Desk & monitor height calculator

Next step: these are your numbers. The order you change things in matters as much as the numbers themselves — adjust your screen before your desk and you will redo it once the desk moves. The complete ergonomic desk setup guide walks through the sequence, with reference tables from 150 to 190 cm and a symptom-to-cause chart for when something still hurts after measuring.

How the numbers are derived

These are ratios of your height, not rules of thumb. Each one is a body measurement from published anthropometric data divided by stature, and each has been checked against measured population averages — the full derivation, its error margins and its limits are on one page.

• Desk height ≈ 40% of your height — your popliteal height (25%) plus your sitting elbow height (14%), which is floor-to-elbow when seated.
• Chair seat height ≈ 25% of your height — lets your feet rest flat on the floor.
• Standing desk height ≈ 63% of your height — same 90° elbow rule, standing up.
• Seated eye level ≈ 70% of your height — same idea: popliteal height plus sitting eye height.
• Monitor top edge level with your eyes. On a 27-inch panel that puts the screen center about 17 cm lower.

Already have a desk? Measure it and score it against these numbers with the workspace checkup — it tells you how many centimetres each measurement is off and which one to fix first.

If the numbers feel wrong

Fixed-height desks are usually 73–76 cm. Measured against floor-to-elbow, that is at or above the elbow height of anyone under about 185 cm — which is why so many people find a standard desk slightly too high. The usual fix is not a new desk: raise the chair until your elbows meet the surface, then put a footrest under your feet. If the screen is too low, a monitor arm or a riser fixes more than any piece of furniture.

Put this calculator on your own site

If you write about desks, chairs, or home offices, you can drop this calculator straight into your article with one snippet of HTML. It stays current on its own — the numbers come from the same source as this page, so when they are corrected, every embedded copy updates too.