The desk was never measured for you
Almost every fixed-height desk sold sits somewhere between 28 and 30 inches — 71 to 76 cm. That range is a manufacturing convention, not a fitting. It exists so that desks stack, ship and match each other, and it has stayed put for decades while the people sitting at them have not.
Here is what that band actually corresponds to. A seated desk surface should land near your elbow height when you are sitting with your shoulders relaxed and your forearms level, which for most bodies is around 40% of your standing height. Run the common desk heights back through that:
- 28 inches (71 cm) suits a body of about 178 cm (5 ft 10 in)
- 29 inches (73.7 cm), the most common of the three, suits about 184 cm (6 ft 0 in)
- 30 inches (76 cm) suits about 190 cm (6 ft 3 in)
The standard desk is sized for a fairly tall man. If you are 165 cm, the desk in front of you is roughly 8 cm too high — and 8 cm is not a subtlety. It is the difference between resting your forearms and holding your shoulders up for eight hours because there is nowhere lower to put your hands.
The good news is that this is a solvable problem without buying anything, because the desk is only one of three heights that matter, and it is the one you are least able to change. The chair and the screen do most of the work.
Measure two things, not five
You need one number for the desk and one for the screen. Everything else follows from them.
Seated elbow height
Set your chair first, before measuring anything. Feet flat on the floor, thighs roughly level, no pressure behind your knees. If your feet dangle, the chair is too high and every number after this will be wrong.
Now sit back, let your upper arms hang straight down beside you, and bend your elbows to about a right angle so your forearms are level with the floor. Do not lift your shoulders to do it. Have someone measure from the floor to the underside of your elbow. That is your seated elbow height, and it is where the working surface — the keyboard, not necessarily the desktop — wants to be.
Seated eye height
Same chair, same posture, looking straight ahead at the wall. Have someone mark the height of your eyes and measure from the floor. That is your seated eye height. The top edge of your screen wants to sit a few centimetres below it, so your gaze drops very slightly rather than climbing.
Measuring beats estimating, because people of the same height differ in leg and torso length by several centimetres, and it is torso length that decides where your elbows land when you sit. If you have nobody to hold the tape, the table below gets you close enough to start adjusting from.
What the numbers should be
Worked from standing height, using average body proportions. These are starting positions to adjust from, not targets to force yourself into — the same figures our desk setup calculator produces, with the reasoning for each row shown alongside.
| Your height | Seat | Desk, seated | Top of screen | 29-inch desk is off by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 155 cm | 39 cm | 62 cm | 107 cm | 11.7 cm too high |
| 160 cm | 40 cm | 64 cm | 110.5 cm | 9.7 cm too high |
| 165 cm | 41.5 cm | 66 cm | 114 cm | 7.7 cm too high |
| 170 cm | 42.5 cm | 68 cm | 117.5 cm | 5.7 cm too high |
| 175 cm | 44 cm | 70 cm | 121.5 cm | 3.7 cm too high |
| 180 cm | 45 cm | 72 cm | 125 cm | 1.7 cm too high |
| 185 cm | 46.5 cm | 74 cm | 128.5 cm | about right |
| 190 cm | 47.5 cm | 76 cm | 132 cm | 2.3 cm too low |
Read down the last column and the shape of the problem is obvious. The standard desk is correct at the bottom of the table and increasingly wrong as you go up it. For a very large share of adults — most women and a good many men — it is off by the better part of a hand's width.
Fixing a desk you cannot change
You almost certainly cannot cut the legs off an office desk, and you may not want to buy a new one. You do not have to. The order of operations matters more than the equipment.
- Set the chair to your body, not to the desk. Seat height first, from the table above or from your own measurement. This is the step people skip, and skipping it makes everything downstream a compromise.
- If the desk is now too high, raise the chair anyway. Keep raising until your forearms are level with the desk surface and your shoulders are down. Yes, this lifts your feet.
- Put something solid under your feet. A footrest, a ream of paper, a shoebox, a stack of books. Feet flat and thighs level again. This single cheap fix is what makes step 2 workable, and it is why raising the chair is the standard answer to a too-high desk.
