Muista Chair Review

What is Muista?

Muista is a furniture design brand behind the original Muista chair concept. Founded in Vilnius, Lithuania, in 2017 by designer Aurimas Lažinskas and his cousin Gytis Štaras, Muista’s aim is to change the approach of long sitting at work desks, to encourage flexibility and movement and make sitting a more enjoyable experience.

Introduced for the first time at the Habitare 2018 design fair in Helsinki, Finland, Muista claims to have achieved big interest and positive feedback, both from health professionals and members of the public. Since then it was successfully showcased at various design fairs including Cologne (IMM), Paris (Maison & Objet), Vienna, Zürich, Hamburg (Blickfang) and sold to hundreds of customers, according to the company.

A different kind of office chair

Have you ever been working at your desk and wished you were riding your horse through mountain fields? Well the Muista chair might be the closest thing you’ll get to making that wish come true. 

Muista’s chair is pretty unique among office furniture as it is basically like a headless rocking horse, but for adults. However, you can also turn it to rock side to side as well if you need a change.

What Makes It a Good Chair?

The primary benefit of using the Muista chair is what they tout in their marketing copy; body movement for some ergonomic benefit. Using this chair in our labs for a few days has confirmed that it does help users sit upright while they work and even get a little motion in the hips and back to keep the core from being stagnant. This is also consistent across many of the user reviews we could find online.

The Muista seat is also safe for most flooring surfaces in your home or office. The rubbery padding on the curved feet helps protect wood or other flooring materials from scrapes and scratches.

The construction is also a bit more solid than some of the other “active seating” products we’ve reviewed in the past. There are basically only two pieces; the curved legs formed from high-quality plywood and the padded seat on top. Without any connections in the frame, it is a pretty solid piece of furniture. And being constructed in Europe from materials found there, we are confident that the materials come from reliable sources and will last longer than many products emanating  from Asia.

The packaging is also unique for the Muista chair. Where most manufacturers just put their product in a cubic cardboard box and fill in any pockets of space with more cardboard or styrofoam so the parts don’t move around, Muista instead basically molds the box around the legs of the chair, so the box looks like a two-legged stool. For one, this shows that Muista is investing in their packaging enough to make sure their customers receive a quality, undamaged product, which is likely indicative of the quality of the chair overall. As a possible bonus to their operations, it lets them stack the chairs in a unique way to save space in shipping.

Great Sitting Experience for All?

While there are certainly benefits to the Muista, you’ll want to be aware of some issues that could change your mind on whether to get it or not. The problem that we experienced ourselves but also see with most of the other customer complaints we found online is that the Muista chair isn’t particularly comfortable. That is a problem several of our testers noted after using the Muista chair for only a few minutes. The problem was worse for heavier users. 

Muista does recognize this is an issue for some users. They recommend that users build up the proper muscles by sitting on it starting at about 30 minutes a day and increasing bit by bit. They claim that most users become accustomed to the new seating within 2-3 weeks at the most. Some can use it longer and are rocking comfortably in only a few days. However, if you are used to riding horses, there might be no adjustment period at all.

One of the most obvious deficiencies of the Muista chair is that it can’t adjust height like office chairs that are equipped with height-adjustable cylinders. This limitation could make it quite difficult if you are working at a desk that doesn’t change height. Luckily, most of our readers are looking for office furniture for sit-stand desks, so the Muista won’t have as much difficulty there. 

However, there are only two different heights you can purchase, and if your legs don’t sit or hang comfortably at the height of the either chair, you are kinda out of luck.

A major factor in deciding whether to buy the Muista for many consumers will be its price. It does cost quite a bit in comparison to most office chairs. The shorter version costs about $400 and the larger will run you about $650, depending on the exchange rate from euros (which has been very disadvantageous to Americans lately, at least at the time of this writing). That said, there hasn’t been an imported product that hasn’t seen price increases since the pandemic, whether due to tariffs, shipping costs, exchange rates, or all three, so the Muista’s price isn’t that much higher than many other active seating options these days.

Need a Rockin’ Time?

There are plenty of positives and negatives to consider when thinking about buying a Muista chair to go with your standing desk workstation. If the price isn’t an issue, and you know your adjustable height desk will go low or high enough to suit your needs (some might not go low enough), it could be a great choice. 

Thinking about the discomfort issue, it might not be such a problem for standing desk users. If sitting gets a little uncomfortable, you can just use this pain as an incentive to stand up and get moving in another way.

Overall, it is a quality seat that will keep you moving, burning a few more NEAT calories, and keeping your spinal cord and joints better lubricated and oxygenated.

Check out more office chairs that might interest you and see what we thought about them in our roundup of ergonomic office seating options.