On a Roll: Office Chair Casters

While we know you’ll all spend the last few days before the holidays hard at work, we wanted to discuss winning strategies for your pre-holiday office chair hallway races.

But even if you don’t have the spirit of competition and just want to know which kind of chair casters to order for your office chair, you’ll probably want to keep reading.

Hard chair casters give the least resistance to rolling. This is an ideal feature for using them on office carpet, because the carpet itself provides some resistance. Soft casters, made of tackier rubbers and plastics, have a little more grip to them and provide a little resistance to rolling by themselves.

Now I can hear you treated-concrete-floor office workers tuning up to ask why you wouldn’t just use the easier rolling hard casters to defeat the marketing department in the office chair 500. Well, when the boss gets back from vacation on January 6, she’s likely to find areas where those hard plastic casters marred the floor. No good. Soft casters are less likely to do this, so you should probably stick with them on hard surfaces.

In summary: hard casters are better for chairs you intend to use (for whatever purpose) on carpet, and soft casters are better for chairs on hard floor surfaces like laminate, concrete, or wood.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines.