Measured posture · Private by design

Ergonomic Desk & Workspace Calculator

Calculate your personalized desk and keyboard height from your actual posture, or plan and verify furniture specifications before you buy.

What would you like to do?

Select your goal to calculate personalized heights or plan furniture fit before buying.

Plan your purchase

Calculate candidate dimensions for your chair and desk setup before buying.

Planning scope & conditional suitability

You can measure using furniture you are not buying. Proposed settings remain conditional; a height-range match does not establish complete ergonomic suitability.

1. What will you keep?

Do you plan to keep your current chair?

Chair support guidance

If your retained chair does not support you adequately, use a reference-seat plan instead. Do not preserve a poor setup just to get a number.

What desk setup will you use?

Desk compatibility guidance

A fixed desk may conflict with a supportive seat setting. An adjustable desk can be coordinated with the chair after delivery.

How do you plan to use this desk?

Do you have a firm reference seat for measuring?

Reference seat advice

You do not need the final chair. Use a stable seat with both feet supported and usable back support; do not stack objects to create seating. If you cannot prepare this safely, continue with a partial shopping brief.

What footwear will you use while working?

2. Record available measurements

Use a tape and helper if possible. Blank measurements remain unknown. You can continue without them; the brief will explain what still needs checking.

A, B and C have different endpoints. With feet on the room floor, C is explicitly 0. A temporary seat is a measurement reference, not a chosen chair.

Floor → seated elbow (in)

Measurement guide

Measure in the supported chair and setting you will keep, from the room floor to the underside of the elbow.

Floor → standing elbow (in)

Measurement guide

Stand on the room floor in your usual working footwear, shoulders relaxed, upper arm near your body and forearm approximately level. Measure vertically to the underside of the elbow. Remeasure if your standing mat or support changes.

A: occupied seat → elbow (in)

Measurement guide

Use a helper to measure vertically from the firm occupied seat surface to the underside of the relaxed elbow. Keep the upper arm near the body and forearm approximately level.

B: room floor → occupied reference seat (in)

Measurement guide

Use the same firm seat and posture. Measure vertically to the seat surface supporting you; a soft cushion or unknown compression makes transfer less reliable.

C: room floor → foot-support surface (in)

Measurement guide

Record the surface supporting both feet. Enter 0 explicitly if your feet rest on the room floor; blank means unknown.

I prepared a supported, relaxed seated posture with feet supported and no pressure behind my knees.

Posture preparation notes

Confirm after entering the measurements. If the seat or foot support physically changed, remeasure the reference geometry. This records your preparation; it does not assess posture or guarantee that another chair will reproduce it.

Reference-seat method & limitations

Reference-seat method and limitations. The home procedure is not a validated anthropometric protocol. Do not transfer reclined or soft-seat measurements as if they were unchanged.

3. Set up a conditional scenario

Configure conditional heights and key-plane offsets to test candidate furniture against your ergonomic targets.

Desk-to-key offset: The physical desk top sits lower than your input surface by your keyboard's key-plane offset: the distance from the desk top to the unpressed home-row keys.

Proposed occupied seat height above the room floor (in)

Scenario setting note

Enter a setting to investigate, not an ideal height. It is not automatically suitable just because a product reaches it.

Retained fixed desk: floor → desk top (in)

Desk alignment note

The brief can calculate the seat height needed for keyboard alignment. That is not a recommendation to raise the chair; support and clearance must still work.

Desk top → keyboard key tops (in)

Example: 30 mm = about 1.18 in. Enter the value in the units shown above.

This offset uses the stated endpoints and the same keyboard/support geometry for every selected posture.

Offset measurement instructions

For a keyboard supported directly on the desk, measure to the centre of an unpressed home-row key with its intended tilt. Keyboard case thickness is not equivalent. Blank is not zero; an unrelated keyboard tray cannot use this conversion.

Measurement-based starting point

Calculate your starting desk & keyboard height from your relaxed elbow measurement.

How it works & scientific guidance

Use your prepared working posture to measure a starting height for your keyboard keys. General ergonomic positioning guidance informs this starting relationship; the home procedure is not a validated laboratory protocol or an OSHA-endorsed calculator.

Methodology · Calculator privacy

Preparation tips before you measure

Before measuring: have a tape measure ready, and ask a helper if possible. Prepare your chair with feet supported by the floor or a footrest and usable back support. Keep your usual footwear. Measure again after changing that setup.

