The Aeron chair is an office chair manufactured and sold by American furniture company Herman Miller. Introduced in 1994, it was designed by Don Chadwick and Bill Stumpf and departed from the design of traditional office chairs by eschewing upholstery in favor of fabric mesh. It received numerous accolades for its industrial design and is featured in the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection. It has been cited as the best-selling individual office chair in the United States with over 8 million sold.
Development
Development of the Aeron chair began in the late 1970s, after Herman Miller hired designers Don Chadwick and Bill Stumpf. They sought to design a chair that improved upon the shortcomings of La-Z-Boy recliners that were often used in residential and medical settings for the elderly, and completed a prototype called the Sarah Chair in 1988. Herman Miller cancelled the Sarah Chair after deeming it unlikely to be commercially viable, and tasked them with designing an office chair.
According to Chadwick, they were tasked by Herman Miller to update the company's previous best-selling office chair, not to design the ideal chair for an eight-hour workday. He said, "We were given a brief and basically told to design the next-generation office chair." The Aeron chair was introduced in October 1994 and priced at $1,000.
The suspended "pellicle" mesh seat and backrest are moulded into glass-fiber reinforced plastic frames. It was available in three sizes, A (smallest), B and C (largest), and originally included a height-adjustable lumbar support pad. In 2002, an updated ergonomic support system called PostureFit was introduced to improve lower back support. In 2005, the arms switched from a dial to a lever to loosen for height adjustment. Variants produced include a wheelless version with a flat base named the Aeron Side Chair, and a higher version with a footrest named the Aeron Stool.
In 2016, Herman Miller released a redesigned version of the chair named the Aeron Remastered, later sold and marketed as simply Aeron. Chadwick contributed to the updated design, Stumpf having died in 2006. It includes an updated suspension system, better spine support, a redesigned denser mesh and a re-engineered tilt. Some components that were previously aluminum were switched to plastic.
Reception
thumb|President [[Barack Obama seated in an Aeron chair while writing his State of the Union address in 2015]]
According to Bloomberg, the Aeron chair "made a fetish of lumbar support". Of the "pellicle" mesh she said, "one of the secrets of the success of that chair was finding that fabric they called ‘pellicle’. That sheer but resistant fabric hit on the right gestalt for where our culture was at." According to New York, "Aerons were hailed as triumphs of industrial design and were a whole different beast from the overstuffed leather power chairs that dominated the Old Economy." Wired described the Aeron's appearance as "a chair that looked more engineered than designed." An Aeron chair is also displayed in the Brooklyn Museum.
In 2025, the Aeron chair was included in Pirouette: Turning Points in Design, an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art featuring "widely recognized design icons [...] highlighting pivotal moments in design history."
Sales and market
The Aeron chair was a success and its sales far exceeded Herman Miller's expectations.