Whether you’re setting up a home office or trying to make your current office setup more ergonomic and comfortable, sustainability is important. Not only should your workstation be comfortable, but you should also be able to sustain it for longer periods of time.
After all, if you’re going to spend all those hours in that space, you should make sure you are comfortable and that your health is not being compromised.
A headrest is an important part of this comfort. Supporting and protecting your neck is necessary if you’re going to be spending long hours sitting in the same spot.
Why Is a Headrest Important?
So, we know headrests are important, but why are they important? What benefit do you get from a chair with a headrest that you wouldn’t get from any other chair?
There are plenty of things!
Pain Relief
Almost all office workers complain about back, neck, or shoulder pain in some form or capacity. This is not out of the norm, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good thing either. If you’ve resigned yourself to a life of chronic pain, turn around!
A good ergonomic chair can make a huge difference in your comfort at your workstation. A chair with an adjustable backrest can provide support to your neck and shoulders, making sure you don’t suffer from any of the pesky aches and pains that plague so many office workers.
A good headrest is adjustable for added customization. Everyone’s body is different and thus, has different needs. Therefore, the support items you use will also have to be different. Adjustable headrests also have different kinds: some are adjustable only in terms of height, in that you can move them up and down.
Fully adjustable headrests are adjustable in height and in angle, so you can make sure that the curve fits your head in the correct way. This will provide the optimal level of support and comfort and minimize pain.
Posture
Bad posture is one of the leading causes of all the pains mentioned earlier. Scrunching your shoulders, staying slouched over your desk, and hunching forward – all of these things contribute to bad posture, and thus, more pain. A headrest makes sure you have the right posture by curving with your spine and neck, making sure you get the support you need.
Rest
Even when working, you can’t maintain the same position for hours. In fact, it’s difficult to maintain any position, even for an hour! Headrests provide rest for your head – as is self-explanatory – but this has more benefits than you’d expect!
Tilting your head back and resting it on the headrest can take some of the pressure off your neck. These short breaks help rejuvenate the body and replenish your energy, allowing you to keep working throughout the day.
Without a headrest, you’d find you’d get tired a lot faster!
Support for Special Needs
Headrests are nice to have for healthy people, but can be downright necessary for some workers! There are plenty of musculoskeletal disorders or chronic injuries that make a headrest and reclination a necessity for workers. Chairs with headrests can satisfy this need for them, and allow them to work.
Whether you’re trying to find a chair for your workstation, or just to keep at a desk in your home, you want to find one that provides the support your neck needs. Otherwise, may find that the pain you don’t suffer from right now may come creeping into your life and make it very difficult. If you already have neck or shoulder pains, you should be considering a headrest regardless.
But not all chairs come with a headrest! While it would be nice if they did, headrests aren’t ‘universal’, in that, the same headrest doesn’t cater to everyone. So, for built-in headrests, there comes the problem of how it supports shorter or taller people.
But we do need, or at least want headrests. So how to include a headrest in any office chair?
Let’s take a look.
How to Add a Headrest to Any Office Chair
Universal Headrest Attachment
The first step is to get a headrest attachment. Again, just like built-in headrests don’t cater to every person, headrest attachments don’t cater to every chair. Because office chairs are all built in different ways, with different backrest designs, it is impossible to find a good attachment that works for every kind of chair.
However, you can look around to find one that works for the specific chair you have. There are plenty of attachments that can be mounted onto the chair.
Secure it to Bezel or Backside of Backrest
Once you have the attachment, you have to find the best way to put it on your chair. This will depend on the design of your chair’s backrest, and there is no perfect way to go about it. This stage is a trial-and-error one, where you’ll simply have to test different things before you find one that works for you.
However, you can use clamps to attach the headrest to your chair, especially if the backrest is mesh and has a plastic bezel at the top. You can also secure the headrest directly onto the backrest itself, by attaching it to the other side of the backrest. This will only work if the backside of the chair has a hard shell (ideally plastic).
What if The Backrest is Foam?
If your backrest is made of foam, you’d find that attaching a headrest can actually be quite a messy task. The simpler solution there is to simply find a headrest pillow, or something similar, and use it instead.
There may be other ways to go about it, such as opening up the foam backrest and adding supportive items inside, such as a wooden plank or something similar. Then, you can use clamps or attach the headrest to the chair the way you would have if the chair had a harder shell.
However, this is again, very messy, and will take a long time. Worst case scenario, your chair may become unusable – especially if you don’t know what you’re doing. The simpler solution is to just use a headrest pillow with a strap that goes around the chair to fasten itself to it.
There are plenty of headrest pillows available for you to use. While they may not look as great as an attached headrest, they do the job of providing support during your long work hours. Undoubtedly, this is more important than the visual aesthetic of your chair.
Flexispot Gaming Chair GC02
While these options are great, the conversation shifts when it comes to gaming. Long hours at work will usually be accompanied by the ability to get up and leave your desk for some time and walk around.
For gaming, while gaming does also allow you to move around and get your stretches, there are plenty of games that are being played live and don’t allow you to move from your seat.
On top of that, you don’t want your fancy gaming setup to be ruined by a headrest you found on Amazon, nor do you want an unmatched pillow wrapped around the chair. Gaming setups are serious business!
Flexispot’s Gaming Chair GC02 is perfect for your gaming setup – and it also comes with a headrest!
Flexisport has always taken ergonomics seriously; whether that’s for working professionals, or professional gamers – or even just for people who happen to sit for long hours.
The gaming chair takes care of your ergonomic needs. It comes with an ultra-wide design that has a high seat back. This makes sure that the needs of most gamers are met. It provides lumbar support with the help of a removable pillow, as well as a backrest that follows the natural curvature of your spine.
Because it uses a pillow, people with different lumbar support requirements can all use the chair and adjust it depending on their own needs. It also comes with a headrest pillow, which is also removable.
The chair itself comes with a 4.3-inch thick seat cushion which makes sure that your gaming experience is comfortable.
The chair also has 2D armrests to provide support to your arms and keep them in the correct position. This helps avoid issues like repetitive strain injury and carpal tunnel syndrome, which occur due to bad wrist positioning.
The chair also has a reclination option, being reclinable up to135 degrees. You can use the chair for work, gaming, or even just laying back and resting.
The chair is made of high-quality PU leather, making it an excellent addition to your gaming station.