A kitchen chair might have sufficed for the first few weeks, but after that, even the most casual-minded home worker will have begun to cast around for something a little more comfortable. Where to start, though? The contemporary desk chair is a curious thing, designed to look far better in flocks than as a single, standalone object. An endlessly adjustable high-tech device is all very well in the context of a high-ceilinged office, set among endless desks and vast panes of glass, but transport it into the domestic realm and it quickly looks like overkill.

For a start, ergonomic brilliance is less easy on the eye than on the back or rear. Conversely, some of the best-known design classics are often best appreciated from the other side of a room, not from within their unyielding confines. Only sadistic chiropractors would advocate spending any time in Mr Gerrit Rietveld’s wooden lightning strike of a seat, the Zig Zag chair, or Mr Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s iconic posture-killer, the Argyle Chair, or even the famously unstable desk chair Mr Frank Lloyd Wright created for his Johnson Wax Building. But although many icons of chair design are best suited for display purposes only, there are a few that endure and can be welcomed into your home-slash-office.

The Eames Soft Pad was originally designed in 1969. Still manufactured by the German furnishings giant Vitra, it has been often imitated but never equalled. An evolution of Mr Charles and Ms Ray Eames’ Aluminium Group seating from the late 1950s (originally designed for a single private residence), the Soft Pad is a family of chairs, loungers and stools that features lavishly padded leather upholstery. This timeless piece of industrial design is at home in every kind of interior, whether antique or modern. The earliest examples have four supports, not five, and are prone to be slightly tippy, but new examples are as robust an object as you’ll ever bring into your home and come complete with a 30-year warranty to prove it.

When it was introduced in 1994, the Aeron chair was treated with some suspicion. Eschewing cloth or leather for a stretchy mesh, the company’s designers Mr Don Chadwick and the late Mr Bill Stumpf developed a flexible material called Pellicle that was stretched across an infinitely adjustable frame. As any Aeron user can testify, if you push yourself back from your desk, whether in delight or despair, the chair’s damper mechanisms absorb the force and recline you backwards before springing you back into position. As a stressbusting gesture this quickly becomes invaluable – just don’t try it with lesser brands. The Aeron is still going strong, receiving evolutionary updates to keep it best in class.

Mr Arne Jacobsen’s “Ant” chair represents simplicity itself. Consisting of a single bent piece of wood firmly fixed to four spindly legs, the Ant is instantly recognisable and available in clear lacquer or a range of eye-popping colours. An architectural favourite for its simple form and ability to bring a splash of life to a space, the Ant started life as another three-legged special, designed in 1952 for the staff canteen in the Copenhagen office of Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical giant. The company ordered just 300 chairs from Fritz Hansen – the furniture maker that had collaborated with Mr Jacobsen since the 1930s. The manufacturer’s skill at using steam to bend wood was ruthlessly exploited by all the architect’s elegant designs, and the Ant is one of the most simple of all, a dumbbell-shaped piece of veneer moulded and curved to accommodate the human form. Like its namesake, Ants might be everywhere, but their ubiquity doesn’t crush their practical, industrious efficiency.

Mr Hee Welling’s AAC 25 for the Danish design specialists HAY is a masterpiece of minimal form-making. The chair’s support is moulded from polypropylene and can be clad and coloured in a number of different materials, while the four castors sit at the ends of splayed aluminium legs. Mr Welling was brought up by a cabinetmaker, and the AAC (About A Chair) is carefully detailed so that a modern, everyday material like polypropylene can be made to exude a touch of luxury. HAY sells several variants on Mr Welling’s AA series, including the About A Stool, About A Table and About A Lounge, all available in the spectrum of colours that runs through the company’s diverse catalogue.

Although the home office chair usually stands alone, all the above examples are usually multiplied many times over within a typical office fit out. The Pacific Chair, designed by Messrs Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby in 2016, is a fine example of a chair that works well in every environment, from a home studio to the ultimate in contemporary office spaces, Apple Park in Cupertino, California. The story goes that every single detail of this $5b doughnut-shaped HQ was overseen by Apple’s outgoing chief design officer Sir Jony Ive in close collaboration with the architect, Lord Norman Foster. Sir Jony helped ensure that only the best of everything was chosen and with 12,000 chairs on the spec list, the Pacific got the vote. Messrs Barber and Osgerby’s design swathes its ergonomic underpinnings with a simple, unpretentious skin, with no visual distractions or unnecessary complexity to distract from the task in hand. The parallels with Sir Jony’s aesthetic are obvious.

French designer Mr Jean Prouvé would have remained a footnote in the history of industrial design were it not for the relentless championing of his modest but marvellous portfolio of furniture, architecture and objects by collectors and contemporary architects. Many of his pieces were designed for educational institutions around France in the post-war era and now command eye-watering prices at auction. Mr Prouvé trained as a blacksmith, and his skill at metalworking was dovetailed with the increasing availability of lightweight materials such as aluminium. As well as exploring the metal’s suitability for prefabricated houses, he created tables, chairs and storage units, often combining metals with wood and bold colours. Limited-edition reissues occasionally break cover on the second market, including a run of office chairs created by Vitra in collaboration with G-Star RAW, the design-obsessed Dutch denim brand.