Enter measurements directly if you already know them. Quick uses the same calculation as Guided; it does not estimate from body height.

Work mode

Results are shown separately for each selected posture.

Sitting

Standing

Both

Floor-to-elbow measurements

Enter your floor-to-elbow measurement to calculate a personalized input-surface starting point.

Sitting elbow height from floor (in)

How to measure sitting elbow height

Set up your chair as you normally work.
Keep your usual footwear and foot support.
Sit upright and relaxed, with your shoulders relaxed.
Keep your upper arm near your body.
Bend your elbow to roughly a right angle with your forearm approximately level.
Measure vertically from the floor to the underside or bony point of your elbow.
A helper is preferable when possible because reaching to measure yourself can change your posture.

Note: If you change your chair height, cushion, footwear, or foot support, measure again.

Standing elbow height from floor (in)

How to measure standing elbow height

Stand in the footwear you normally use at your workstation.
Stand comfortably with shoulders relaxed.
Keep your upper arm near your body.
Bend your elbow to roughly a right angle with your forearm approximately level.
Measure vertically from the floor to the underside or bony point of your elbow.
A helper is preferable if available.

Refine — keyboard offsetAvailable when an input-surface target is supported.

A keyboard offset can refine desk-top height only when an input-surface target is available. No offset or keyboard preset is assumed.

Case thickness, closed-laptop thickness, and keyboard-tray references cannot substitute for a compatible desk-top-to-key-plane offset.

Advanced — scientific protocol statusWhat this home measurement can and cannot tell you.

Sitting & standing: Direct user-provided floor-to-elbow measurements are used to calculate practical input-surface starting points.

No body-height estimate is active. The home measurement procedure has not been validated as a laboratory protocol.

Chair: no approved numeric chair-height mapping exists. No chair compression or footwear allowance is applied.

Interactive updates require JavaScript. The availability explanations and initial results below remain readable. For purchase planning, read thedesk buying checks,chair buying checks andreference-seat instructions.

Results

Enter your floor-to-elbow measurement above to calculate your input-surface starting height.

Sitting

Scientific route not approved. No production model is approved for this target.

input-surface height

Unavailable

Why this? — Sitting input-surface height

Scientific route not approved
No production model is approved for this target.
Reason: model-not-approved
Message: MODEL-HOLD
No personalized value was produced. See methodology and scientific availability below.

Methodology and scientific availability

desk-top height

Unavailable

Why this? — Sitting desk-top height

Scientific route not approved
No production model is approved for this target.
Reason: model-not-approved
Message: MODEL-HOLD
No personalized value was produced. See methodology and scientific availability below.

Methodology and scientific availability

Chair fit

Qualitative chair setup

Check foot support, back support and seat fit

Read qualitative chair-fit guidance →

Why this? — Sitting chair-seat guidance

Scientific route not approved
No production model is approved for this target.
Reason: model-not-approved
Message: MODEL-HOLD
No personalized value was produced. See methodology and scientific availability below.

Methodology and scientific availability

Standing

Scientific route not approved. No production model is approved for this target.

input-surface height

Unavailable

Why this? — Standing input-surface height

Scientific route not approved
No production model is approved for this target.
Reason: model-not-approved
Message: MODEL-HOLD
No personalized value was produced. See methodology and scientific availability below.

Methodology and scientific availability

desk-top height

Unavailable

Why this? — Standing desk-top height

Scientific route not approved
No production model is approved for this target.
Reason: model-not-approved
Message: MODEL-HOLD
No personalized value was produced. See methodology and scientific availability below.

Methodology and scientific availability

Information: Use the approved direct measurement route for this target. (DIRECT_MEASUREMENT_RECOMMENDED)

Technical details

Development contract: phase1-dev-1; registry: phase1-dev-1; rounding: phase1-dev-1. Scientific status: development-unapproved.

Methodology, Scientific Evidence & Privacy

Learn how measurements are applied, their scientific limitations, and how your calculator measurements stay in your browser.

Methodology and scientific availabilityScientific standards

Sitting and standing measurements describe separate setups. Your measured elbow height supplies a practical keyboard-key starting level. No body-height estimator is active, and the home procedure has not been validated as a laboratory protocol.

