There’s a lot of engineering attached to the making of an office chair, and then there are exaggerated debates about why do office chairs have five wheels and not three wheels. What’s better, four wheels or five wheels? Here’s we shall discuss what logic is applied to introducing five wheeled office chairs, and how does it contribute to your productivity.
The National Institutes of Health counseled a five-leg chair base for optimum stability and negligible chances of chair tipping.
The Importance of Right Chair Design
A lot of us do not realize the consequences of a poorly designed chair, and we keep on wondering why our body has suddenly started to pain so bad. So if you do not use the right or comfortable well-designed chair, you might end up facing issues like backache, shoulder ache, pain in the neck, and so on. Your body shall get stiff, resulting in lower productivity at work, and more expenditure on treatment.
If you think about it scientifically, just an addition of an ergonomic chair design, could solve all such issues, and keep you in good health.
Importance of Wheels in Chairs
The wheels or casters in a chair are meant to make your chair more stable and move from one place to another effortlessly. The chair usually has three, four, and five wheels, but the science says, more the wheels, the better the stability, and also the bigger the cost.
Four legs is an easy thing if you are using a traditional wooden chair, but when we talk about office chairs with casters, we suggest five wheels for their stability and enhanced mobility.
Why do Office Chairs have Five Wheels?
So why opt for five wheels, when you could also do with four or three wheels? Why spend that extra money. Well, you need to be aware of the fact, that a furniture item needs to be comfortable, and stability comes from design.
A five wheelchair is more stable, and it has added benefits that we shall discuss in detail;
1. Stability
When you divide the diameter of the chair by the number of legs, you shall know how stable the chair’s going to be. So more the legs, better the stability.
A 3-legged chair is calculated to have half the stability, as it could be tippy in all directions, especially towards the face of the chair, or as opposed to a corner. It offers low stability, and hence it isn’t the first choice for people who look for better stability and improved durability.
A 4-legged chair is calculated to offer 71% stability towards its tippy direction, and a 5-legged chair has 81 % stability towards its tippy direction. So this explains, why a 5-legged chair is the first choice for people who shop for better productivity at the office.
2. Scattered Load
When you use a chair with more casters, you are using a mechanism that scatters the load of the operator on all the wheels, thus putting a lesser load on a single wheel. This provides elongated life to the casters, thus making your chair more durable and economical.
So a five-legged chair would end up being more economical for you in long run. Although, the fact is, the more the wheels, the bigger the cost of the chair, when you choose a five-legged chair, you are basically saving for the long run.
5-legged chairs are likely to get no or negligible injuries during work, there are lesser chances of the chair to break or lose control while in use. Hence this design ends up being more economical in long run.
3. Longer Life for Wheels
Since the 1980’s a lot of office chairs were replaced and the 5-legged chairs took over all other chair designs, which made five wheels office chair the most famous option in this category.
A five-legged chair means a lesser load on each wheel, both when the chair is in a stable position or moving. This elongates the life of the wheels and makes them comparatively last longer.
The life of casters depends totally on how you use your chair, if you are a rough use, this means your chair might encounter more abuse resulting in more damage.
Tom Reardon, the Executive Director of Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturer’s Association said, the majority of furniture manufacturers did stop producing a four-leg chair in the 1980s, and that was only because the five-leg chair was considered to be more safe and stable for the operations. It was researched to be suitable to be used in all kinds of work environments.
4. Stability against Wobble
A wobble would cause your chair to tip, and hence you definitely need to take this factor into consideration. If you work on a four-legged chair, the wobble would happen along with any one of the diagonals in the square and this would make your chair lose control, causing a fall that might cause immense damage to your body.
However, when you use 5 legged chairs, the center of gravity would always be displaced in combination with the line of support. Thus, a 5-legged chair would create greater stability and more firmness on an uneven floor, making it a must-have for office spaces.
5. Greater Strength
Five wheels give more strength to your chair, so if your office chair has five wheels it is less likely to break while in use or while moving from one place to another.
Another fact is, even if one leg is broken, the other four legs won’t get much moved and would work as they are supposed to be, making your chair suitable for use even in that case. But, if you break a leg of a four-legged chair, it cannot be used further in any circumstance. So, that’s an added benefit with a five-legged chair.
People usually refer to and buy five-wheeled chairs for better balance at work. Plus effortless mobility adds to the already added benefits of the five-wheeled chair.
