This desk height calculator answers a question most people only ask after their shoulders have started aching: how high should this desk actually be? Office furniture is built to a single standard height that suits a narrow band of adults, and almost everyone outside that band spends years compensating with hunched shoulders, dangling feet or a raised chin. The measurements here are proportional to your own body rather than to a factory default.
Arb Digital publishes this alongside a large library of free calculators, largely because the agency's own team spends the working day at screens and the questions kept coming up internally. It is a starting point built from published ergonomic guidance, not a clinical assessment — anyone with existing pain or an injury needs a professional evaluation rather than an arithmetic one.
What This Desk Height Calculator Does
Enter your standing height and the tool returns five workstation figures. The headline number is the seated desk or keyboard surface height, which is the single measurement that governs shoulder and wrist posture. The supporting grid gives standing desk height for a sit-stand setup, chair seat height, the height at which the top edge of your monitor should sit, and how much footrest you need if your existing desk is fixed at a height taller than the calculated one.
The heel field matters more than it looks. A pair of shoes with a 3 cm heel raises every standing measurement by 3 cm, and standing desks are set once and rarely revisited, so a desk dialled in barefoot will be wrong on every day you wear boots. The keyboard posture selector shifts the surface figure by 2.5 cm in either direction for people who prefer a slightly negative or slightly raised typing surface.
The bar display puts chair seat, seated desk, standing desk and seated eye level on one scale, which makes the relationship between them visible. The gap between chair seat and desk surface is the one that determines whether your forearms rest level; the gap between desk and eye level determines where the screen goes.
How to Use It
- Measure your height properly. Shoes off, heels against a wall, looking straight ahead. Guessing here throws every downstream figure out by the same error.
- Set your usual heel height. Use the shoes you actually stand in at the desk, not the ones you wore when you measured yourself.
- Enter your current desk height if it is fixed. Measure from the floor to the top of the desk surface, not to the top of the keyboard.
- Set the chair to the seat height figure first. Feet flat, thighs roughly parallel to the floor, no pressure behind the knees.
- Adjust the surface, then the screen. If the desk cannot come down to the calculated height, raise the chair to it and use the footrest figure to support your feet.
The Formula / How It's Calculated
Every figure is a fixed proportion of standing height, using anthropometric ratios that are stable across the adult population even though absolute heights vary enormously. The proportions this tool uses are: chair seat height 25 per cent of stature, seated working surface 42 per cent, standing working surface 62 per cent, seated eye height 72 per cent and standing eye height 93.5 per cent.
Worked example for a person 175 cm tall in 2 cm heels. Chair seat is 0.25 × 175 = 43.8 cm. Seated desk surface is 0.42 × 175 = 73.5 cm, which happens to land almost exactly on the 73.7 cm standard office desk — that is not a coincidence, because the standard was set for roughly this stature. Standing desk is 0.62 × (175 + 2) = 109.7 cm. Seated eye height is 0.72 × 175 = 126.0 cm, and the monitor top edge sits about 5 cm below that at 121.0 cm. Because the existing desk at 73.7 cm is only 0.2 cm above the calculated surface, the footrest figure rounds to zero.
Run the same numbers for someone 160 cm tall and the picture changes sharply. Their seated surface should be 67.2 cm, so a standard 73.7 cm desk sits 6.5 cm too high. Raising the chair to compensate lifts their feet off the floor, which is exactly why the footrest figure returns 6.5 cm for them. That single number is the most useful output on this page for anyone shorter than about 170 cm.
Why the Standard Desk Height Is Wrong for Most People
The 73.7 cm office desk is a manufacturing convention rather than an ergonomic finding. It suits an adult of roughly 175 cm reasonably well and gets progressively worse in both directions. Guidance from the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration on computer workstation desks reflects this by recommending height-adjustable work surfaces, with an adjustment range near the user of roughly 50 to 69 cm — a range whose upper limit is below the height of the fixed desk most offices actually buy.
The two failure modes are distinct. Someone too short for the desk raises their shoulders to reach the keyboard, which loads the upper trapezius continuously, and loses foot contact with the floor, which shifts weight onto the back of the thighs. Someone too tall for the desk collapses their spine forward to reach down to it and ends up with knees pressed against the underside. Neither problem is fixed by a better chair, because the chair is not the thing that is wrong.
If the desk cannot be lowered, the practical order of operations is: set the chair to your correct seat height, see how far the desk overshoots, then either add a keyboard tray below the desk surface or raise the chair and add a footrest of exactly that overshoot. Raising the chair without a footrest trades a shoulder problem for a circulation and lower-back one.
Where the Monitor Goes, and Why It Is Not at Eye Level
The persistent advice to put the screen "at eye level" is a half-remembered version of the actual guidance, which is that the top of the viewing area should sit at or slightly below eye height, so that the whole screen is viewed with a marginally downward gaze. Cornell University's computer workstation ergonomics guidelines put the centre of the screen roughly 15 to 20 degrees below horizontal eye level for exactly this reason.
The reason is not comfort in the neck alone. A slightly downward gaze reduces the exposed surface of the eye, which slows tear evaporation and cuts the dry-eye symptoms that accumulate over a long screen day. A monitor centred at eye level forces a wider lid opening for hours at a time.
