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Trade terms for professionals and design studios
Measure it before you look at it. The high-back Light rises from 107 to 120 cm off the floor, depending on where the gas lift is set, over a base 72 cm across. Luxy makes this backrest in one arrangement: revolving, on five spokes, with armrests. That tells you what the chair is for. It is the revolving boss chair of the collection, the one that goes behind the desk, and every other Light is built lower.
The lower ones are the same design at 84 to 97 cm: a medium backrest that Luxy offers with armrests or without and, on a sled base, at a fixed 84 cm. In Luxy's brochure they appear as conference table seating, several to a room. So the person who runs the office and the people who meet there sit on one family, told apart by a measurement and not by a different product. The frame is round steel tube throughout, with die-cast aluminium for armrests and base.
Luxy R&D is the designer; production is at Lonigo (Vicenza), in three series. The 14000 is all mesh, which Luxy says helps breathability. The 16000 carries a thin padding. The 18000 is the fully padded one, and on these two the cover is removable. Each series takes the high or the medium backrest, the five-spoke base or the sled, and beam benches complete the list. La Mercanti asks the height of the person and of the desk before suggesting the high backrest or the medium one.
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The phrase is Luxy's, written for the 16000 series: padding «characterised by tailored fabric and leather work». What can be seen in Luxy's images is the result: horizontal seams running across seat and backrest, over a padding only 13 mm thick. With so little foam underneath, the covering and its stitching are what the eye reads first. Anyone choosing this series is therefore choosing the covering with more care than usual: La Mercanti lays the fabric and leather options on the table before the frame colour is discussed.
Michelin, in Turin. Luxy's brochure states that Light in mesh, with the medium backrest, was chosen to furnish the meeting rooms of the Michelin offices there. Two photographs accompany the sentence: black revolving seats around a white rectangular table and around a dark round one. The reference belongs to Luxy and is repeated here as Luxy publishes it. What a buyer can take from it is the specification itself: mesh, medium backrest, one colour throughout the room.
Say so when you order. Light is supplied as standard with castors for hard floors: self-braking, rubberised, 65 mm in diameter. Castors for carpeted and other textile floors are a different item, and Luxy supplies them on request. The colour rule stays the same either way: black castors on coloured bases, white on the white base, chrome on the chrome base. Where an office has both kinds of floor, name the one on which the seat will actually spend its day.
They are three of the sixteen covering collections that Luxy marks as suitable for the padded series of Light. Luxy arranges them in seven groups, and the range takes in both fabrics and leather. The mesh series is separate: it uses Batyline, in black or in white. In practice the covering is chosen by name from a closed list, so every seat in an order can be asked for in exactly the same terms. The full list is in the specifications on this page.
In the armrests and in the base. The armrests, open or closed, are die-cast aluminium, chrome-plated or painted. The five-spoke base is die-cast aluminium too: polished on the chrome version, powder-coated on the others. The frame between them is steel. Luxy's care notes treat aluminium apart from the rest: only products made for polishing metals, and a reminder that aluminium parts oxidise naturally where hands rest. A buyer who likes polished armrests should know that before choosing them.
The seat of a revolving Light moves up and down on its gas lift. Luxy's instructions say where to stop: five checks, done once at your own desk, in the order given here.
Before adjusting your Light, use the whole surface of the seat. Luxy puts this first among its instructions for use. Adjusting while perched on the front edge gives a reading that changes the moment you sit properly, so settle in first and only then reach down.
Rest your forearm flat on the desk. According to Luxy the seat is at the correct level when the elbow forms an angle of about 90°. Shoulders creeping upward mean the seat is too low; a forearm sloping down to the desk means it has gone too far up.
Now look down. With both feet resting on the floor, the knee should also be at about 90°. The two angles are checked together, since one adjustment moves both. If the elbow is right and the knee is not, the desk is the part that does not fit, and it is worth saying so.
Each series has its own travel. With the medium backrest the seat runs from 42 to 55 cm in mesh, from 43 to 56 cm with thin padding and from 47 to 60 cm with full padding; with the other backrest every figure is one centimetre more. Knowing the range saves looking for a level the model does not reach.
The level is set once; posture is not. Luxy calls it dynamic sitting and means changing position often through the working day. A correctly set seat is the starting point; the habit of moving is what the instructions ask for next, and it applies to every Light, whatever the series.
