The phrase "executive chair" comes from an era of corner offices and secretaries. Nobody working from a spare bedroom is running a boardroom. But the chairs themselves have survived the job title, and for good reason: a high back, a headrest and a wider seat are exactly what you want if you're sitting for seven hours and taking calls for three of them.
The problem is that the category is now enormous and most of it looks identical in photographs. So rather than talk you through specifications, here are six chairs we actually stock, what each one is genuinely for, and where each one falls down.
The shortlist at a glance
| Chair | Back | Upholstery | Standout | Approx price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HOMCOM Executive Mesh Chair with headrest and lumbar support | High | Mesh | Cheapest way to get a headrest | £67 |
| HOMCOM Executive Mesh Office Chair with flip-up armrests | High | Mesh | Arms fold up to tuck under a desk | £72 |
| HOMCOM Swivel Executive Mid Back, black or brown | Mid | PU leather | Fits small rooms and low desks | £89 |
| HOMCOM Executive Office Chair High Back with armrests | High | PU leather | The straightforward all-rounder | £95 |
| Vinsetto High Back Executive Swivel, grey | High | PU leather | Best on camera | £122 |
| Vinsetto Executive Office Chair with footrest, brown | High | PU leather | Reclines with a pull-out footrest | £142 |
If the budget is tight: HOMCOM Executive Mesh Chair, around £67
Mesh isn't what most people picture when they hear executive, and this chair won't win any points for gravitas. What it does have is an adjustable headrest and lumbar support at a price where those usually vanish from the spec sheet entirely.
It's the right call if you're kitting out a room you use a couple of days a week, or if you're not sure how long the home working arrangement will last. The honest limitation is that mesh shows its price point more obviously than leather does. It looks like a working chair, because that's what it is.
If your desk is low or the room is tight: HOMCOM Executive Mesh with flip-up armrests, around £72
This is the one I'd point most people towards if they've got a small home office, and it's for a reason nobody mentions in product descriptions.
Standard UK desk height is around 72cm to 75cm. Fixed armrests on a high-back chair often sit at almost exactly that height, which means the chair won't push under the desk when you stand up. In a spare bedroom where the chair has to get out of the way so you can open a wardrobe door, that's a daily irritation. Armrests that flip up solve it completely.
Same mesh construction as the cheaper model, plus that one bit of practical design.
If you want leather without the bulk: HOMCOM Swivel Executive Mid Back, around £89
Every other chair here has a high back. This one doesn't, and that's the point.
High-back chairs are tall. In a box room with a sloped ceiling, or a corner of a bedroom where the chair sits in your eyeline from the bed, a mid-back version takes up noticeably less visual space. You lose the headrest, so it's the wrong choice if you're on video calls all day and want somewhere to rest your head between them. For anyone who mostly sits upright and works, it's plenty.
Comes in black or brown at the same price. Black hides scuffs better.
The safe all-rounder: HOMCOM Executive Office Chair High Back, around £95
If you don't want to think about this, buy this one.
High back, armrests, PU leather, nothing unusual. It sits at the point in the range where you stop paying for the basics and haven't yet started paying for extras you might not use. There's no footrest, no massage function and no reclining beyond the usual tilt.
That last point is worth dwelling on, because a chair with fewer moving parts has fewer things that can fail. Reclining mechanisms and vibration motors are the components that go first on budget chairs.
If you're on camera a lot: Vinsetto High Back Executive Swivel in grey, around £122
Video calls have quietly changed how people shop for office chairs. What's behind you and around you is now part of your professional presentation, whether you like it or not.
Grey PU leather photographs better than black, which tends to disappear into a dark blob on a webcam, and better than brown, which can read as slightly dated on screen. The high back and headrest frame you properly in shot rather than leaving your head floating against the wall behind.
It's a real consideration, not a made-up one, and this is the chair in the range that handles it best.
If you sit for long stretches: Vinsetto Executive Office Chair with footrest, around £142
The most expensive chair here, and the only one with a pull-out footrest.
The case for it is straightforward. If you're at the desk from nine until six, being able to recline and get your legs up for ten minutes at lunch is worth more than any amount of lumbar padding. It effectively does two jobs, which matters if the home office is also the only spare room and there's nowhere else to sit.
The trade-off is footprint. Reclining chairs need clearance behind them, so this isn't the one for a chair wedged against a wall.
A word on the massage models
A large slice of our Executive Chairs range comes with heated vibration massage, mostly in the £118 to £135 bracket.
Being straight with you: this is a genuinely nice-to-have rather than a reason to choose a chair. The vibration is gentle, it targets the lower and mid-back, and plenty of people who buy one use it daily and rate it. But it isn't physiotherapy, and I wouldn't pick a chair with a worse fit just to get the feature. If two chairs suit you equally and one has it, take the one with it.
One practical thing to check
Almost every office chair ships with hard nylon castors, which are designed for hard floors. Most UK home offices are carpeted spare bedrooms. On a thick carpet those castors drag rather than roll, and you end up shoving the chair around with your feet.
It's a cheap fix. Carpet castors are a standard part, they cost very little, and they pull out and push in without tools. Worth knowing before you decide the chair is faulty.
Have a look at the full Executive Chairs range, and if none of these quite fit, the Ergonomic Office Chairs and Reclining Office Chairs collections cover adjacent ground. The wider Home Office section has desks and storage if you're setting up from scratch.
Every order at Bossy Cat comes with free delivery to UK mainland addresses, excluding Northern Ireland. Orders are dispatched within 3 to 5 working days, and there are no hidden fees at checkout. If you change your mind, returns are fine, though the return postage is covered by you. Anything faulty is on us.
