Most buyers who write to us about the European market ask first about strength tests. The question that actually trips up an order is dimensions. EN 1335-1 sorts office work chairs into types by how far they adjust, and a chair that survives every cycle test can still be turned away because its seat sits a centimetre outside the band a tender named. We would rather set that on the first sample than the third.
What EN 1335-1 actually defines
EN 1335 splits into parts. Part 1 — the current edition is EN 1335-1:2020+A1:2022 — is dimensions only. Part 2 (EN 1335-2:2018) covers safety, strength and durability, and we treat those as two separate gates. The 2020 revision is worth flagging because it added a fourth type: where the old standard had A, B and C, the current one lists AX, A, B and C. If your customer quotes "EN 1335 type A" from an old spec, check which edition they mean, because the bands moved.
The types are not quality grades. They are adjustment ranges. A type with a wider range fits more of the working population without swapping the chair; a narrower type is cheaper to build because the mechanism and column do less. Seat height for a work chair starts at a 400 mm minimum with an adjustment range of at least 120 mm, and the higher types add independent backrest adjustment on top of seat-height travel.
Why a tender names a type
European workplace rules push employers to give staff a chair that fits a regulated workstation, not just one that does not collapse. So a public tender or a large corporate fit-out will write "type A" or "type B" into the spec, and the buyer is contractually bound to it. When that happens, the dimensional report matters as much as the durability report. We have seen a perfectly strong chair fail acceptance because the seat depth adjustment was 10 mm short of the type band — a fault that costs nothing to design in up front and a container to fix afterwards.
The trade-off we put in front of you
Here is the call. The wider, more-adjustable types cost more per unit: a longer-travel gas column, a seat slider, an independently adjustable backrest, sometimes a deeper mechanism. If your buyer's spec genuinely needs type A, build type A. But if the tender allows type B and your end users are a fairly uniform group, building to type A is paying for adjustment range nobody will turn the knob on. We would rather match the type to the spec than gold-plate a number the buyer never reads. Where the spec is silent, we will tell you which type your market usually accepts.
A worked example
Take a mid-sized German office fit-out that names type A. Type A's defining feature is independent backrest adjustment on top of the seat-height travel, so the chair needs a height-adjustable backrest or a height-adjustable lumbar, not a fixed back. We set the gas column to deliver the seat-height band — starting from the 400 mm floor with at least 120 mm of travel — and add a backrest height mechanism. If the same buyer's second site allows type B, we can drop the independent backrest adjustment on that line and save the part, because type B does not demand it. Same chair platform, two configurations, two prices, both compliant. That is the kind of split we would rather plan up front than discover when the buyer rejects half the order.
One more practical point: the type is about the chair's adjustment range, not the user. A type A chair fits a wider spread of body sizes without being swapped, which is why shared and hot-desk floors lean toward it. A single-occupant executive office can often live with a narrower type because the one user sets the chair once. Match the type to how many different people sit in the chair, and you stop paying for range nobody uses.
How we set it on your order
Tell us the destination country and, if you have it, the exact EN 1335 type and edition the buyer named. We set the column length, seat slider range and backrest adjustment to that band before we cut the first sample, and we build to EN 1335 test methods so the dimensional and durability checks can be booked together — testing can be arranged per order, and we do not pre-print a certificate that may not match your final configuration. For background on how EN 1335 and BIFMA compare as testing frameworks, the BIFMA vs EN 1335 guide on ChairManufacturer.net covers both standards side by side. Our ergonomic task-chair range is where most type A/B contract work starts, the mesh task chairs cover the lighter type B/C lines, and the ODM/OEM workflow bakes the dimensional check into the sample stage.
If you are quoting more than one tender with different types, send us the specs and target quantities and we will map the type bands and the cost deltas. Reach the contract desk through our contact form or write to [email protected].