Office Furniture 101

Greetings fellow Office Furniture 101 students.  Welcome to our training forum.  Right now we want to make a brief post regarding quality foam used in office chairs.  Generally speaking, foam is a petroleum based derivative that is baked in an iron and when it rises forms little round cells that have trapped air inside the chambers.  This loaf is then removed from the iron and is either cut down to smaller units (like seats and backs) or in some cases is the exact form factor for the seat or back.  This trapped air is what provides the comfort and support to rest body weight in for the duration of an 8 hour day.

The amount of chemical that is poured into the iron to create the foam determines the density of the foam.  Higher density foams have thicker cell walls trapping the air and therefore longer life before beginning the process called “break-down”.  In layman’s terms, the cell walls of higher density foam last longer (in terms of years of service) than medium and lower density foams.  This means it will take much more wear and tear in the ups and downs of being compressed and released as the user gets in and out of the chair through out the day.

Typically lower density foam only has three years of service life before they begin to the process of break down under normal usage.  Breakdown is a slow process that may take up to two more years to fully notice the affects of degredation.  By comparison, many higher density foams will have a longer shelf life (9 years in some cases) before beginning the break-down process.

Once breakdown has completed, it is usually easy to identify.  The user begins to feel the wood or metal seat pan beneath the foam or the wood frame that foam floats above on a thin layer of meshing often referred to as ultra flex.  In either case, the feeling is undeniable that despite seeing an upholstered piece of foam on the seat you actually feel like your sitting on the wood frame itself.  For this reason, USED office chairs are typically not deemed a wise aftermarket investment–even for the short run.  Even if it was built by the Mercedes Benz of office furniture manufacturers, that foam had a shelf life when it left the factory and most likely will not be able to service the new users expectations adequately.

One draw back to high density foam is that the cell walls are typcially so thick that they don’t allow a lot of flexing around the encapsolated air molecules.  For this reason a high quality high density foam chair may actually feel firm to the user at first test.  An educated consumer realizes this is a sign of high quality and like a new pair of shoes it must go through a break-in season before it really fits them perfectly.

By all means, beware because the lower the density of foam, the softer the initial sit and cheap, inexpensive chairs will woo potential suiters with their supple soft cushioning.  Yet, three years later they will be a fraction of the comfort they were when initially purchased.

For this very reason, many reputable office furniture manufacturers will laminate a thin layer of lower density foam over the foundational high density foam to provide both early user comfort and product service longevity.  Remember from an earlier lesson, we identified that shipping weight is a great way to identify product quality.  In either case, the lower density foams will weigh less than higher density foam and will show up in the shipping weight.

The entire 9 to 5 product line featured at Smart Buy Office Furniture prides itself in high density foam chairs to insure a long lasting product that the user will be proud of for years to come.  Please visit us at www.smartbuydesk.com for more examples of higher quality foam chairs.

Welcome to Office Furniture 101.  I’m your unaccredited professor, Tom.  In this article we are going to cover some basic office furniture shopping tips when surveying all of the options for office chairs in particular.  Let me give you a quick and easy laymans guide to identifying quality related to office chairs.  It rests in the office chair’s shipping weight.  When trying to compare one office chair with another, the layman’s way to identify which chair has better quality is to compare shipping weights.  This is because you can’t hide poor office furniture quality from the freight companies.  The heavier the item, the heavier the guage of steel that goes into the mechanism which is the foundation of the chair.  This weight rule is virtually fool proof for anything that you buy in the office furniture industry.

Occasionally, you may find an advancement in office furniture technology that might upset this rule.  For example, the 5 prong waffle PVC base  is much lighter than it’s dinosaur predecessor the welded metal base.  Most consumers are unaware that the polyethylene waffle base passes more stress tests than the old metal clad bases.  This is because the molecular bonding is through out the entire office furniture base rather than the strength being found at the weld points of the old metal bases. In this case, the lighter the base the better.

However, for the most part, check the shipping weights of the office chairs you are interested in.  Compare a professional dealers office chair to an office supply big box store office chair and you will see a world of difference.  When you think of what just a little bit more money will get you as far as quality it may makes sense to upgrade your office chair portion of your office furniture budget.  Remember, the office chair is the only piece of office furniture that can actually pay for itself in the first year through increased worker productivity.  As a business owner, you know you pay wages for those “employee stretches, body shifts, pauses to eleviate back pain” not to mention repetitive stress injury expense.

Don’t forget to test the office chair in the local office furniture dealer’s showroom.  If you go to a professional office furniture dealership, they will be able to fit the chair to you in the showroom with all of the adjustments, etc.   If not, and you are in the Austin, TX market call us and let us know 512-452-DESK, we’ll come to your site and adjust the office chair.