Input-surface height and desk-top height are different quantities. When both prerequisites are supported, desk-top target equals input-surface target minus the compatible keyboard key-plane offset. An offset cannot unlock unsupported body-height science.

OSHA guidance supports an elbow-level input starting relationship and relaxed working posture. It does not establish a millimetre-exact optimum. No keyboard presets or numeric chair transformation are approved.

Planning is separate from adjustment: a proposed occupied seat height plus a reference seat-to-elbow measurement gives a conditional keyboard starting level. A fixed-desk alignment calculation is not an ideal chair-height formula. Planning calculations and measurement limits.

Good Working Positions — Good Working Positions; recorded project verification; no measurement accuracy claim

Keyboards — Keyboard Placement; active scientific specification §6.2; no numerical tolerance

Principles and requirements for physical input devices — clauses 3.6.1 and 3.6.2, publisher preview; preview definition verified in OQ-7; no full standard compliance claim

Default adjustment results below use the homepage's direct-measurement setup engine. Planning arithmetic is a separate conditional scenario, not an approved ideal-chair-height estimator.

Sitting input-surface height: Unavailable. Scientific route not approved No production model is approved for this target.
Sitting desk-top height: Unavailable. Scientific route not approved No production model is approved for this target.
Sitting chair-seat guidance: Unavailable. Scientific route not approved No production model is approved for this target.
Standing input-surface height: Unavailable. Scientific route not approved No production model is approved for this target.
Standing desk-top height: Unavailable. Scientific route not approved No production model is approved for this target.

Stature model records: 0. Direct sitting route enabled: yes; direct standing route enabled: yes.

Contract phase1-dev-1; source registry phase1-dev-1; display rules phase1-dev-1. Scientific status: development-unapproved.

Full methodology and source approach

This calculator provides ergonomic setup guidance and is not medical advice.

Calculator privacy100% In-memory

Calculator inputs and results stay in memory. The calculator does not send them to a server, include them in URLs, or save them in browser storage. Display preferences are not saved either. Hosting providers process normal page-request metadata.

Full privacy policy

How we approach your workspace

Evidence before a number

Each result has a purpose

Sitting and standing are evaluated independently. Input-surface height, desk-top target, and chair settings are distinct ergonomic quantities.

Only useful inputs

Measure your actual relaxed elbow height. We calculate starting heights from your real physical geometry, never generic stature formulas.

Clear limits

Published standards guide starting postures, not medical absolutes. We separate verified evidence from unproven assumptions.

Understand result types and evidence

Essential Guides

Know what supports the guidance

See what you measure, how keyboard-key height differs from desk-top height, and what the result can help you adjust. Sources and limitations are explained alongside the calculation.

Read the methodology and current scientific status

Ergonomic Desk & Workspace Calculator

What would you like to do?

Plan your purchase

1. What will you keep?

2. Record available measurements

3. Set up a conditional scenario

Your shopping brief

How do you work at your desk?

Sitting

Standing

Both (Sit-Stand)

Measure your sitting elbow height

Measure your standing elbow height

Input-Surface Starting Height

Want a starting height for the desk top?

Measure from the desk to your home-row keys

Results

Sitting

input-surface height

desk-top height

Chair fit

Standing

input-surface height

desk-top height

Methodology, Scientific Evidence & Privacy

Evidence before a number

Each result has a purpose

Only useful inputs

Clear limits

Explore your workspace question

Desk height

Standing setup

Chair fit

Desk dimensions

Desk depth

Know what supports the guidance

What would you like to do?

Plan your purchase

1. What will you keep?

2. Record available measurements

3. Set up a conditional scenario

Your shopping brief

How do you work at your desk?

Sitting

Standing

Both (Sit-Stand)

Measure your sitting elbow height

Measure your standing elbow height

Input-Surface Starting Height

Want a starting height for the desk top?

Measure from the desk to your home-row keys

Results

Sitting

input-surface height

desk-top height

Chair fit

Standing

input-surface height

desk-top height

Methodology, Scientific Evidence & Privacy

Evidence before a number

Each result has a purpose

Only useful inputs

Clear limits

Explore your workspace question

Desk height↗

Standing setup↗

Chair fit↗

Desk dimensions↗

Desk depth↗

Know what supports the guidance

Desk height

Standing setup

Chair fit

Desk dimensions

Desk depth