Hack Your Office Chair (Without Getting into Trouble With HR)

If you work in a traditional (or even a non-traditional) office, the furniture can verge on the boring side. In an attempt to add a little color, we came up with this office chair hack that you can do without damaging your standard issue furniture. All it takes is some colorful nylon mesh and a pair of scissors. While we used an IKEA chair that we have in our conference room, these DIYs can be adapted to any number of office chairs. Let’s get started!

Materials:

– nylon mesh in bright colors

– fabric scissors

– desk chair (we used these chairs from IKEA)

Instructions:

1. Cut nylon mesh into thin strips. For the seat and legs version, they can be as short as 2 inches long. For the embellished back, you’ll need them to be about 4 inches.

2. Tie each strip in place, either around the leg of the chair, through the hole of the seat, or on the top rail of the chair back. Double knot it so it stays secure.

3. Trim the excess as close to the knot as you can.

4. For the back of the chair, only trim one side. Then knot the excess on the other side of the knot to the bottom rail of the chair back. Trim the excess from that knot.

5. Spin the knot to the bottom of the seat or back of the chair leg so it is out of view, and you’re done!

We went with a range of bright colors for this DIY.

Let’s start with stripes. You can measure to get the stripes even, but you can always reposition them if need be.

You’ll be able to bust out this DIY on your lunch break, and still have time to grab a sandwich!

We were inspired by the cross-stitched chair seats we’ve seen, but we wanted something that could stand up to being sat on everyday.

The color combinations are endless! You could also tie on diagonal stripes you don’t want to go for the straight and narrow.

This back looks like what you’d see on an expensive, ergonomic office chair—but with more color!

Start by tying one end of the strip to the top rail—leaving a long tail on one side. Then tie that tail to the bottom rail, and trim the excess from both knots.

So many colorful scraps!

Which of these chairs is your favorite? Tell us in the comments!