When you buy an office chair, you will soon have to choose between mesh and foam models. We’ve tested many of the best office chairs and as a rule of thumb we recommend a mesh chair for breathability and a foam chair for extra comfort. But does that make mesh the better option for employees?
Not necessarily, according to a report from researchers at the University of California, in collaboration with Secretlab, the company behind our pick for the best gaming chair. In their study, the researchers compared a high-end mesh model with the foam-covered Secretlab Titan Evo.
The results suggest that mesh office chairs may not be the best for ergonomics after all, as you may have been led to believe.
Foam office chairs versus mesh office chairs
In an extensive, eight-hour blind test, researchers found that both chairs showed no differences when it came to comfort, pain and general fatigue – common complaints with chairs that are not ergonomically designed or made of inappropriate materials.
However, it appears that foam-covered office chairs may have an edge when it comes to general computer tasks in the office or home office. According to the trends identified in the study, Secretlab’s foam office chair showed more signs of support and more positive results when sat on it for longer periods of time.
“The rise of hybrid work has prompted everyday workers to invest in their home office furniture. The search for a good chair often leads to a choice between mesh and foam chairs. People are often drawn to mesh seats, but our findings suggest that foam seats should not be categorically underestimated as a seating material suitable for prolonged sitting,” said Melissa Afterman MS, CPE of the UC Human Factors Ergonomics Lab at the University of California. , Berkeley and San Francisco.
Meanwhile, Dr. warned Stuart McGill, professor emeritus at the University of Waterloo and an ergonomics expert, office chairs that are too soft “do not provide sufficient support to enable the stress migrations and distributions that are critical to achieving comfort and injury resistance.” In other words, if the chair does not support and distribute the weight properly, it puts more pressure and tension on the body.
In a study on stress migration, Dr. McGill notes: “Tissue loads must migrate from tissue to tissue to minimize the risk of a single tissue accumulating microtrauma. Secretlab Titan Evo’s foam seat base helps distribute pressure to the parts of the body designed to bear weight.”
But the question of mesh versus foam may not be so clear-cut. After all, Secretlab has spent a lot of R&D time creating more comfortable and supportive high-density foam for office chairs – a process that goes far beyond dynamic lumbar support and pebble chair design, with recognition from leading industry bodies like United States Ergonomics (and what we get from this efforts, you can see in our Secretlab Titan review).
Ultimately, it comes down to the type of office chair that best suits your workspace and workflow – and mesh may not always be a better choice than foam.