Picking an office chair should really be an easy task. You find something that fits with your office décor, is the right height and generally looks appealing and you’ve got yourself your new piece of office furniture. Unfortunately, that’s barely even half the game. Whether you believe we live in a nanny state or whether you feel that the advent and increasingly stringent health and safety law protects employers from lawsuits and employees from repetitive stress, the fact remains that you now have a lot of factors to take into consideration when purchasing office furniture.

There are a couple of things you need to consider before you even start shopping around:

• Type of work. Some work involves regular movement, necessitating a chair that moves freely and easily.
• If you have more than one shift, or more than one person sharing a desk and chair the chair should be easily adjustable to accommodate each user. An easily adjustable chair is always a good thing anyway; it will accommodate any user.

A number of other factors are also important, and these are the things you must be wary of because of health and safety. These should apply whether you are purchasing for your own use in your home office or whether you are purchasing for your company.

• You should try and choose a chair with adjustable armrests. Without armrests users are liable to develop shoulder fatigue. It is important that you select a chair with armrests that do not obstruct computer users.
• Chairs should have five pronged legs. No more and no less. This is so that you can turn the chair, and place your feet without the legs obstructing you.
• Ideally, the person or people who will be using the chair should trial the chair themselves. Different chairs suit different people.

All modern office furniture tends to abide by these rules, and is also highly adjustable. You need to ensure that you can adjust height, inclination, depth, backrest and even arm rests. If these can all be altered and users are properly instructed on how to do so then you won’t go far wrong.

If you employ people with disabilities or recurring physical ailments, you will need to find out if they have any special requirements when it comes to selecting the appropriate furniture. You especially have to consider back, arm, wrist and leg complaints as potentially needing specialist furniture although it may be that a regular adjustable office chair will do the job perfectly well.

The Internet has many resources for buying useful and good looking office furniture and almost all of it should have the functionality that you require. Always make sure that the chair you are buying is right for the person who will be sitting in it, otherwise you might find yourself buying another one.