How To Determine Whether Your Office Chairs…

Just like any other piece of business equipment, your office chair has a finite life cycle after which it’s more costly to own than replace. One of the first indicators of when it’s time for a new chair is when your current one is starting to cause you pain or discomfort. Although the effects may feel small at first, each passing workday is adding to the negative impact an unsupportive chair has. Productivity starts to decline as energy levels wane and agitation levels rise, especially in the afternoon after you’ve been in the seat for many hours.

In this article, we’ll help you learn how to tell if your office chairs need replacing, not just for your benefit, but the benefit of everyone sitting in them along with the bottom line of your business.

Are Your Office Chairs Becoming More Uncomfortable?

Do Minor Aches And Pains Worsen With Each Passing Hour?

The first indicator that your chair needs changing is when it starts getting more uncomfortable after you’ve been sitting in it for a few hours. If your chair has always been this way, chances are, it isn’t a quality chair to begin with. However old, discomfort is a sign it’s time to take a look at buying a new chair that allows you to perform your best for the entire workday, not just the beginning.

How Does The Chair’s Padding Look And Feel?

If your chair lacks comfort and your work is suffering, check the foam padding. Has it lost its springiness and does the seat feel lumpy or misshapen?

Cheap foam cushions rapidly lose their ability to provide support, often becoming brittle and hard after only a few months of use. And if when you stand up, your seat still visibly keeps the form of your body, it’s time for an upgrade.

Finally, check for cracks or rips, and if your arms are either missing or held together precariously, it's definitely time to replace your chair.

Missing Or Insufficient Lumbar Support

A key feature of a truly supportive office chair is lumbar support. When your back is constantly bent forward, your muscles will strain from being pushed out of its natural curve. Office furniture without lumbar support frequently leads to back pain and is a leading indicator that you need a new office chair.

What Is Your Posture Like In The Chair?

Your office chair should gently place you in a naturally well-positioned seating posture. One test is if you can keep your feet on the floor with a small gap between your knees and the front of your seat. With feet planted, you should also be supported by the backrest in both your lower and middle back.

Your Back Always Hurts By The End Of The Day

Sitting for hours at a time every day takes its toll after a while when you’re in the wrong office chair. If the cushion is worn down or the chair’s design forces you into bad posture, take that as a major warning sign that your office chair needs replacing. The wrong office chair can exacerbate a host of physical problems, especially back troubles, which can affect not only your work life but your personal life when enjoying your favorite physical activities.

Constant Squeaking And Creaking

When you share office space with someone who has a noisy chair, it can be annoying and distracting to coworkers. If your entire office is made aware of every time you stand up, turn around, or lean back in your chair, it’s time to get a new one. If your chair is making noise that’s irritating to you, it’s a good bet it’s annoying everyone else as well.

Broken Critical Parts And Adjustment Levers

A broken seat back or armrest is a clear sign your office chair needs replacing. You can’t do your job if your chair is literally falling apart. This often starts out small with a loose armrest or slight wobble in the seat back, or even with broken adjustment levers.

The Office Chair Won’t Lean Back Or Roll Anymore

Not being able to lean back in your chair makes for endlessly long and uncomfortable days. This can lead to back and neck pain, not to mention draining your productivity as each hour slowly ticks by.

And if your chair doesn’t roll anymore, there’s an even greater potential for injury. Not being able to roll your chair forces you to lean at strange angles while pulling the chair under you in an awkward motion that’s anything but ergonomic.

Also, some people have to move around their workspace more than others, passing back and forth from file cabinets and their desks. If this is you or your team and the wheels don’t work on your office chairs, that can add up to a lot of extra effort during the workday.

Never Underestimate The Benefits Of Office Chair Support

Some may see an office chair as something that just needs to be replaced every couple of years. However, this ideology locks them into a spiral of discomfort and distraction because each new chair deteriorates rapidly. It’s surprising how the details of office chair comfort can affect your productivity, and when a chair quickly declines in comfort, so does the quality of work you or your team produces.

Studies Prove Ergonomic Chairs Boost Productivity

In one study, researchers found participants had a statistically lower HRV ratio while sitting in the Herman Miller Cosm chair in seven of the nine tests. This measurement indicates a lower stress level while sitting in the high-back Cosm, compared to a highly adjustable chair and a non-adjustable chair.

Choose G|M For Your Office Chair Needs

G|M is committed to providing innovative office chairs for more comfortable and productive working environments. Visit one of our showrooms to feel for yourself in Riverside, Irvine, or San Diego. Our priority is helping our clients elevate their workplaces! Call or click today and find your next perfect office chair.

