How high should a standing desk be?

Start with your elbows, not the tape measure

Stand at the desk in the shoes you actually work in. Drop your shoulders, let your upper arms hang straight down, and bend your elbows to a right angle. Your forearms should be parallel to the floor, hovering just above the desktop. That height — wherever it lands — is your standing height.

If your shoulders creep up towards your ears, the desk is too high. If you find yourself leaning down onto your wrists, it is too low. Both cause the same complaint after a fortnight: a sore neck and a nagging ache between the shoulder blades.

Then set the screen

Desk height and screen height are two different problems, and getting the desk right can still leave you craning. The top of your screen should sit at or just below eye level, about an arm's length away, so your gaze falls slightly downward.

On a laptop, those two rules fight each other: get the keyboard right and the screen is far too low. The fix is a separate keyboard and a stand or arm for the laptop. It is the cheapest ergonomic upgrade most people can make.

Typical heights by body height

Use this as a starting point, then adjust by feel. These are desktop heights measured from the floor to the top surface.

Add roughly 2–3 cm if you wear shoes with a heel, and check the desk's own range covers your number before you buy.

Check the range before you buy, not after

This is where height quietly decides which desk you can buy. Two-stage frames like the Desko V1 and V2 travel 700–1150 and 700–1200 mm, which suits most people comfortably. Three-stage frames go lower and higher: the V3 covers 600–1250 mm.

If you are shorter than about 160 cm or taller than about 190 cm, the extra travel stops being a nice-to-have. Below 160 cm you want a frame that drops properly low for sitting; above 190 cm you want the top of the range, and you should add the thickness of your desktop to the frame height when you check.

Save it as a preset and stop thinking about it

Once you have found both heights, store them on the keypad. Every Desko frame has a touchscreen keypad with four memory presets, so sitting and standing become one touch each.

This matters more than it sounds. The most common reason people stop using a standing desk is friction: if changing height is a chore, you stop bothering. One touch removes the excuse.

Two heights, not one

A standing desk has two correct heights, and most people only ever set the standing one properly. The sitting height matters just as much, and it is the one you spend more hours at.

Set the seated height first: sit back in your chair with your feet flat on the floor and your thighs roughly parallel to it. Now bring the desk to your elbows. If the desk cannot go low enough, raise the chair and use a footrest — a stack of books works while you decide.

Then stand and repeat. The gap between the two numbers is usually 30–40 cm, which is why the height range of the frame matters more than the headline maximum.

Common mistakes, and what they feel like

Height problems announce themselves in specific ways, and the symptom usually tells you the cause.

If you are notably tall or short

Above about 190 cm you are looking for a frame that reaches roughly 125 cm at the top of the desktop. Remember to subtract your desktop thickness from the frame's quoted maximum — an 18 mm top on a 1250 mm frame gives you 126.8 cm, which is fine; a 25 mm top on a 1150 mm frame gives 117.5 cm, which is not.

Below about 160 cm the constraint is the bottom of the range. Many two-stage frames stop around 710 mm, which with a top is a 73 cm sitting height — too tall for comfortable seated work if you are 155 cm. A three-stage frame reaching 600–620 mm solves it without a footrest.

Standing desk height for a laptop

A laptop puts the keyboard and the screen on the same plane, so no single desk height is right for both. Set the desk for your hands, then raise the screen separately with a stand or an arm and add an external keyboard.

If you will not do that, favour the keyboard: working with your wrists bent for eight hours does more damage than looking slightly down at a screen. But the fix costs less than a decent pair of shoes and takes five minutes.

Questions, answered.