Ergonomics
What actually makes a chair ergonomic
DecArt Team · 09 Aug 2026 · 2 min read
Every chair in every catalogue is described as ergonomic, including chairs that are not. The word only means anything when it is attached to specific adjustments, so here is what to look for — and what to ignore.
The five that matter
- Seat height. Feet flat on the floor, thighs roughly parallel to it. This is the one adjustment every chair has and the one most people never set correctly.
- Seat depth. Two to three fingers of gap between the back of the knee and the front edge of the seat. Too deep and the edge presses behind the knee all day; too shallow and the thighs are unsupported. Fixed-depth seats are the usual reason a chair suits one person and not another.
- Lumbar support. It has to meet the inward curve of the lower back — which means it has to move, either up and down or in and out. A moulded bump in a fixed back is not lumbar support, it is a shape.
- Armrests. Shoulders relaxed, elbows at roughly a right angle, forearms level with the desk. Height adjustment is the minimum; width and pivot help where people share desks.
- Recline with tension. Backs are not meant to be locked upright for nine hours. Useful recline means it can be locked at more than one angle and the resistance can be matched to the person's weight.
The ones that are mostly marketing
A headrest is genuinely useful in a chair you recline in — a cabin or an executive seat — and close to useless on a chair you sit upright in to type. "Memory foam" means little without a density figure. And a chair described only as "high-back" tells you the height of the backrest and nothing about whether it fits you.
Fit is not one-size
The chair that suits a 5'2" person and the chair that suits a 6'2" person are not always the same chair. On large orders this is worth planning: a single well-adjustable model usually covers a floor, but if you have a wide range of builds, order a couple of alternatives rather than forcing everyone into one shell.
Then set it up
An adjustable chair that nobody adjusts is just an expensive chair. On installation, ten minutes showing people how the levers work returns more comfort than the next price bracket up. We are happy to run that with the handover on project deliveries.
