Set the seat height first, from your elbows and not your feet. Then seat depth, then the backrest and lumbar, then the armrests, and set the tilt tension last. The order matters because each adjustment changes the correct value of the next one — set the armrests first and you will set them twice. If your feet leave the floor when the seat is at the right height, the answer is a footrest, not a lower seat. All five adjustments are free. Buy something only after you have run out of them.
Why the order is the whole trick
Your chair has one adjustment that is set by the desk and four that are set by your body. Seat height is the one set by the desk: your forearms have to reach the keyboard without your shoulders lifting. Everything else is then measured from where that puts you. Mayo Clinic's ergonomics guide and OSHA's computer-workstation eTool both describe the same dependency chain, and Cornell's seated guidelines put the same numbers on it.
Adjust in the wrong order and you chase your own tail: you lower the seat so your feet reach the floor, which puts the desk too high, so you raise the armrests to compensate, which lifts your shoulders, which is what you were trying to fix. The five steps below break that loop.
The five adjustments, in order
1. Seat height — from your elbows
Sit all the way back in the chair. Raise or lower the seat until your forearms sit roughly level with the desk, shoulders down, elbows at about 90 degrees. This is the only adjustment set by the furniture rather than by you, which is why it goes first.
2. Feet — and why you fix them with a footrest
Now look at your feet. If they are flat on the floor, carry on. If they are dangling, do not lower the seat: that re-breaks step one. Put a footrest under them. If your knees are sitting higher than your hips, go slightly higher on the seat instead — knees a little below hip level opens the hip angle, which is the mechanism behind our chairs for hip pain page.
3. Seat depth — the two-finger check
Two to three fingers between the front edge of the seat and the back of your knee. On a chair with a sliding pan, move the pan; on a chair with a fixed pan and a moving back, move the back. Too deep and the edge presses behind your knee so you slide forward and abandon the backrest entirely — which is the single most common reason people say their lumbar support "does not work". Steelcase publishes 15.5 to 17.75 inches of adjustment on the Series 1; many chairs publish no range because they have none.
4. Backrest and lumbar — find your curve
The most prominent part of the backrest or lumbar pad should land in the inward curve of your lower back, roughly at belt height. Raise the whole backrest if it adjusts; move the pad if it has one. Height first, then depth or firmness. If the chair has nothing adjustable back there, a lumbar cushion does the same job for about the price of a takeaway — that is the first pick below, and our lumbar support page covers the full range.
5. Armrests — then tilt tension
Drop the arms until your shoulders relax, then raise them just enough to carry your forearms without lifting them. If they bump the desk, go lower or take them off — a chair you cannot pull under the desk forces you to reach, and reaching is a shoulder problem. Finally, unlock the recline and set the tilt tension so you can lean back with light pressure. A chair locked upright holds you in exactly one posture, and one posture all day is the thing all of this is meant to prevent.
What to do when the chair runs out of adjustment
Three real limits, and what each of them actually needs. All three are cheap next to a new chair, and all three are genuinely the correct answer in their case rather than a consolation prize.
| Symptom after step 5 | What it means | The fix |
|---|
| Lower back unsupported, no adjustable lumbar | The backrest's curve does not land where yours is | A lumbar cushion, positioned at belt height |
| Feet dangling at correct seat height | Desk is fixed too high for your stature | A footrest, or a desk whose minimum height is lower |
| Pressure on the sit bones by hour four | Seat foam has compressed, or the pan is too deep to adjust out | A dense contoured cushion that offloads rather than sinks |
| Chair sinks on its own | Gas cylinder has failed — not an adjustment problem | Replace the cylinder; see sinking chair |
| Still wrong after all of the above | The chair genuinely does not fit you | A chair that publishes its dimensions — see best office chairs |
Two adjustments almost nobody uses
Forward seat tilt. If your chair has it, a few degrees of forward tilt opens the hip angle and takes load off the lower back when you are leaning in to type. It is the most useful control on the chair and the least used.
Armrest width and pivot. On a 4D armrest, the arms move in and out and swivel, not just up and down. Pushing them outboard is what makes a chair usable if you sit cross-legged, and angling them inwards supports your forearms when you are mousing rather than typing.
Once the chair is set, the rest of the workstation follows from it: the monitor height is measured from your eyes in the seated position you just created, which is why we cover it separately in how high should your monitor be, and the desk height is set from your elbows in our height calculator. If you want the whole workstation in one pass, start at the self-assessment.
Buy in this order, and only after the free fixes
1. A lumbar cushion, if the backrest cannot be moved
The cheapest meaningful upgrade to a chair that otherwise fits. Position matters more than thickness — belt height, not shoulder blades.
2. A footrest, if the desk is fixed and too high
An adjustable one, because the right height depends on the seat height you set in step one. This is also the fix for a desk that cannot go low enough.
3. A dense seat cushion, if the foam has gone
Dense and contoured, not soft and thick. A soft cushion lets the pelvis roll back, which undoes the lumbar support you just set.
4. A new chair, if two of the five adjustments do not exist
At that point you are buying accessories to simulate a chair. Look for published seat height and seat depth ranges — and, for this site's readers, a published emissions certificate.
