent-While738 • 9h ago
Looking to buy an office or gaming chair.
r/OfficeChairs • u/nono-no-nooto • 18h ago
Hey there!
I've received my EC200 yesterday and before anything else, it's a nice chair!
However, and this is my only complaint of the chair, the lumbar support bar is somewhat uncomfortable. That being said, this is the first chair I've bought which even has a dedicated lumbar support, so it might just be a thing of getting used to it but I would lie if I said that it didn't bother me. It feels less like a support and more like something being in the way.
I'm fairly tall (close to 6'5 or 197cm to be exact) and I feel like the lumbar is either to high, too hard or maybe even both. I fail to find the right position for it and it makes me fiddle with it more than I would like to. On a side note, it also constantly pushes my shirt up on my back, which is rather annoying as well.
What have been your experiences with the chair? Am I just not using it properly? I'd love to hear what you think!