Do you spend several hours each day working at home in your office, or maybe work full time from home? If this is you then you need to be much more selective in the chair you use, because you don’t want to end up with something which cripples you every time you sit in it.

Selecting the best home office chair depends on how much you use it. If it’s just for occasional light use, say an hour or so a day then what you buy isn’t too critical.

For people who spend significant amounts of time sitting at a computer their chair needs to be seen as a serious work tool, after all you wouldn’t try to cook a gourmet meal for 12 on a disposable barbeque would you?

And it’s no different with a chair, those long hours you spend sitting each day take a toll on your body and so it’s vital you select a quality chair capable of giving you maximum comfort and support, especially when you have been sitting for many hours.

In the next post on selecting a home office chair I’ll take a look at the kind of budget you will need to allow for to get a properly featured chair.

I imagine hardly anyone ever stops to think what their back is worth to them, they all just take it for granted it’s only when it starts to ache most of us are even aware it’s there

Fortunately or maybe unfortunately our back can withstand a great deal of misuse and until it becomes a real problem we will happily go on abusing it.

However, all this misuse does have a price particularly as you get older, it becomes more and more difficult to shake off the aches and pains.

It can creep up on you little by little until you end up with a serious problem which there isn’t a quick fix solution for.

Humans weren’t designed for sitting for long periods of time and so it becomes ever more important to make sure we give our back and body every assistance in sitting in a properly supported dynamic posture.

Guess what? Those $79 chairs at the discount store don’t come close to providing what you need, in fact they will likely do a good job of messing your back up once you sit in one for a few years.

So, to return to my opening question: What is your back worth?

For me the answer can be summed up in one word, priceless. If this means spending several hundred dollars to get the right chair to properly support my back and body then this is a small price to pay.

When you buy a quality office chair look on it as an investment which will last years, while others continue to keep buying cheap chairs and replacing them several times compared to the life of the right chair, they seem destined to keep making the same mistake again and again.

Factor in the cost of regular trips to your chiropractor to sort out your back and you will begin to see the false economy of budget chairs. Here is a quick summary of reviews of quality office chairs designed to look after your back.

Knoll has recently released an excellent new workplace research report - “The Future of Ergonomic Office Seating” by Dr Tim Springer of Hero Inc (Human Environmental Research Organization, Inc).

In the report the author makes some key points about office seating pointing out some office chairs are quite complex and users need to be trained in how to use them correctly. He also shows that research into sitting tends to focus on a limited field of activities and often relies on old or limited data.

The report goes on to look into what an office chair should be capable of, covering things like:

• Supporting the body and its activity
• Promoting movement
• Enabling improved performance
• Ease of use
• Not be harmful

Next it looks at the future of ergonomic office seating, how the work environment has changed and how designers and seating manufacturers need to always be looking for new materials and ideas as well as using eco friendly materials if at all possible.

Here’s where The Future of Ergonomic Office Seating Report can be downloaded. It raises many interesting points about what really matters in office seat design.

Imagine an office chair which has a two word instruction manual? - sit down.

In a radical departure from its normal office chair designs having multiple adjustments Herman Miller® has created a range of seating which can be used by almost anyone in widely differing office settings, it really is sit and go.

There is in fact one adjustment and this is seat height, apart from this it really is a question of just sitting down and starting work as the unique design of its kinetic spine adapts to whatever sitting position the user chooses to take.

Miller collaborated with Germany’s Studio 7.5 on the design of the Setu™, previously working with each other on the Mirra® chair.

Office working continues to be less reliant on dedicated workstations as people become more mobile in their work habits and so the need to offer a range of seating requiring no user input and take the thinking out of sitting comfortably makes sense.

Setu™ includes multipurpose chairs with either a 5 star aluminum base with casters or a 4 star base with glides. There is also a high back lounge chair too with the same base options as well as an ottoman for resting those tired legs on.

Setu™ has the potential to be a really big seller and the product can be seen at NeoCon Floor 3 Stand 321 June 15 - 17.

