Your chair is sinking. Fix it or replace it?
You raise the seat, you sit down, and ten minutes later you are looking up at your monitor again. This is the single most common office chair failure, and the good news is that it is almost never the end of the chair. We sell new chairs and we are still going to tell you to repair yours if it is worth repairing.
1. What is actually failing
The seat is held up by a gas cylinder: a sealed cartridge of nitrogen with a piston. Press the lever and you release the gas to move; let go and a valve holds you. When the seals inside wear, the gas leaks past them and your weight pushes the seat down over minutes.
It is a wear part, like a tyre. Two things shorten its life here in particular: heat, which is hard on seals, and cheap manufacture. Cylinders are rated by class, and class 4 is the higher of the two ratings you meet in office chairs. 44 of our 157 models use class 4, 66 class 3.
Nothing about a sinking chair means the frame, the mechanism or the upholstery are finished. Usually they are fine.
2. Two minutes of diagnosis
Before ordering anything, work out which of three things you have.
| What you see | What it is |
|---|---|
| Seat sinks slowly under your weight, rises fine when empty | Gas cylinder. The common case. A cheap part. |
| Seat drops instantly the moment you sit, or will not rise at all | Cylinder, failed completely. Same part, same fix. |
| Seat holds height but wobbles, tilts sideways, or clicks under you | Mechanism. A different and more serious problem — the metal box between seat and base. |
To be sure it is the cylinder: sit down, mark the seat height against a wall or a door frame with a piece of tape, and check after ten minutes. A cylinder leak shows as a steady, quiet descent. A mechanism problem shows as movement in a direction the chair should not move at all.
3. What is worth repairing
The cylinder: almost always. It is a standard part, sold by length and diameter, and swapping it is a short job — the old one taps out, the new one drops in. Any furniture repair shop in Al Quoz does this, and you can do it yourself with a rubber mallet if you are that sort of person.
What you need first is the article code of your chair, so you order the right length. On our chairs it is on the sticker under the seat and on your invoice; the height range is also printed on every product page as two numbers like 140/85.
Castors: yes. Cheap, universal, and worth doing the moment one starts scratching the floor. In this climate they collect fine sand, which grinds the bearing from the inside.
Armrest pads: sometimes. Available for chairs still in production, rarely for anything older or unbranded.
4. When replacing is the honest answer
- The mechanism is worn. On mid-market chairs it is not sold separately, and a workshop cannot rebuild it economically. This is what ends most chairs.
- The base is cracked. Especially polyamide bases with hairline cracks where the arms meet the centre. This is a safety matter, not a cosmetic one.
- The foam has collapsed and the frame is flexing. Re-foaming costs real money and gives you an old chair with new foam.
- Nobody sells the part. Common with unbranded chairs and imports that were a one-off container.
Before buying new, it is worth doing the arithmetic on cost per year rather than on sticker price — the numbers are in the cheap chair is the expensive one.
On chairs we sold, the cylinder is covered: five years of parts at no charge, and half the cost of the part for the seven years after that, fitted by us at your desk. On chairs someone else sold, we do not do repairs — we would be guessing at parts we do not stock. A local workshop is the right call there.
Questions
Can I fix a sinking chair with a hose clamp?
The old internet trick: clamp the cylinder so the seat cannot drop. It works, and it leaves you with a chair fixed at one height that you cannot adjust. Fine as a temporary measure, not as a repair.
How long should a gas cylinder last?
Years, not months. A cylinder failing inside two years usually means a cheap one, not a heavy user. Heat here shortens the life of any of them.
Is it dangerous?
A leaking cylinder is not dangerous, it is annoying. A cracked base is the one to take seriously — stop using the chair and replace the base or the chair.
Do you sell cylinders separately?
For our own chairs, as warranty parts. We do not run a spare parts counter for other brands, and pretending otherwise would waste your time.
The short version
Sinking almost always means the gas cylinder, which is a cheap standard part and a short job. Wobble, tilt or clicking means the mechanism, which usually ends the chair. Check which one you have before you spend anything — and if the frame is sound, repair rather than replace.
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