Will Office Chair wheels scratch Wood Floor?

When you buy a new office chair there are few questions that comes to your mind when the chair arrives at your home or the office. One of the most common questions are “Will Office Chair wheels scratch Wood Floor?” and “do office wheelchairs indeed cause such scratches?”

Short Answer: Yes, office chair wheels do damage the wooden floor over a period of time. However there are some solutions to help you in preventing damages to your floor.

If your office is furnished with a hardwood floor, it may quite often distress you to see scratches on the floor you spent so much money on! 

The scrapes on the wooden floor are often caused by the office chair wheels.

Most of the time, the wheels of the office chairs are made of hard plastic material which does not go hand in hand with the hardwood floors.

They tend to inflict damage and ruin the elegant look that the floor provides. This post will clear all your doubts regarding the wear and tear of the floors and the possible solutions to prevent this.

How office Chair wheels scratch wooden flooring?

When it comes to the hardwood floor damage, you might end up blaming the office chairs but it is the wheels that are to be blamed.

The rolling wheels of a chair that provides easy movement lead to scraping marks on the floor.

The wheels are not always wood friendly. So, if you are going for an eloquent interior with hardwood floors, these office wheelchairs are very likely to damage the floors.

We are providing below a list of a couple of ways in which the office wheelchairs might be ruining the wooden floorings.

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1. Material of the Chair Wheels

 The wheels of the office chairs are typically made of hard plastic like nylon. These wheels then might provide swift movement but they eventually end up damaging the wood floors.

No worries there, since there are innumerable ways to prevent your wooden floorings from the damage that can be caused by office chair wheels.

2. Smaller Surface Area

Since only four or five small wheels are balancing the entire weight of the chair and the person sitting on it, they are likely to cause a dent on the floor.

These wheels are putting pressure on a particular area of the floors leading to scraping marks. Furthermore, the dragging of these chairs also causes scratches to the flooring.

3. Pressure on the Wheels

You must be wondering that the only purpose of a chair is for people to sit on it.

Then, what is the point of having one if you cannot let people sit on them just to prevent dent?.

Well, there are many ways to prevent that, which we will be listing down later in this article. But we cannot ignore that the pressure exerted on the wheels is indeed a problem.

4. Friction

Rolling wheelchairs are a common necessity in every office, as you are aware. But what you may not have noticed is that these rolling chairs are often moved around a lot.

Since they have such smooth glides, people usually tend to let the wheels move a lot. The office wheelchair can move around 360°, and hence why not just sit on your chair and move it just a little to grab your file or that bottle perhaps!

That movement causes friction between the wheels and the floor and thus, there goes one more reason for your dented hardwood floor.

What damages can an Office Chair with Wheels cause?

Well, you will most likely have scratches all over the wooden floor. This itself ruins the classic look you may have wanted to go for!

The wheels of these chairs tend to dent the wooden floors. The upper layer of the hardwood floor comes off leaving scraped marks on it.

Since these wheels are made of hard plastic, small pieces of debris may get stuck to the small spaces in between the wheels. This further adds to the damage to the floor.

The cost of repairing it almost equals the cost of getting a new one furnished.

How to prevent damages to the Wooden Floor?

There are few solutions to that can be implemented to prevent scratches to your hardwood floors if you are using office chairs

1. Replacing Wheel Casters with Rollerblades

As we earlier mentioned, the office chair wheels are usually made of hard plastic materials that can damage wooden and tile surfaces.

It would be a great idea to replace these wheels with softer rollerblades type wheels that are easily available and can be assembled easily.

So, you can replace your wheel casters with softer office chair caster wheels made of neoprene rubber or polyurethane.

In this way you can easily avoid considerable damage to your wooden floors.

2. Chair Mat for Hardwood Floors

Office Chair Mats for hard floors come in handy when you are looking for a decorative way to protect your floorings.

They not only add to the furnishing of the interior but also prevents direct contact between the office wheelchairs and the floor.

The chair mats prevent scratches on the floor that results from pushing around the chairs. Some of these chair mats are fully transparent and have an appealing look. So, they not only prevent damages to the floor but also add to the eye-catching interior of the office.

3. Using Furniture Pads (More Suitable for Chairs without Wheels)

Furniture pads are a great way to protect the hardwood floors.

What are Furniture pads?

These are protective coverings that prevent the rolling chairs from moving around.

Some of the best Furniture pads that you can get for  your rolling chairs are Scotch felt pads and Felt Furniture Pads X protector.

Unfortunately these furniture pads are more suitable for office chairs without wheels, which brings us to our last solution.

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4. Avoid Dragging the Chair

Even after taking all precautions, if you still push the office chairs around, that would lead to scratch marks.

Dragging around rolling chairs is easier, since they are quite heavy and when you have the wheels, why not! But if you wish to keep your wood floor intact and elegant, this is a thing that has to be avoided.

Instead of pushing the chair, you simply can get help and get it shifted whenever necessary.

Conclusion

You can pretty much say that office chair wheels will damage your wooden floors, if you don’t implement the above precautions.

Office wheel chairs are indeed a necessity but the damage they inflict on hardwood floors can be concerning. But with the list of preventions we have mentioned, in this article we hope we have cleared all your doubts.

The best two solutions are buying a good quality office chair mat or replacing your wheels with rollerblade style wheels.

These preventive measures will not only save your wooden floors from excessive damage but also spare you from the unnecessary expenses of getting the floors fixed.

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