What height should my chair be?
Start with your feet flat on the floor and your knees at roughly the same height as your hips. That usually means the seat is a little lower than people expect. If the chair must stay high to reach the desk, put something under your feet so they rest flat instead of dangling.
Armrests are worth a minute of fiddling too. Set them so your shoulders sit level rather than shrugged, and so your forearms rest without you leaning to one side.
Where should my monitor sit?
Roughly an arm's length away, with the top of the screen near eye level. The pattern we notice most in the clinic is not a wrong monitor height, though. It is the slow drift: the screen stays put while the person creeps toward it over the course of the afternoon. Raising the screen makes the drift harder to do.
Two monitors? Put the one you use most directly in front of you, not the gap between them.
What about laptops?
A laptop on its own forces a choice: hands in a good spot or eyes in a good spot, never both. If you work on a laptop for more than an hour or two a day, a separate keyboard and mouse change the equation entirely. Raise the laptop on a stand or a stack of books and plug in the keyboard, and the screen and your hands can finally be in sensible places at the same time. This is the single cheapest adjustment on this list.
Do I need a standing desk?
Not necessarily. The useful thing about a standing desk is not standing, it is the option to change position without stopping work. Standing all day at one height brings its own complaints; we see those too. If you have one, use it to alternate. If you do not, you can get most of the same variety by building movement into the day.
How often should I change position?
More often than feels natural, which is why we suggest tying it to things that already happen: phone calls taken standing, or a stretch while the kettle boils. A rough guide many people use is a position change every 30 minutes or so. The exact number matters less than the habit. Your best posture is the next one.
What if my setup seems fine and my neck still complains by 3pm?
Then it is worth having someone look at how you move, not just where you sit. That is what an assessment is for: we look at your desk habits and your body together, and you leave with a written plan. Our back pain page describes how that works for the desk-related complaints we see most. There is also a printable version of this advice: The Desk Setup Checklist on our homepage, free by email.
This article is general education, not personal treatment advice. If a specific ache brought you here, an assessment is the honest place to start, or call us at (519) 555-0147.