- Or hang the keyboard lower. An under-desk keyboard tray moves the typing surface down to your elbow height and leaves the desktop where it is. This is the better answer if the gap is large — over about 8 cm — because at that point you would be perched uncomfortably high.
- Then fix the screen, separately. See below. Raising your chair raises your eyes, so the screen has to follow, and a monitor left sitting on the desk will now be too low.
A desk that is too low is the harder case, and it is rarer. Lowering the chair to match will put your knees up and your feet under-supported. Risers under the desk legs are the honest fix; failing that, accept the desk height and get the chair and screen right, because those two you control.
The screen is a separate problem
Desk height decides where your hands go. Screen height decides where your head goes, and they are set independently — which is why getting the desk right and leaving the monitor on its factory stand still leaves you looking down all day.
Aim the top edge of the screen a few centimetres below your seated eye height, so your gaze falls slightly rather than rising. Distance is roughly an arm's length, about 50 to 70 cm, and further is fine if the text is still comfortable to read. Bigger screens want to be further away, not closer.
Height is what matters; what you use to get there does not. A monitor arm is convenient and adjusts freely. A stack of books costs nothing and works exactly as well once it is at the right height.
Laptops deserve their own warning, because a laptop cannot satisfy both numbers at once — the screen and the keyboard are bolted together. Raise the screen to eye height and the keyboard goes up with it and your shoulders follow. The only real solution is to separate them: laptop on a stand at screen height, with a separate keyboard and mouse down at desk height. Without a stand, the working compromise is to keep the laptop flat and accept looking down, then raise it for long stretches of reading rather than typing.
What this cannot tell you
- The table is proportions, not your body. It works from standing height using population averages. Two people of 170 cm with different leg-to-torso ratios genuinely need different desk heights, and the table cannot see the difference. Measure if you can.
- The posture is the target; the centimetres are only a route to it. If a number puts you in an awkward position, the number is wrong, not you. Forearms level, wrists straight, shoulders down, gaze dropping slightly — if those four hold, you are there.
- No height is correct for eight hours. A perfectly fitted workstation is still a static position. Getting up periodically does more than any measurement on this page.
- It cannot tell you what furniture to buy. The numbers say what height you need; whether that is best reached with a tray, a riser, a footrest or a different desk depends on your room and your budget.
- Persistent discomfort is not a measurement problem. If something hurts and stays hurting after your setup fits, that is a question for a qualified professional rather than a tape measure.
Frequently asked questions
What desk height do I need if I am 165 cm?
Around 66 cm seated, with the chair at about 41.5 cm. A standard 29-inch desk is 73.7 cm, so it is roughly 8 cm too high for you. The usual fix is to raise the chair until your forearms are level with the desk and add a footrest, or fit an under-desk keyboard tray to bring the typing surface down to you.
Is it worse for a desk to be too high or too low?
Too high is more common and easier to fix, because raising the chair plus a footrest solves it with no modification to the desk. Too low is more awkward: lowering the chair to compensate leaves your knees high and your feet poorly supported, so you generally have to raise the desk itself on risers.
How do I measure my seated elbow height on my own?
It is genuinely hard without a second person, because looking down at the tape changes the posture you are trying to measure. Two workarounds: sit against a wall and have your elbow mark the wall with a sticky note, then measure to the note afterwards, or take a side-on photo at chair height and measure against a known reference in the frame. Otherwise start from the height table and adjust by feel.
Do standing desks solve this?
Only if they adjust, and only if you set the standing height correctly too. Standing elbow height is roughly 60% of your standing height, so a standing desk that is too high produces exactly the same lifted shoulders as a seated desk that is too high. The benefit of a sit-stand desk is changing position, not a magic height.
To get all four numbers for your own height at once — seat, desk seated, desk standing and screen — use the desk setup calculator, which shows the proportion behind each row rather than just the result. More in screens and desk.
HealthGuideTip provides general health information for educational purposes only and is not medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional about your own health, and before changing any treatment, medication, or lifestyle.