NeoCon World’s Trade Fair 2009 runs next week in Chicago for 15 - 17 June and will be host to over 600 companies involved in office interiors.

Although office furniture and seating are major categories, NeoCon covers the whole gamut of office interiors, from floor coverings and textile to lighting and art.

Full details of who is exhibiting at NeoCon can be found here.

If you spend your working hours programming then as well as having a good reliable computer your no: 1 tool has to be a comfortable, supportive office chair.

The intense nature of coding work means you must give your body the best possible support and comfort. Accuracy when inputting code is vital and if you are sat in some cheap excuse of a chair your mind just won’t be 100% on your work, because the nagging discomfort of that chair will eventually become a significant distraction.

You need to focus totally on your work and you will only achieve this by using a chair which is designed to give you excellent postural support and remain comfortable at all times.

Here’s a shortlist of reviews of the sort of chairs which should be ideal for coding and programming work.

• Aeron good for all sizes of user and you’re happy with the firmness of mesh seating
• Leap very comfortable well padded chair if you like a chair with good foam supports
• Futu easy simplicity of adjustment and set up, excellent balanced body support
• Embody comfortable 4 layer seating support in breathable fabric if you are liable to sweat a lot
• Humanscale Freedom readily and easily adjustable good comfort in use

The above list is by no means exhaustive but represents a good place to begin to find the right chair for intensive coding and programming work.

The past 6 months has seen a number of quality new office chair launched including HÅG’s Futu and Herman Miller’s Embody.

The Generation chair by Knoll is due for launch at the beginning of June at this year’s NEOCon show.

Indications are this is far from just another office chair, instead a carefully thought through and developed product in conjunction with Formway Design who were involved with knoll’s Life chair.

A key point in the chair’s design is the high degree of elasticity built into both its frame and unique upholstery so as you change position the chair moves with you supporting every fluctuation to properly support the body’s movements.

The Generation looks like an exciting new development from Knoll and as soon as it is fully released I will add a full review of it to the main site.

Aching or tired legs and feet often crop up in the office as a result of lack of movement in our lower limbs.

We all know the answer is to get up and have a stretch, trouble is when you are beavering away it’s so easy to forget.

Well the Webble™ will take of this while you continue sitting and working in your office chair. This revolutionary footrest makes it really easy to move your feet and legs whenever you feel like it as you continue working.

To discover more about this great lower limb exercise gadget I’ve added a review of it explaining how it works.

When Herman Miller launched its new Embody chair online I remarked on this Blog I was taken back at the price tag and felt that given a couple of years the cost would come down.

So I was more than a little surprised to find Miller has now dropped the price by around $200 which means that an Embody fitted with arms is now $1,199 making it a lot closer in price to their popular Aeron chair.

And whilst it’s a great chair it is still nearly double the cost of HÅG’s new Futu chair, which has to represent outstanding value and would undoubtedly be higher priced if better known.

Not familiar with HÅG? It’s been making chairs in Norway for a long time, and was the first chair manufacturer to introduce seat depth adjustment with its Peter Opsvik designed model 2010 way back in 1975.

Incredibly, this vital adjustment for personal leg comfort is still missing from the vast majority of office chairs, needless to say the Futu and Embody both include it.

Follow the links for reviews of both the Embody and Futu chairs.

Here’s a great resource I came across recently 50 Simple Techniques for Staying Fit While Stuck at Your Desk which contains links to a wide selection of ideas for keeping fit when working in the office.

The site includes 50 useful links under 3 broad headings. General Techniques for Office Fitness covers sites with advice and tips on exercising in the office as well as some sites advising on healthy eating when stuck in an office.

The next category, Best Tools for Office Fitness covers things like Ball Chairs, Exercise Tools, Chairs and Back Supports.

Finally there is a Videos section with links to show you how to exercise, as well as Yoga and Pilates routines for the office, even how to massage away a headache.

There is a total of 50 links to some excellent sites and each link comes with a brief summary explaining what the site is all about.

All in all these Office Fitness Ideas will provide you with an excellent compilation of useful sites to explore on the area of healthy office working.