Two practical adjustments follow from this. Large monitors need to sit lower than small ones, because the top edge is what you are placing and a 32-inch panel has far more height below that edge. And a laptop used on a desk cannot satisfy both rules at once — raising the screen to the right height puts the keyboard out of reach, which is the whole argument for an external keyboard whenever a laptop is used for more than an hour. Viewing distance should be at least an arm's length, and if text is too small at that distance the answer is to increase the operating system scaling rather than pull the screen closer. The screen size calculator and the DPI and PPI calculator cover the sizing side of that decision.
Standing Desks: the Height Everyone Sets Too Low
Standing desk height is not the same proportion as seated desk height, and people who convert an existing setup often raise the surface until it "feels about right", which reliably lands too low. Standing elbow height sits at roughly 62 per cent of stature, and a surface below it drags the shoulders forward into the same rounded posture the sitting problem was supposed to solve.
Two adjustments improve a standing setup more than fine-tuning the height does. The first is an anti-fatigue mat, because the discomfort that drives people back to sitting is usually plantar rather than postural. The second is a footrail or low box that lets you shift one foot up periodically, which unloads the lower back far more effectively than standing symmetrically and still.
Alternation matters more than the total. The benefit of a sit-stand desk comes from changing posture regularly rather than from standing for long stretches, and standing all day produces its own set of problems. A simple interval timer such as the Pomodoro timer is a reasonable way to prompt the switch without thinking about it.
Chair Seat Height and the Footrest Question
Seat height is set from the floor to the top of the seat pan at the front edge, and the target is a position where your feet rest flat with thighs approximately level and no pressure from the seat edge behind the knee. That works out at roughly a quarter of standing height for most adults, though a deep seat pan or a thick cushion shifts it.
The footrest figure exists because of a conflict that fixed desks create constantly. The desk dictates one seat height and your legs dictate another, and when the desk wins, the footrest restores the floor to where your legs need it. A footrest should be as tall as the overshoot and large enough to take both feet flat — a narrow bar under one foot is not a substitute.
One thing this calculator deliberately does not do is recommend armrest height, seat depth or lumbar support position. Those depend on chair geometry rather than on your stature, so a number derived from height alone would be misleading. Set them by feel once the seat height and desk height are correct.
Arb Digital keeps a large library of free tools covering everyday measurement, planning and marketing maths, and the team is happy to help with anything the tools do not cover.
Browse Free Tools Talk to Arb DigitalCommon Mistakes to Avoid
- Measuring to the desk top instead of the keyboard — a thick desk with a keyboard sitting on it puts your hands higher than the surface figure suggests.
- Setting the desk before the chair — the chair defines your elbow height, so every desk adjustment made first has to be redone.
- Raising the chair without a footrest — dangling feet shift body weight onto the back of the thighs and undo whatever the higher chair fixed.
- Centring the monitor at eye level — the top edge belongs at or just below eye height, which places the centre lower than most people expect.
- Setting a standing desk by feel — it almost always ends up below standing elbow height, which reproduces the rounded shoulders you were trying to avoid.
Related Free Tools From Arb Digital
Convert any of these measurements between systems with the length converter, size a display with the screen size calculator, check pixel density with the DPI and PPI calculator, and time your sit-stand intervals with the Pomodoro timer. For other body-proportion figures, the waist to height ratio calculator and the child height predictor are on the site, and everything else is in the free online tools hub.
Frequently Asked Questions
Roughly 73.5 cm for a seated surface and about 108 cm standing barefoot. That seated figure is close to the standard 73.7 cm office desk, which is why people around this height rarely notice the problem that shorter and taller colleagues run into.
No. These are starting measurements derived from published ergonomic guidance and body proportions. Anyone with existing pain, an injury or a diagnosed condition should get a professional workstation assessment rather than rely on a calculation.
Because they are different proportions of stature. Seated surface height is about 42 per cent and standing surface height about 62 per cent, so the gap between them grows with height rather than staying constant.
If your desk is fixed at a height above your calculated seated surface, you have to raise the chair to reach it, and then your feet leave the floor. The footrest figure equals that overshoot, so any positive value means you need one.
At or slightly below it. That places the centre of the screen 15 to 20 degrees below horizontal, which keeps the gaze marginally downward, reduces neck extension and slows tear evaporation over a long screen day.
It changes every standing figure by the full heel height, so a 3 cm heel means a 3 cm taller standing desk. It has no effect on seated figures, because the chair already sets your seated elbow position.
Not without an external keyboard. Raising a laptop so its screen top reaches eye height puts the built-in keyboard far too high, and lowering it to type puts the screen far too low. Splitting the two is the only way to satisfy both.
Those depend on the geometry of your specific chair rather than on your stature, so a figure derived from height alone would not be reliable. Set them by feel once seat height and desk height are correct.
This calculator provides general workstation measurements based on published ergonomic guidance and body proportions. It is not a medical assessment and does not diagnose or treat any condition. If you have persistent discomfort, seek a qualified professional evaluation.
