Telecommuting: home desk high, chair low. Seat cushion solutions?

March 22, 2020 8:43 AM

Like a lot of people, I'll be working full-time from home till whenever. I have a workspace that is ideal apart from a monster desk (no good way to move or swap out during isolation) that's a bit too high for ergonomic typing with the desk chair raised to maximum height. Suggestions on good seat cushions designed for the purpose that would add a couple of inches of elevation (2" or 5cm would do it)?

The desk is too heavy for my wife and I to move unaided. Considered ordering a new chair but the maximum adjustment height of my current one seems to be fairly standard. Cushion + the footrest I brought home from work would seem to be the easiest workaround.

posted by Creosote to Work & Money (12 answers total)

There are "big wheel" upgrades to normal office chairs that can add elevation as well.
posted by nickggully at 8:51 AM on March 22, 2020 [2 favorites]

Do you have a separate keyboard? As an alternative, you could attach a lower keyboard tray to the desk, or use a beanbag laptop tray to prop up the keyboard/mouse on your lap.
posted by pinochiette at 9:03 AM on March 22, 2020 [1 favorite]

If that were my problem I'd solve it by acquiring a piece of 3/4" particleboard flooring and supporting it on blocks of a suitable thickness. I'd use enough blocks that the particleboard didn't flex between them, so say 12" apart, and fix them temporarily to the bottom of the particleboard with something easily taken apart later like maybe a few blobs of hot glue.

That way the usual relationship between chair height and floor height would be maintained, and I could roll my chair around and put my feet wherever they're comfortable as I usually would, but the desk legs would straddle my little raised platform instead of sitting on top of it so the desktop would effectively be lowered.

If I was feeling fancy I'd add a bit of moulding around the edges to make a raised lip, just to make it harder to roll the chair off the edge by accident.
posted by flabdablet at 9:08 AM on March 22, 2020 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I have used a cushion of this type. There are many from different manufacturers.
posted by matildaben at 9:08 AM on March 22, 2020 [1 favorite]

If I were looking to do this on the super duper cheap I'd use a couple of shipping pallets, taking some planks off one of them to fill in all the spaces between the planks on the other.
posted by flabdablet at 9:13 AM on March 22, 2020

Whatever your solution, consider that you'll want to be able to touch your feet to the floor too. If you just add seat height, you will want to find a footrest as well.
posted by mollymayhem at 10:02 AM on March 22, 2020

Best answer: I have this pillow on my desk chair and it's at least two inches thick (and hasn't sagged despite years of use).
posted by BlahLaLa at 10:15 AM on March 22, 2020

Someone suggested a pullout keyboard tray. If your desk supports this it’s a great solution as it keeps your monitor high and the chair normal, and also frees up your desktop space.
posted by q*ben at 10:28 AM on March 22, 2020

Response by poster: Thanks for answers so far—have footrest, pullout tray won't work, going for solutions that involve simple product shipment and not anything I'd have to do carpentry or venture into a store for at this point (health status is such that I'm in the high-risk category for severe case of COVID-19).
posted by Creosote at 2:20 PM on March 22, 2020

I know it was alluded to already, but if your chair has caster wheels, you can often buy aftermarket wheels that can add another inch-ish to the chair's height, if the cushion isn't enough.
posted by Aleyn at 3:46 PM on March 22, 2020

Google wheelchair cushion for lots of options and styles.
posted by jointhedance at 5:25 AM on March 23, 2020

If you need something until your seat cushion arrives... you can try sitting on a bed pillow.
posted by oceano at 8:43 AM on March 23, 2020