What Height Should Your Monitor Be?

The rule everyone repeats — "top of the screen at eye level" — is right, and it is also the part most people get wrong, because they measure from where their eyes are when they sit up straight instead of where they actually are after ten minutes of work.

Measure from your real eye level

Sit the way you actually sit: back against the chair, shoulders relaxed. Have someone measure from the floor to your eyes. For a 170 cm person that is usually around 120 cm.

The top bezel of your monitor should sit at or just below that number. The centre of the screen then falls naturally about 10 cm lower, which is where your gaze rests when you look slightly down.

If you cannot change the height of your monitor, you have three options, roughly in order of value:

A monitor arm ($30–$120). Best range of motion, frees desk space.
A riser or a stack of books ($0–$40). Fine for a single screen you never move.
A laptop stand ($20–$60). Required for laptop-only setups, but you also need an external keyboard.

Distance: an arm's length

Sit back and extend your arm. Your fingertips should just about reach the screen. For a 27-inch panel that is roughly 60–70 cm.

Too close and your eyes work harder to converge; too far and you lean forward, which undoes everything the height adjustment achieved.

Tilt is not decoration

Tilt the screen back about 10–20 degrees. A perfectly vertical screen forces you to hold your neck slightly forward to keep the whole panel in focus. A screen tilted too far back reflects the ceiling light into your eyes.

Dual monitors: two layouts

Side by side — fine if you switch between them. The seam should sit directly in front of your nose, otherwise you end up rotated all day.
Primary centred, secondary offset — better if one screen gets 80% of your attention. Put the primary straight ahead and angle the second one toward you.

An ultrawide avoids the seam problem entirely, provided the pixel density is high enough that you are not leaning in to read text.

Laptop-only setups

You cannot get a laptop screen to eye level without raising it, and once it is raised the built-in keyboard is unusable. So the honest answer is: laptop stand plus external keyboard and mouse, or accept that a laptop-only setup is a compromise you fix later.

If your neck hurts at the end of the day and your chair is decent, the screen is almost always too low.

Check yourself in 30 seconds

Top of screen at or just below eye level
Screen an arm's length away
Tilted back 10–20°
No glare from a window directly behind or in front of you
You are not leaning forward to read text

Need the numbers for your height? Use the desk and monitor height calculator.