For years, foam engineering has faced the same problem — how to create a foam that was both soft and supportive. Too soft, and your foam sags under weight and will not provide enough support over long hours. Too much support, and your seat feels uncomfortably firm, even hard.
We wanted a foam that offered the best of both worlds. Our medium-firm cold-cure foam comes close, finding a proven balance between comfort and support. But we knew we could push it even further.
It took 10 years, many different types of foam, hundreds of prototypes, and more meetings with ergonomic experts than we can count. Secretlab NanoFoam™ Composite is the most challenging foam we’ve ever made — our first to successfully fuse both softness and support for long hours of exceptional comfort. Experience it for yourself.
A layered approach
NanoFoam™ Composite breaks new ground with a multi-layer foam technology. It is just as supportive. It still has our medium-firm cold-cure foam. But it now has a layer of microfoam at the top that makes it softer than ever.
This microfoam contours gently to your body with a slow, controlled feel. Unlike other foam types, it is incredibly responsive to you, evenly distributing weight to reduce stress on your body and improve overall comfort.
It also eases you into our medium-firm cold-cure foam below, which never bottoms out like cheaper, softer foams. Cast as a single piece from precise molds, it provides just the right amount of support to take the strain off your muscles.
“Sitting for long periods can create pressure points that lead to discomfort and fatigue. We wanted to add softness to the seat without sacrificing support. So we picked microfoam, a type of memory foam. It reduces the accumulation of stress peaks, but we also had to figure out how to get it to play well with the cold-cure foam base, ” says Vincent Sin, Head of Industrial Design at Secretlab.
Engineering for real-world performance
When there are so many layers, it can be a challenge to get everything to feel like a single, cohesive piece of foam.
To do that, we had to see how our foam composite interacted with the weight of the human body. Our engineers ran extensive pressure distribution studies, using Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and advanced pressure mapping to identify stress points after long hours of sitting. That data shaped how we optimized the thickness and shape of each layer, down to the millimeter.
The microfoam layer is also purposefully absent from the rear, delivering firmer support where your ischial tuberosity (or sit bones) are because they bear the most weight. The last thing we want is for you to sink into your seat, which creates uneven strain on other areas of your body. On the other hand, a thicker microfoam layer at the edges adds softer cushioning, so the seat never digs into the back of your knee.
“Outside the lab, we also tested it with people of different builds, sitting habits, and environments to fine-tune the foam’s response. The goal was simple — to make sure it adapts naturally to each person, no matter how they sit,” Vincent says.
The final detail was our nano-based adhesive. Foam changes shape when you sit down, and it was crucial that the different layers of foam continue to move and respond naturally without any tugging or stress. Our nano-based adhesive is super strong yet almost invisible, binding the different layers together while remaining responsive.
The result is a composite that smoothly transitions between softness and support. It’s something you have to sit in and feel for yourself.
“At the end of the day, a chair should work with your body, not against it,” Vincent says. “We take our product development process seriously, and with Secretlab NanoFoam™ Composite, we feel like we’ve solved one of the biggest issues people have with foam. We hope it’s something you enjoy as part of your day, no matter how long the hours.”
