Nowadays, a large number of people spend hours at a time sitting down both at home and at work. The combination of prolonged sitting and a non-ergonomic chair can cause not only discomfort and back pain, but also lasting adverse impacts on your spine and body.

For this reason, here you are offered a plan for the making of an ergonomic chair, which can also be looked up under the name ’kneeling chair’. There are already two plans on our site to help you create similar kneeling chairs, so if you happen to be interested in this topic, we recommend that you visit the Kneeling Chair Plans webpage to review the plans there and read for more details.

 

Ergonomic knee chair plan
Project type
Project difficulty
Medium, requires experience
Skill level
for DIY enthusiasts
for intermediate experienced woodworker
Level of workshop equipment
Quality power tools for professionals
Applied woodworking joints
Fasteners
Edge half lap joint
Dimensions

Height: Variable; Wide 540mm (21.26''); Long 590.5mm (23.25'')

 

The construction of this chair is quite simple and there shouldn’t be any major problems with it. To create the chair, you will need basic carpenter's tools (Table saw, Drill, Jigsaw...); at first the parts may seem to be more complex, but there is no need to worry as they can be easily cut with the help of a jig saw. All the connections between the chair parts are made with screws, which greatly facilitates its making even in a rather poorly-equipped workshop. Depending on your taste and the surrounding furniture, you can apply various finishes to the chair. You can use wax or varnish to highlight its wood texture, and you can also color and hand-paint it and additionally decorate it in the way you like. On the chair there are surfaces suitable to be decorated with woodcutting as well. Don’t forget that the beauty of the chair will be greatly affected by the choice of padding cloth.

 

Exploded view and parts list
Ergonomic knee chair plan - Exploded view and parts list
Assembly drawing
Ergonomic knee chair plan - Assembly drawing

As you can see in the picture, the chair has wheels so that it is easy to move, and the seat angle and the knee support can be adjusted (for more comfort, both are padded). The position of the wheels and the spaces between them provide the chair with stability. The only disadvantage is that it is not possible to adjust the height of the seat/knee support. You can adjust the chair to your body by moving the holes on which the seat and knee support are fixed or, if you accept the challenge, we recommend that you redesign the shape of the chair, i.e., its body part (part Chair pedestal).

To prevent easy movement (rotation) of the seat/knee support while sitting, attach a piece of sandpaper between the body of the chair and the supports, which will hold the supports at the required inclination when the screws are tightened.

 

Part drawings
1 - Chair pedestal
2 - Back support
3 - Front support
4 - Threaded bar
Rectangular tube 25 x 20 x 2mm
12 - Knee support
13 - Knee board
14 - Front semicircle support
Parts 16 and 23 - Foam blocks
19 - Seat
20 - Seat board
21 - Back semicircle support
Ergonomic knee chair - Standard parts

If you have back pain due to prolonged sitting posture, it should be noted that this chair will not heal you, but rather help you alleviate the problems. Of course, you should consult a physician first. Its construction allows a portion of your body's weight to shift towards the knees, thus relieving the back. If you don’t feel any back pain and you spend long hours sitting down, we recommend that you create this "ergonomic" chair and combine it with a regular one or some other type of ergonomic chair. In this way, you will surely, to some extent at the least, prevent serious health problems that may arise. Prevention is not widely popularized today because it is less lucrative than drugs, so make sure you don’t wait too long and bring your body to a state when drugs cannot be avoided. It wouldn’t hurt to repeat once again that, if you spend a lot of time sitting, it is very likely that you will have problems with your back.

 

Ergonomic knee chair - Anthropometry

This chair is intended for people of average height. In case you want to make a chair for bigger people, you have to enlarge and modify it a little.

 

Download project in PDF file format
Download project (high resolution images)

Submitted by Ceh Jan