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Workspace checkup

Four measurements·About two minutes, one tape measure

The desk height calculator tells you what your setup should be. This tells you how far off what you actually have is — and which of the three gaps is worth fixing first.

cm · without shoes
cm · floor → top of the desk
cm · floor → top of the cushion, sat on
cm · floor → top of the screen
48
Fix thisout of 100

Your setup is fighting you. The good news: the biggest gap is usually fixable today with something you already own.

  • Screen height17 cm too low
    yours 105 cm · target 122 cm45% of score
  • Desk height3 cm too high
    yours 73 cm · target 70 cm35% of score
  • Seat heighton target
    yours 45 cm · target 44 cm20% of score

Fix in this order

  1. Screen is 18 cm too low, so you are looking down at it. Raise it by that much — a riser, a stack of books, or a monitor arm. This is the single change most likely to stop neck pain.
  2. Desk is 3 cm too high for you. Raise the chair by that much and add a footrest of the same thickness. Only if the chair cannot go that high is the desk itself the problem.

Change one thing, then sit with it for a week. Moving three things at once means you never find out which one was the actual cause.

How to take the four measurements

Everything is measured from the floor, and the tape measure is the whole tool. Nothing needs to be exact to the millimetre — within a centimetre is plenty.

  • Your height — without shoes, standing straight.
  • Desk surface — floor to the top of the desk, not to the keyboard or the mat on top of it.
  • Chair seat — floor to the top of the cushion while you are sitting on it. An unloaded chair measures several centimetres higher than the seat you actually sit at, which is the most common way this measurement goes wrong.
  • Screen top edge — floor to the top of the screen. That is the edge that should sit level with your eyes. For a laptop, measure to the top of its screen, not to the keyboard.

Where the target numbers come from

The checkup compares your measurements against the same four ratios used everywhere on this site — desk, chair, screen and standing height as fractions of your height, derived from published anthropometric data. How those numbers are calculated, and when not to trust them.

What the score is actually weighting

The score is not a count of problems — the three measurements are not equally important. Screen height carries 45% of it, desk height 35%, and seat height 20%.

Screen height dominates because the neck pays for it fastest and it is also the cheapest thing to fix. A screen that is 15 cm too low has you looking down for eight hours a day; a riser or a stack of books solves it for nothing. Seat height matters least of the three because the body tolerates it: if the seat is too high for your legs, a footrest restores the geometry, and footrests cost very little.

Anything within 1.5 cm of target counts as on target. That is roughly the threshold below which people cannot tell the difference, and chasing it further is measuring for the sake of measuring.

If you cannot change the desk

Most people cannot. A fixed-height office desk sits at 73–76 cm and stays there, and the two workarounds cover almost every case:

  • Desk too high — raise the chair until your elbows sit near 90°, then put something solid under your feet of the same thickness. A footrest is the whole fix; replacing the desk rarely is.
  • Desk too low — bed risers or adjustable legs under the desk. Cheaper than a new desk, and reversible if you share the room.

If your score is low and everything aches, the number is only part of it. Duration matters as much as geometry — see how long to stand at a standing desk for what to do about the hours themselves.

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