5 Key Adjustments for an Office Chair

VelocityEHS certified ergonomist Jennie Dustin explains the five key adjustments for an office chair.

Video Transcript

Hi, I’m Jenny Dustin, certified professional ergonomist at Humantech (now VelocityEHS Ergonomics). Today, I’m here to tell you about the five key adjustments to make when adjusting your office chair. You guys know that your office chair is the most used piece of office equipment, so it’s very important to make sure it’s appropriately adjusted so that you can achieve your comfort position.

The first adjustment that you want to make is your seat height. You want to make sure that your knees and your hips are both in about 90-degree angles with your feet flat on the floor.

The second adjustment to make is the back support. Most chairs have some level of adjustment, where you can have either the back support locked, or you can have it dynamic. If it is more comfortable for you to have it locked that’s okay, but we do actually recommend to keep it with the dynamic settings so that you have some muscle contraction throughout the day. And if you do have it in that dynamic setting, you want to adjust the tension so that it’s not too loose that you’re falling out of your chair, and also not too firm that you’re ramrod straight.

The third adjustment is the seat pan depth. You want to have your seat pan adjusted, so you’ve got about two to three fingers’ space between the back of the legs and the front of your chair.

The fourth adjustment is your lumbar support. If your chair does have lumbar support adjustability, you want to make sure that it’s adjusted such that it’s in the natural s-curve of your back, the low of your back.

The last adjustment is your armrest. So, armrests actually should be used while you’re resting, not while you’re actively typing. So, you want them adjusted so that they’re actually just below your elbows, and don’t actually come in contact with your arms unless you’re maybe chatting with a colleague and you can put your arms down to rest for a bit, but that they’re out of the way and not in contact with your arms while you’re typing.

So, keeping in mind those five key adjustments, we hope that you can find a good comfort position in your office environment.

As ever, if there are any questions you can always visit our website (now VelocityEHS Ergonomics).

Thanks very much for watching.