Ergonomics advice usually arrives as a diagram of a perfect person at a perfect desk. Useful if you are buying everything new. Less useful if you have a fixed-height desk and a chair you already own.
So here is the order that works with what you have. It matters that it is an order — each step depends on the one before it.
Step 1: Chair first, and ignore the desk entirely
Set the chair so your feet are flat on the floor and your knees sit at roughly 90 degrees, level with or slightly below your hips.
Do this without looking at the desk. The chair answers to your body, not your furniture. If the correct chair height leaves your feet dangling, you need a footrest — a stack of books works while you decide.
Step 2: Now compare the desk to your elbows
Sitting properly, let your arms hang and bend your elbows to 90 degrees. Your forearms should be level with the desk surface, or the desk very slightly lower.
Almost every fixed desk is 73–76 cm, which is built for someone around 180 cm tall. If you are shorter, the desk is too high for you, and there is no adjustment that fixes it from the chair — raising the chair to meet the desk just moves the problem to your legs.
If the desk is too high: raise the chair to the correct arm height and add a footrest for your legs. This is the standard fix and it works.
If the desk is too low: risers under the legs. Rare, but easy.
Step 3: Wrists last
With the chair and desk settled, your wrists should be roughly straight when typing — not bent up over the front edge of the keyboard.
Two things cause bent wrists: a thick keyboard, and keyboard feet. Try folding the feet down flat first; a lot of people prop their keyboard up and then wonder why their wrists ache.
If the keyboard is genuinely tall, a wrist rest fills the gap so the wrist stays neutral rather than hinged. It should support the heel of your hand, not the wrist joint itself.
Step 4: Monitor height and distance
Two numbers:
- Height: the top of the screen at or just below eye level. You should look slightly down at the centre of the screen, never up.
- Distance: roughly an arm's length. For a 24-inch screen that is about 60–75 cm; for 27-inch, 75–90 cm.
Looking up at a screen is the single most common setup fault and the one most strongly associated with neck strain, because it holds your head tilted back for hours.
Most factory stands cannot go high enough. A desk shelf fixes height cheaply; a gas-spring arm fixes height and distance together and lets you change both without tools.
Two monitors: which one is the main one?
Decide, then commit. Your primary screen goes directly in front of you — not offset so that both screens are “fair”. Splitting the difference means you spend every session slightly turned, which is worse than either screen being secondary.
The second screen goes to your weaker side, angled inward. If you genuinely use both equally, stacking one above the other keeps your neck straight.
Lighting is part of ergonomics
A bright screen in a dark room forces your pupils to keep adjusting, and that is a real source of eye fatigue in long sessions. Some light behind the monitor — dim, indirect — flattens that difference. It is the functional half of what ambient lighting does.
The rule that beats all of the above
No position is good for six hours. The best-configured desk in the world still needs you to stand up every 45 minutes or so. Adjustability matters mostly because it lets you change position during the day — not because there is one perfect setting to find.
General guidance only — if you have persistent pain, see a physiotherapist rather than buying furniture.
Stands, shelves and wrist rests are in Setup Accessories.
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