Standing Desk Height: How to Set Yours Up Properly

Stand naturally, relax your shoulders, and bend your elbows to about 90 degrees: your standing desk is set correctly when the surface sits at, or just below, your forearms. For most UK adults that lands between roughly 95cm and 120cm, depending on height. The same elbow rule sets your sitting height too.

Most people who feel achy or awkward at a standing desk are simply standing at the wrong height, usually a few centimetres too high, with shrugged shoulders doing the compensating. This guide covers the elbow rule properly, gives you starting heights by body height, explains what the buttons and presets are actually for, and answers the question everyone asks: how long should I stand?

The elbow rule, sitting and standing

One rule governs desk height in both positions: with your upper arms hanging relaxed at your sides and your elbows bent to roughly a right angle, your hands should fall naturally onto the keyboard. The desk surface sits at, or a whisker below, elbow height. Wrists stay straight, shoulders stay down.

Two failure modes tell you the height is wrong:

• Desk too high: your shoulders creep up towards your ears, your wrists bend upwards to reach the keys, and by mid afternoon your traps are solid. This is the common error, because a too high desk feels vaguely more upright and virtuous for the first ten minutes.
• Desk too low: you slump forward and down towards the keyboard, rounding your upper back, and your wrists bend down. Common for tall people on desks or converters that run out of travel.

Note what the rule does not mention: your screen. Desk height is set for your elbows, and screen height is a separate job, handled by a monitor stand or arm so that the top of the screen sits around eye level. If you set the desk high enough to bring a stand less monitor up to eye level, your keyboard is now wrong. Elbows set the desk; the monitor gets its own support.

Starting heights by body height

Everyone's proportions differ, so treat this as a starting point and fine tune by feel over the first week. Heights assume flat shoes or bare feet; add accordingly if you stand in boots.

Two practical notes. First, look at that sitting column: a standard fixed desk is 72 to 75cm tall, which is too high for most of the population to sit at correctly. If you have ever needed to raise your chair and then found your feet dangling, that is why, and it is one of the quiet arguments for a height adjustable desk even if you never stood at it. Second, if you are outside this range, check a desk's minimum and maximum travel before buying; budget frames often cannot go low enough for shorter users or high enough for anyone much over six feet.

Setting it up: a five minute routine

1. Find your standing number. Stand at the desk in your usual footwear, relax your arms, bend your elbows to 90 degrees and raise the desk until the surface just meets your forearms. Note the height on the display if your desk has one.
2. Find your sitting number. Sit with feet flat and knees at about 90 degrees, then bring the desk down to meet your elbows the same way. Do not adjust your chair to the desk; adjust the desk to you.
3. Save both as presets. If your desk has memory buttons, program them now. This is not a gimmick: the difference between pressing one button and holding an arrow while eyeballing the height is the difference between actually switching positions and not bothering by week three.
4. Sort the screen separately. Top of the monitor at or slightly below eye level, roughly an arm's length away, in both positions. A monitor arm makes this trivial; a fixed riser works if your sitting and standing eye lines happen to need the same offset, which for most people they roughly do once the desk heights are right.
5. Fine tune for a week. Shoulders creeping up? Drop the desk a centimetre. Slumping down at it? Up a centimetre. Small changes, one at a time.

How long should you actually stand?

Not all day. Standing rigidly for eight hours is not an upgrade on sitting for eight hours; it just moves the complaints to your feet, knees and lower back. The point of a sit stand desk is changing position often, because the next posture is the best posture.

Honest, commonly given guidance looks like this:

• Start small: 15 to 20 minutes of standing per hour, building up as your legs and feet adapt over a few weeks.
• Use natural triggers: stand for calls, stand after lunch when the slump hits, sit for focused writing if that is when you do your best work. Habits attached to events survive; habits attached to timers get dismissed.
• Move while standing: shift weight, change foot position, pace on calls. An anti fatigue mat genuinely helps here, encouraging small constant movements rather than a locked stance.
• Wear something on your feet or stand on a mat rather than hard floor in socks; an hour on bare laminate teaches this lesson quickly.

If you get to a roughly even split across the day in blocks of 20 to 45 minutes, you are using the desk about as well as anyone does.

Frequently asked questions