The Advantages of a Chair that Swivels

hubba | May 19, 2010 |

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Many of us now work in offices all day and spend the vast majority of our time sat down in a chair or seat of some description. Those of us which do not work in an office still end up spending most of out time in the seated position; people such as assemblers, checkout assistant and packers all spend just as much time sat down as the average office worker. From an evolutionary point of view, we really are not meant to spend so much time in the seated position, we're designed to move and for that reason the chairs that we spend so much of our time sat on are extremely important to our well being.

The first chairs were more than likely to be in the form of a stool; they would have had three legs and no back support. For the poor souls that had to use this seats for their every day tasks they probably ended there career in a world of pain with and extremely poor posture.

Moving on from the stool, somebody came up with the idea of having a back on the chair that people could adopt a more relaxed seating position on. These chairs however would need four legs as the mere act of leaning backwards would cause your centre of gravity to shift and consequently the seat you were sitting on would topple over. Although a vast improvement over traditional chairs, a four legged chair still left a lot to be desired, particularly for those that needed to regularly move to complete their tasks. In some cases the back of the chair would actually inhibit free movement and would be a great source of annoyance.

Thankfully somebody had the foresight to design a chair that swiveled. The swivel chair probably made its first appearance in the 1970's and since then has proven to be extremely popular and it is not difficult to see why – the advantages are clear:

A swivel chair is suited to many tasks that workers have to carry out, it is flexible enough for someone to comfortably sit on in a static position all day and for someone that needs to move around. A business could therefore buy matching chairs throughout their organization for all employees.
A swivel chair will support your movements and does not restrict them. The back of the chair will move with you, not against you and this is a great ergonomic feature. A chair should support you in whatever movement you want to do – as I mentioned at the beginning we're designed to move and any thing that we sit in all day should allow us to do so.
A swivel chair will allow you to use all of your space very efficiently, you can keep things behind you, to the left of your desk and to the right of your desk and be able to reach and use these items with ease.

There really have been very few objects that have revolution the way that we work greater than the ergonomic swivel chair.