Supportive armchair?

My caree has for the past decade or so been using a rather elderly wooden-framed armchair (upholstered back, removable seat cushion with webbing underneath, and bare wooden arms) - certainly not an "old lady's chair", but not exactly modern-looking, either. It's now a question of whether she spends serious money on getting it reupholstered, or simply buys a new one, but most of the modern ones I've looked at so far seem to support your back only up to about the shoulders, and I think she'll need something which will support head and neck as well. She certainly doesn't want an "NHS hospital chair" type, but equally she doesn't want the type with bulky upholstered arms which you often find in 3-piece suites because they take up too much width.

Has anyone found anything which might be suitable?

 

I certainly found it worthwhile to get my wonderful 1970s Gimson & Slater rock 'n rest chair reupholstered, as I've never found anything as comfortable. A relative with a bad back also swears by his modern Ekornes Stressless chair too, though. It's slightly wider than mine, but is not a huge bulky armchair and it does offer full support to the neck.

They're expensive and he wasn't sure whether he'd get on with it (you have to sit for a long time in a chair to really know!), so he decided to buy secondhand first and then replace it with a new one if he liked it. He paid about £200 to an eBay seller for a leather one, which when it arrived turned out to be in lovely condition and didn't need replacing. He's probably had it 10 years now, and it's still as good as ever.

 

I love my Ekornes Stressless chair, too. I've had it for years.

 

We get everything re-upholstered by Steve Marriage in Woodbridge who I imagine is a lot cheaper than anything in London - if the old chair is otherwise well suited. Transportation is an issue but men with vans seem easy enough to come by these days.

 

For what it's worth: I hate that chair with a passion. Had to content myself with it for over a year because it was cheap and it's way too uncomfortable for a chronic pain body. The armrests especially hurt without padding.

 

I don't know if this would suit. It's known as an Eames chair. We had some for years, but eventually the padding gave out. The arms look a little higher than the ones we had, and arm height is important to me now.

 

We had these chairs in the meeting area of our office, and that was true for me too.

My chair has bare teak arms, but both the original owner (my granddad, who was 6" shorter than me) and I found that you can position yourself so that the arms are at a perfect height, and this, along with the profile and angle of them, makes all the difference. I can sit for hours in comfort, whereas even in a 40-minute meeting I'd be constantly moving my arms on and off the armrests of the Ikea one, trying in vain to find a position where there was support for my forearms but no pressure on them.

Design is everything, which is why I'm still sitting in granddad's chair nearly 50 years after our nan nearly locked him out of the house over the price of it! We seem to invest a lot our design funding into tech devices now; people are happy to spend £££s on their phones and smart watches, but as most aren't willing to pay for good furniture, it's quite hard to find it.

 

I did my back in shortly after buying that IKEA chair, and have never been able to sit in it since... I think we chucked the cushion off it because our old much loved cat left fur and general filth all over it. And the woody bit we're trying to work out what we can use it for in the garden in terms of growing stuff over it. That skeleton is still sitting in our garden shed, that I'd really like to reclaim from all the general carp that's in it. Sorry, going off topic!

Last summer bought some garden chairs that really are comfortable. Are they called zero gravity? Much more comfortable than any chairs I've got in the house. No reason why we shouldn't use them in the house...

Don't know if this link will work as it's to my purchase from my Amazon.

 

I used a £20 Wilko version of that in the house for several years! (This was before I inherited my current chair.)