Sooner or later, everything breaks down. Even the stars in the sky sputter out and die. Nothing is permanent. Office furniture has a lifespan of its own.

A Long-Term Investment

A sound piece of advice that you may or may not have heard before is this: Invest in what’s between you and the ground. Anything that separates you from the dirt is worth investing in. Shoes, mattresses, tires for your vehicles; they’re all critically important for various aspects of your life.

A chair is no different. It separates you from the ground, and thus, it’s worth an investment. It’s a piece of furniture you use every day, you spend hours of your life in it, so you want to make sure you’re getting the best you can out of it.

Indeed, the life span of an office chair depends heavily on the investment you make into it. Some chairs might last 1-2 years. Some chairs might last 5-6. Some chairs can last decades, with proper care and maintenance.

According to Baylor University:

“[…] probably up to 7 or 8 years for a chair with a 5-year warranty and 12-15 years for a chair that offers a warranty of 10-years or more. These life expectancy estimates are not directly related to the warranty period but are based on quality such guarantees imply.”

On average, an office chair should last between 5 and 10 years before it needs replacement. However, there are a lot of different factors that can affect this number, both up and down, so it’s worth considering everything when you’re making a chair purchase.

Factors Affecting a Chair’s Longevity

There are a bunch of different elements that go into how long-lived a chair can be.

Let’s go over them all.

Construction

The overall construction, quality, and materials used to make your chair will make a great difference in the longevity of your chair.

1. Construction materials. A chair made out of cheap plastic is going to fall apart faster than one made out of aluminum. One made out of metal or wood will last longer, though they’re much less common. Even in terms of plastics, some kinds of plastic are longer-lived than others.

2. Construction quality. A chair carefully made with a high level of quality control will last a lot longer than a chair mass-produced in a factory in China with no oversight. Small defects in the materials or manufacturing process can make a huge difference in the overall lifespan of the chair.

Usage

The construction of your chair isn't everything; how it's being used will also directly affect the lifespan.

1. Duration. A chair that is used for four hours a day, five days a week, is going to last longer than a chair that is used for 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, and that chair is going to last longer than a chair that is used for multiple shifts from multiple people, 20 hours a day around the clock. More usage means more wear and tear, which means more accumulated damage, which means a shorter lifespan.

2. Environment. A chair that is kept in a clean office is going to last longer than a chair that spends most of its time in a dirty warehouse or machine shop. At the very least, dirt and grime can work their way into the fabrics and cushions of a chair, making it much less pleasant to use. Over time, dirt and grime can infuse the mechanisms of the chair, such as the gas spring, the casters, and the adjustment levers, all of which can grow stiff and fail over time. Another environmental factor is the kind of people using the chair. Office workers wearing slacks are going to do less damage to a chair than a construction supervisor who might have dirty, rough jeans, a tool belt with sharp objects in it, or other items that can damage a chair.

3. Fabric resilience. Some fabrics last longer than others. Leather chairs, with proper care, can last for decades or even centuries. Faux-leather chairs do not. Fabric chairs can last a long time, depending on the quality of the fabric. Some mesh compositions are very resilient, while others can tear and run overtime. You may also want to factor in stain and odor resistance.

4. Care and maintenance. The more a chair is cared for, the longer it will last. Replacing casters before they break, replacing a gas spring as it wears out, lubricating mechanisms, keeping the fabric clean; all of this can impact the longevity of a chair.

Signs Your Chair Needs Replacement

Some signs a chair needs to be replaced are obvious. If a leg breaks off, a back mechanism fails, or another major mechanical issue breaks the chair, then you need a new chair. It’s simple.

Other signs are more subtle and might be something you can fix. However, even if your chair has a problem you can fix, it’s still a sign that parts of the chair are wearing out, and other failures may be imminent.

1. The warranty is almost up. One of the biggest reasons to replace a chair is that the warranty is almost up. If the chair has wear and tear from use, and the warranty is almost up, you may want to replace the chair simply to take advantage of the warranty. This, of course, depends on whether or not you can get the chair replaced under warranty. Many chair warranties cover defects and some kinds of damage, but won’t cover a chair that is simply used.

2. There are visible cracks or tears in the chair. Tears in the chair and holes in the fabric of a chair mean, at the very least, that the fabric needs to be replaced. A leather chair can often be repaired, though high-quality leather, once it is damaged, may be difficult or impossible to repair. Mesh, such as the mesh backs of some top office chairs, is often the last fabric to go on a chair, because of its use. However, it can still tear and run. For some chairs, where the mesh is tuned to be supportive, a tear can destroy its ergonomic capacity.

