A good quality tattoo chair is a vital piece of furniture for your studio. Prices start at around $150 for a decent chair. A good budget model is the Desktop Portal from Oakworks, which costs $166. It is a versatile option as it can be used on top of a table as a face support when a client is lying down, or at the edge of a table for a seated client. It allows good access to clients’ necks, backs and shoulders which are common body parts to have tattoos. It is one of lightest pieces of equipment available, has TerraTouch upholstery and a lifetime limited warranty.

For a more expensive chair, the Wellspring at $390. It is a portable table weighing only 12kg but is still extremely strong and flexible – an all-round reliable piece of furniture. With semi-firm padding, TerraTouch upholstery and uniLock closure system it gives clients both comfort and security.

At the high end of the price range, the Alliance Wood ($468) is another portable model with a six position, 60 degree adjustable backrest. Lightweight and versatile yet sturdy, it is a good investment for your studio.

Amazon has a selection of chairs to suit all budgets. The Aosom Blue 3″ Foam Portable Massage Chair is suitable for tattooists. It comes with an aluminum face rest, a secure storage bag and 3 years warranty and costs only $99.99.

The Sierra Comfort Professional Series Portable is $149.99 from Amazon and has everything a well-equiped tattoo artist needs. Made from beach timber with 2.5” high density foam for optimum comfort, it includes a removable extended arm rest, bolsters, face rest, several height adjustments and a carry handle and case.

There is a great deal of choice in tattoo chairs; if you do a bit of research you will find the right one for you.

One of the most popular hydraulic chairs on the market is the Encore Hydraulic Tattoo Chair. This is chair made specifically for tattoo artists – in other words, it’s not a general or all purpose chairs, it is a chair made in mind for professional tattoo artists. Let’s take a closer look at this chairs features and price.

Type of Chair: Hydraulic Tattoo Chair
Price: $500 US
Tattoo Chair Features:
- Rotates around entirely 360 degrees
- Has a heavy duty metal base as well as a heavy duty hydraulic pump
- Comfortable Thick Foam Cushioning all on parts
- Adjustable parts; includes the headrest, back and legrest
- Arms can be removed if needed (without any need to mess with nuts and bolts!)
Color:
- The Encore Hydraulic Tattoo Chair is available in black or white
Weight: 375 pounds
Dimensions: Approximately 67 inches in its length and 28 inches in its width

Comments and Reviews:

This is an all around solid tattoo chair. It’s completely adjustable, it’s comfortable, it looks sharp in both black or white – but personally I prefer the solid black look over the white version. The hydraulic pump makes it easy to use. You can swivel this chair completely around with no problem and adjust it to be taller or lower so you can easily access to the areas of the body being tattooed.

Another reason to go with a company like Encore is that unlike some other companies which make general and all purpose salon chairs that can be used for tattooing but aren’t made for it, is that Encore makes tons of tattoo furniture. Encore makes various tattoo client chairs, tattoo artist stools, hydraulic chairs, non hydraulic chairs, as well as flat bed tables, magnifying lamps, trays, trolleys, and more – all made with the goal of making furniture specific for giving tattoos: in other words, tattoo furniture!

We can divide up all the types of tattoo furniture into a few broad categories. Let’s now do this and analyze the different types of tattoo furniture, starting from what we probably could say is the most important furniture to have on down to items you still need but aren’t as critical to your operation.

Client Tattoo Chairs – The customer needs a place to lie or sit when receiving a tattoo, and that place is the client side tattoo chair. Tattoo chairs range in price from a couple hundred dollars on up into the thousands. Chairs rotate, move up and down, (i.e. hydraulic tattoo chairs) and adjust as necessary to get the proper height and comfort thing going between the client and the artist.

Artist Tattoo Chair/Stool – The second part of the set up between the customer and the tattoo artist is the small stool used by the tattoo artist. These usually have no back, swivel, and lengthen to go up or down. These types of tattoo chairs cost under $100.

Display Case & Display Furniture – How do you plan to show your customers your flash art collection? Many shops put up glass displays and place the art behind the glass on the walls. More in depth options include giant book-like rafters that you flip through, each oversized page connected to the wall containing a dozen or more pieces of art. On a similar note, if you group body piercing services into your shop, you’ll need glass counter top display cases to showcase and protect the body jewelry for sale. Display cases generally end up costing a shop $1,000′s of dollars to buy, install, and maintain. As such, this makes for one of the most expensive tattoo furniture items needed in a shop.

Couches and Seats – It’s common to set up a tattoo shop so that potential customers can walk in, grab a book of tattoo flash art, and take a seat on a big comfy couch and start perusing possible designs. Most every shop these days has a couple couches for customers to relax in. (Not to mention, you’ll find employees and their friends using these couches probably more than anyone else. Obviously prices for couches vary considerably. However, there’s little reason to spend more than a couple hundred dollars per couch in my opinion. A place like Ikea sells cool artsy couches perfect for tattoo shops that fit within this price range, making them a pretty cheap tattoo furniture deal! (Also note though that there are specialty niche businesses that cater to the tattoo industry, which do make couches, chairs, and other furniture for customers to sit on that are specifically made for tattoo shops.)

Misc. Furniture Items - This category can be expanded to include quite a few tattoo shop furniture items you might see or want to use. This includes artisan items such as heat lamps to functional furniture items such as a front desk to coffee tables for flash art books to rest on.

For example, it’s common to find different types of chairs for sale advertised all at once as a being a:

• tattoo chair
• barber chair
• massage therapist chair
• hair styling chair
• manicure chair
• TV watching chair (OK, just kidding on this one!)

Is there anything wrong – or rather, is there anything unprofessional about using a tattoo chair that could also double as a place to cut the old man’s hair or give Mom a perm?

In a single word: no.

In two words: absolutely not!

Far from being a cheap item, the all purpose chair is actually often of superior quality over the other types of chairs marketed and sold for the individual trades above, such as a chair that is strictly a massage chair, for example.

Why is this the case? Because in order for the chair furniture to be truly effective at being a barber chair, tattoo chair, or whatever the case may be, it needs to be versatile and it needs to be of high quality. This usually means it’s going to be adjustable and hydraulic, allowing for the craftsman, be they a tattoo artist or hair styling, to adjust the chair according to the needs of the situation, job, and client.

Additionally, another perk of the all purpose tattoo chair is the ability to liquidate furniture to another business if the need arose, either because you’re replacing your current equipment (upgrading the tattoo shop, basically) or because it’s possible one day the shop itself or you as a tattooist will no longer need the chair. Having all purpose chairs means it’ll be much easier to sell a used chair to another business since they don’t have to strictly be a tattoo shop but instead could qualify under a number of other trades that need a reliable, hydraulic chair.

On this note, take a look at the following article about used tattooing equipment: Where to Buy a Used Tattoo Chair.