Note that here when we use the term “tattoo furniture”, we’re talking the furniture used in tattoo shops and parlors, not furniture with a style inspired by tattoo art, which is actually awesome in and of itself but perhaps a topic for another article.

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.

So far, all these articles we have written about on tattoo chairs are mostly written from the perspective of the client. By this I mean we’ve talked about making the chair adjustable and comfortable and so on for the benefit of the person receiving the tattoo. (Also, for the artist in the sense of being able to easily access the tattooed area.)

But what is the artist doing? Standing there bent over, tattoo machine in hand, giving a tattoo, being careful not to trip over the power supply cable?

I think not. They’ve got a chair of their own. In fact, when someone uses the term tattoo chair, this actually refers to two different types of tattoo chairs.

First, we’ve got the tattoo chair we’ve mostly addressed in our other articles – the one for the client. Usually a hydraulic tattoo chair but not always.

Secondly, we’ve got the tattoo chair for the artist. They’ve got to sit on something, too!

Not surprisingly, these tattoo furniture pieces are referred to as a tattoo client chair and a tattoo artist chair, respectively.

The chair the tattoo artist sits on resembles the types of chairs used by professional drummer and massage therapists. Typically this means an adjustable stool made. Usually it’s got a comfortable mesh black seat, silver metal body, and 4 black wheels. The chair may or may not have any backing to it. Often the artist will work slightly at an angle, and so a back is not used.

As mentioned, it’s adjustable, and this is an mandatory feature, otherwise it could be horribly uncomfortable for the artist over the years using a chair that’s not ergonomically correct. This means it’s adjustable not only in the sense of height adjustment, but is mobile (wheels) and the seat itself swivels, moving side to side as the tattoo artist shifts his or her body weight.

Of the two, the client tattoo chair is far more of an investment (i.e. costs more!) because of the more materials and features a quality tattoo client chair must have. This can be anywhere from a couple hundred dollars on up into a thousand or more dollars. On the other hand, the tattoo artist chair is considerably (and thankfully) cheaper, costing anywhere from $50 to $100 from most tattoo furniture supply or general furniture companies.