Most often, it is the seat cushion that tears. This is where buttons from pants, sharp items in pockets, and other forms of abrasion can damage the fabric. Tears and runs in the fabric of a seat cushion can be repaired by replacing the upholstery, but in some cases, doing so is just as expensive as getting a new chair. It all depends on how willing you are to spend the money to repair an existing chair.

Other kinds of damage may be harder to notice if you don’t look at your chair. Probably the two biggest points of damage are the back and the legs of the chair, both of which are pressure points where sustained use can lead to damage. Cracks in the plastic of the chair’s frame can lead to catastrophic failure down the line, so it’s best to replace the chair when you see them. Again, you may be able to replace individual elements, but replacement parts can be expensive and occasionally difficult to obtain.

3. Your chair is no longer comfortable to sit in. One of the more common ways to decide that a chair needs replacing is subjective. Is the chair no longer comfortable? Over time, a chair can break down in subtle ways that you might not notice. It can be stiffer or looser than it was when you got it and adjusted it to your liking. It can be loose and creak or squeak. Wheels can squeak. All of this leads to a less comfortable experience and an experience where you’re more likely to be stressed, sit in a less ergonomic posture, and end up with lower productivity and back pain.

Now, you may find yourself no longer comfortable because of external factors that have nothing to do with the chair itself. For example, changing life circumstances can lead to changes in how your body’s posture sits naturally. A chair might need replacing solely because of your own changing life. That’s fine too, it just means the chair is still good and can be repurposed or given to someone else to use instead.

4. The cushion of the chair is compressed. In almost all cases, the “soft” parts of a chair are the first parts to go. The frame of the chair is going to be much longer lived than the cushion of the seat. The foam of the seat can get compressed over time, the same way that a pillow will lose its fluff after it has been used for a while.

This is one element of a chair that can be replaced if you know how to upholster a piece of furniture, though you might be hard-pressed to find the same kind of fabric and the same kind of cushion as the chair you already have.

5. The mechanisms are no longer tight and stable. Any part that moves or adjusts, or needs to be solid to resist movement or adjustment, can loosen up over time. The stiffness of the back when you lean, the locking mechanism that holds the back of the chair or the headrest in place, the bolts holding the armrests in place; all of these can be worn out over time.

In some cases, you don’t need much to fix these problems. It may be as simple as tightening a few bolts or adjusting the spring tension on the chair. In other cases, it might be the plastic of the frame itself wearing out. In these cases, there’s nothing you can do to fix it, you simply need to replace the parts.

Okay, that’s not strictly true. Any damage done to a chair can be replaced with sufficient resources and ingenuity. Often times, though, these are chairs that have been purchased for an office; they aren’t owned by makers with workshops, they’re owned by office workers, or by the company that employs them. Repairs aren’t usually in the cards.

6. The gas spring no longer supports you. Gas springs are a surprisingly common point of failure for chairs, especially for heavier chairs or for chairs used by heavier people. Gas springs can be replaced, but it can be difficult figuring out exactly what kind of spring you need to get and how to replace it, so many people choose to use this as an opportunity to replace their chair. Additionally, if a gas spring is at the point of failure, chances are other parts of the chair are nearing that point as well.

7. The chair’s appearance is failing. While appearance is not tied to function for chairs, in some cases, a shabby looking chair reflects poorly on the company. If your chairs are used for important meetings with clients, for example, you don’t want to present yourself as a company lacking in resources, so using chairs that look like they’re on the verge of falling apart is going to be a strike against you.

Should You Replace Your Chair?

If your chair is running into any of the problems listed above, chances are it’s a fine opportunity to replace your chair. Any time a chair lasts more than five years, the chair has had a good life.

When you decide to replace a chair, you might want to decide what to do with it. If it’s still in reasonably good shape, donating it to a charitable cause might be a good idea. If it’s falling apart, you may consider finding a furniture recycling center in your area. Some organizations will also take donor chairs that they can use for parts to repair other chairs.

If no such resources are available in your area, it might just be fine to throw the chair away. This is why buying from a company that focuses on sustainability is a good idea. You might also want to check with the manufacturer of the company to see if they have a recycling program and if you can send the chair back to them for disposal.

At the end of the day, deciding what to do with an old chair shouldn’t be a common decision. Chairs can last quite a long time, after all.