How to Set Up a Standing Desk

Set the desk to your elbows, then the screen to your eyes, then the keyboard to your hands, then the chair to the desk. That order is the technique. Almost everyone does it backwards — they put the monitor where the box came, sit at whatever height the chair happened to be, and then spend years compensating with their neck.

Why the order matters more than the numbers

Every element of a workstation constrains the next one. The desk height sets your elbow angle. The elbow angle sets where the keyboard has to be. The keyboard position sets how far away the screen can sit. The screen height sets your neck posture. If you fix any of those in the wrong order, you force a compromise upstream and the compromise usually lands on your neck or your lower back.

The correct sequence starts with the body and works outward: elbows first, because that is the joint with the least tolerance and the most consequence. OSHA's workstation guidance and Mayo Clinic's desk setup advice both organize around the same principle, and it is why the nine steps above are numbered rather than listed.

The numbers to hit

• Elbows: roughly ninety degrees, upper arms hanging relaxed at your sides, shoulders down. Not shrugged, not reaching.
• Wrists: straight and roughly level with the forearm. Not bent up to reach the keys — which is what the flip-out feet on the back of most keyboards cause, and why they should usually stay flipped in.
• Screen:top of the display at or just below eye level, at roughly arm's length. Further away is usually better than closer, if your eyesight allows it.
• Feet: flat, whether on the floor or a footrest. Dangling feet load the front of the seat pan and are a common hidden cause of lower-back ache.
• Standing height versus sitting height: different by considerably more than people expect. Our height calculator gives you both numbers for your stature, which is faster than guessing twice.

The two steps everyone skips

The break-in. Composite panels emit most when they are new, and a flat-packed desktop has spent weeks sealed in plastic with nowhere for that emission to go. Unboxing it in a garage and standing it on edge for two to three days before it enters your office is free, takes no effort, and removes a disproportionate share of the total. Our 72-hour method is the full version, and it matters most on a large laminate top — see MDF versus solid wood for why.

The presets. A sit-stand desk that has to be adjusted by feel gets adjusted twice and then stops. Recording both heights takes thirty seconds and it is the difference between owning a sit-stand desk and owning a desk. If the desk has no memory buttons, mark the two heights on the leg with a pencil.

Getting the monitor right, specifically

This is the step that most often stays wrong, because a monitor stand puts the screen at a fixed height and your eye height changes by several inches between sitting and standing. One of those two positions will be wrong, permanently.

A monitor arm is the fix, and on a sit-stand desk it is close to essential rather than a luxury. If you work on a laptop, the equivalent is a laptop stand plus a separate keyboard — and the separate keyboard is not optional, because raising a laptop raises the keys with the screen. Two screens have their own geometry problem, which our dual monitor guide works through.

After setup: the part that actually decides the outcome

A perfectly configured workstation used in one position all day is still one position all day. The setup buys you a good sitting posture and a good standing posture; the benefit comes from moving between them.

Start with twenty to thirty minute standing blocks and build up over a few weeks. Our sit-stand ratio guide covers what a realistic day looks like, and our troubleshooting page covers what to do when it hurts — which, in the first fortnight, it sometimes will.