Humanscale Liberty Australia

The Liberty is the mesh chair in the Humanscale range, and the one built around a back that adjusts itself. Chair Dinkum stocks it at our Pyrmont showroom. Call 02 9640 0642.

From $1,114. View the product page.

Verified specifications

Taken from Humanscale's current Liberty task chair page. Where Humanscale publishes nothing, we say so.

1. Weight capacity: certified to 400 lb, which is about 181 kg.
2. Designer: Niels Diffrient.
3. Back: patented Form Sensing Mesh, in a tri-panel construction, combined with a low-stretch mesh.
4. Recline: weight-sensitive. No manual tension dial.
5. Arm pads: Duron, described by Humanscale as a multi-layer design "softer and five times tougher than standard arms".
6. Frame and trim options: polished aluminium frame, silver trim or black trim.
7. Seat materials: textile or leather, depending on configuration.
8. Seat width, seat depth and seat height range: not published by Humanscale. See below.

One correction worth making plainly, because the figure circulates widely in the Australian market: the Liberty is not a 136 kg chair. Humanscale certifies it to 400 lb — the same rating as the Freedom and the World One. If you have seen 136 kg quoted for a Liberty, including anywhere it may still appear in our own older content, the correct figure is 181 kg.

The tri-panel Form Sensing Mesh back

Most mesh chairs give you a lumbar adjustment: a pad or a strap you move up, down, in or out until the pressure lands where your lower back wants it. It works, when it is set correctly. The problem is that setting it correctly requires you to know where your own lumbar curve sits, and to notice when the chair has drifted.

The Liberty takes the adjustment away and solves the problem mechanically instead. The back is built as three separate mesh panels rather than one sheet, with the tri-panel construction allowing each panel to respond independently while the low-stretch mesh holds the shape. The result is a back that forms to the shape of your spine as you sit into it, and re-forms as you move.

Why the absence of a lumbar adjustment is the point

It reads like a missing feature on a comparison table. It is not, and it is worth understanding why before you rule the chair out.

A lumbar adjustment is a control that has to be set right to help. Set wrong — too high, too low, too aggressive — it is worse than no support at all, and it is set wrong on a great many chairs in a great many offices. In a shared or hot-desk environment it is set wrong almost by definition, because it was set by the last person who sat there, if it was set at all.

A back that forms to the spine has no wrong setting to inherit. That is the same argument as the weight-sensitive recline, applied one component further up the chair, and it is why the Liberty suits multi-user environments in a way that a heavily adjustable chair does not.

The counter-argument deserves a hearing too. If you have a specific, diagnosed lower-back requirement and a physiotherapist has told you where you need support and how much, a chair that decides for you is the wrong tool. In that case you want explicit, lockable lumbar adjustment, and you should say so when you call us. We would rather point you at a different chair than sell you this one. Our guide to ergonomic office chairs for back pain covers that ground.

The dimensions Humanscale does not publish

Humanscale's current Liberty pages do not publish seat width, seat depth or seat height range. We are not going to invent them, and we would treat any stockist page that quotes them without a source with some suspicion.

If a seat dimension decides your purchase, call 02 9640 0642. We will measure the chair in the showroom and give you the figure as our measurement, labelled as ours rather than as a published manufacturer specification.

Who it suits

1. Hot desks, shared desks and shift work. Nothing to set, nothing to inherit set wrong. This is the strongest case for the chair.
2. Warm rooms and warm months. Mesh moves air in a way upholstery does not, which matters more in an Australian summer than most specification sheets admit.
3. People who dislike fiddling with chairs. There is very little to fiddle with.
4. Heavier users. Certified to 400 lb (181 kg).
5. Offices buying in volume. One chair that is correct for everyone beats one chair that is correct for whoever configured it. See commercial fit-outs.

Who it does not suit

1. Anyone with a prescribed lumbar requirement. Covered above. You want an adjustment you can set and lock.
2. Buyers who want a headrest. The Liberty as we stock it is a task chair without one. For a headrest, the Freedom Headrest is the chair.
3. Anyone who finds mesh unpleasant against the back. Some people simply do not like it, and no amount of engineering fixes that. Sit in one first.
4. Buyers who need published seat dimensions on paper. They do not exist.

Warranty

Humanscale's published terms cover the Liberty under "all other seating, excluding fabric, cushions, arm pads, castors and wood" at 15 years. Those excluded components carry 5 years.

On a mesh chair this split is worth reading carefully. The mesh back itself is the structural back of the chair rather than an upholstery textile, and it sits under the fifteen-year term. The seat covering, the arm pads and the castors sit under the five-year term. If you are costing a replacement cycle, cost the castors and arm pads separately from the chair.

Full terms are on our warranty page. This warranty is in addition to your rights under the Australian Consumer Law, which cannot be excluded.

How it compares in the range

Against the Freedom ($1,700): mesh against upholstery, and no headrest against a headrest. Same designer, same 400 lb rating, same fifteen-year seating term, same absence of a tension dial. This is a preference decision rather than a quality decision.

Against the World One LM ($660): both are mesh, both use tri-panel Form Sensing Mesh, both are certified to 400 lb. The World One is the lighter, simpler chair on a twelve-year warranty rather than fifteen. The Liberty is the more substantial build with more configuration and a polished aluminium frame option. The gap between them is smaller than the price gap suggests, and we say so on both pages.

Our honest review and buying guide for the Liberty Mesh goes deeper, and the three-way comparison sets all three side by side.

Sit in one

Mesh is the single most personal thing about a chair, and a back that forms to your spine is impossible to assess from a photograph. Our Pyrmont showroom is open by appointment — call 02 9640 0642 or use our contact page.

Humanscale Australia · Freedom · World One LM · Browse the Humanscale range · All task chairs · Warranty terms