How long does an office chair last: 90 euros and 17 years of use

The gaming throne versus the office chair turning 17

How long should an office chair last? The answer from household arithmetic is uncomfortable: 90 euros to buy and 17 years of service. That's the track record of a chair its owner had already written off at 15 and which, two years later, is still getting through the workday. The replacement price, meanwhile, hasn't stood still: the same model now costs at least 180 euros. Double, to buy exactly the same thing.

Twelve, twenty, twenty-five and thirty years of real use

When you ask about the real lifespan of a computer chair, the answers paint a picture of an old, segarro domestic fleet. Twelve years for an Ikea model. Twenty for a Steelcase that is still, literally, almost like day one. Twenty-five for another showing no signs of fatigue. Thirty for an inherited desk chair, with the upholstery starting to give way and the mechanisms intact.

Nobody brags about design with those numbers. They brag about structure: wheels that spin, backrests that don't wobble, arms that don't fall off. The big upfront investment pays off precisely when it stops being an investment and becomes routine.

What breaks isn't the steel, it's the polyurethane

The pattern repeats with almost suspicious insistence: the upholstery fails, not the chassis. A 30-year-old office chair asks for reupholstering; a faux-leather chair rescued from the street has its polyurethane wrecked and every mechanism perfect, ready for a dirt-cheap fix. The weak point of work furniture isn't the mechanics, it's the finish.

That diagnosis explains why supermarket gaming chairs end up on the curb with their colorful upholstery burst, while three-decade-old office chassis are still doing their job. It also explains the advice that keeps coming up: mesh instead of faux leather, certification instead of looks, and a headrest and arms if the workday is long. If the gaming whim wins out, at least make sure it breathes.

Wicker, wooden beads and 150 years

There's one level up, and it isn't technological. In country houses, chairs handed down over 150 years are still in use, seen already by the grandparents of today's gray-haired folks. Their upkeep comes down to renewing the wicker every so often. For many, the contemporary alternative to a sagging chair is a wooden-bead seat cover: the most honest byproduct of office furniture.

The wrecked chair keeps working and the whim waits. Paying twice for the same thing seemed like a bad idea until someone found out that paying once for something that lasts 30 years is exactly what households with old furniture have been quietly doing all along. The new stuff piles up on the curb.