Big and Tall Goes for More Than Clothes

When people talk about Big & Tall sizing, it tends to be a catchall for anything bigger than average size. There are sections of retail stores devoted to the “Big & Tall” market, and there are even whole stores dedicated to serving Big & Tall customers. Yet this term does a disservice to those who shop Big & Tall, as it generalizes in a way that can be confusing and even misleading. Big & Tall sizing covers a wide variety of heights, widths, and weights, and it is important to know exactly what you need for your particular body type before just buying a Big & Tall product.

A Market For You 

For the most part, the market for Big & Tall clothes has adjusted to meet the needs of just about everyone who falls into that category. Whether you are merely larger than average and require shirts and pants with a greater width than most clothes have, or if you are instead quite tall but lacking the concomitant width, most Big & Tall clothiers can provide you with whatever clothing needs you may have. There are other products, however, which should be suited to your size – though you may not yet realize it!

Take, for example, your chair. Consider how you are sitting in it. Your bottom and thighs are on the seat of the chair, your knees bend and your feet reach the ground. Your back is against the back of the chair, and your arms are on the armrests. Is your neck touching the chair? How supported are you? Do your arms and/or legs have to bend at strange, uncomfortable angles just to fit into the chair – in fact, is your posture a healthy one? Do your sides feel like they are being pressed in by your armrests? Do you find that your chairs just don’t last long, and you are often replacing them?

A Chair Fit For You

If you answered yes to any of these questions and you fall into the category of Big & Tall, it may be that you have miscalculated your chair needs, and in fact need a chair that suits your larger-than-life size. Most people don’t know that modern manufacturing standards for chairs mandate that chairs must be stress-tested at 250 lbs., which means that while they are safe for up to 250 lbs. to be placed on them, anything above that could do damage to, and even break, the chair.

As such, you should look for a chair that specifically has a weight capacity that meets your particular needs. Quite a few of these types of chairs exist; you needn’t worry that you will be limited in your selection! Similarly, if you are particularly tall, you will want a chair that can adjust its back and seat to a degree that helps you. Yes, many modern office chairs have the ability to adjust, but they often only rise a few inches above their base height, and your weight could potentially cause them to lower over time.

Instead, with a chair that is specifically Big & Tall, you can have the room to sit comfortably, have your back supported, have your legs reach the ground at a natural angle – along with your arms resting on the armrests at a natural angle as well – and not be afraid that this wonderful, comfortable chair will be worn out too soon. People underestimate the value of a good chair, but when you’re working in the office for hours at a time, there is value in having a comfortable place in which to rest your bones.

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Comfort & Health

There are other elements of your office that could benefit from a Big & Tall makeover, including your desk (which you work over, and under which you must fit your legs), your computer (if the monitor isn’t angled or adjusted so that you needn’t hunch or crane your neck), and anything else that you use on a daily basis. Once you begin buying specifically for your Big & Tall nature, you will be amazed at how much more comfortable, at ease, and genuinely happy you are.

After all, you can really only be as happy as your body is healthy, and sitting in strange, awkward, uncomfortable poses and postures all the time for the sake of low-quality furniture is bound to lead to health issues. With the right furniture choices, however, you can overcome!

Beyond the Basics in Your Office

Sometimes, a business can place too much emphasis on its office aesthetic, spending far too much of its cash on excessive displays of comfort and prosperity. Other times, however, an office can spend far too little, with their employees working on the equivalent of cardboard boxes. As in all things, however, the best way to approach office design and aesthetics is by taking the middle path of moderation, furnishing a comfortable and inviting space that is simultaneously cost effective and not distracting in its opulence.

Making Space 

Many cutting edge businesses are making an effort to create large amounts of open space in the design of their office. Once upon a time, a bullpen packed with cubicles, desks, and various equipment – copy machines, printers, fax machines, telephones, etc. etc. etc. – was de rigeur for the corporate world, but more and more successful businesses are turning to the open floor plans and wide spaces that are commonly seen in Silicon Valley businesses.

Facebook’s offices in Palo Alto, California, are well known for their open, warehouse-like look, with walls left blank for employees to customize and each department free to provide their own unique design specifications so that those spaces would meet their needs more effectively. Twitter’s office space is similar, with desks existing on the edges of wide open space, and meeting rooms centered within that space. In some ways, this reflects the structure of the web that has made both of these companies so wealthy.

What is clear, however, is that employees like to have open space to move about in, rather than being hemmed in by desks and equipment on all sides. Those open spaces create concomitant mental space in which to move, metaphorically speaking, which leads to the kind of creativity and outside-the-box thinking that these companies value so highly.

The Day to Day 

Beyond a floor plan, what else can you do to encourage employee productivity and happiness using an affordable budget? Consider the furniture that your employees commonly interact with. Their desks and their chairs – little else, when you think about it, unless you often hold meetings and conferences, in which case the conference table and the chairs in there are also commonly used. The question is, do you think your employees want to be sitting in those chairs, at those desks?

If the answer is “no,” then you have a serious problem – if your employees don’t want to be there, then the quality of their work is really going to suffer. To help your employees be the best that they can be, you need to provide a work environment in which they are pleased to be there. To that end, desks that are suited to their posture and work purposes are ideal. Some consideration for what is pleasing to they eye is also wise; a plastic fold-out table, while at a comfortable height, is hardly encouraging.


Chairs are a larger issue, as your employees probably spend a fair amount of time sitting on them. Uncomfortable chairs that are inappropriately sat upon have actually been recorded as doing damage to your employees’ health, which, as you can imagine, puts a serious damper on their happiness and productivity. To that end, comfortable, ergonomic chairs are best. If your chairs possess neither of these qualities, you may soon have employees who are ill, in pain, and generally don’t want to be there.

Accessorize Your Office 

Sometimes creating a great office space is all in the details. Are your walls bland white space? Is the lighting the kind of lighting you would find in a Burger King break room? Is there nothing alive in your office beyond the employees themselves? (And even that is in doubt some mornings?) If your answer to each of these questions is “Yes,” then you have a problem that can easily be solve by bringing some fresh attention to detail to your office. Paint the walls, hang paintings, maybe get some graffiti in there – anything to separate your office walls from the walls of an interrogation room!

A few plants here and there, perhaps an office pet, and some lighting that is pleasing to the either rather than the sort that burns its way to the back of your brain, can all do a lot to improve employee happiness and productivity. When you can walk into an office and say to yourself, “I want to be here and I want to work here!” then you know you have a winning office space, and soon, a winning business.