Fixed-height desk at the standard 29 inches, one 24 inch monitor, and I type with my shoulders somewhere around my ears. If I raise the chair enough to fix my elbows my feet dangle, and if I lower it my wrists bend up to reach the keys. I'm choosing between cutting the legs down and bolting on a keyboard tray, and I'd rather hear from short people who've already done one of them.
Cut the legs. I took 5 cm off a solid oak desk with a mitre saw four years ago and it remains the best thing I've done to a piece of furniture. Method: sit in the chair at the height where your feet are flat and your thighs are supported, let your arms hang, bend the elbows to about ninety degrees, and measure from the floor to the underside of your forearm — that's your keyboard height, and your desk surface wants to be at or a couple of centimetres below it. Mine came out around 65 cm against the 73 or so it shipped at, which explains an awful lot about my twenties.
If you do cut them: mark all four legs from the same reference with a square, cut slightly proud and sand to the line, and check whether the feet have adjusters you can wind out afterwards to fix a rock. Ten minutes of marking saves you a wobbly desk you can't uncut.
Before you take a saw to furniture, do it in the right order: chair height set by your elbows, then a footrest so your feet are supported, then and only then decide whether the desk is wrong. A £25 footrest, or a ream of paper in a box, solves the dangling-feet half of your problem in an afternoon and costs nothing if it turns out you'd rather move desks. I'd also be wary of trays — most of the cheap ones give you no room for a mouse, so you end up reaching up and out to the desktop for the mouse instead, which is how people trade a shoulder problem for a wrist one.
Second the order of operations. I fixed my chair and footrest first and discovered the desk height was fine all along — the problem had been that my feet were unsupported so I was bracing with my legs and locking my shoulders.
My tray purchase was a waste of £70 for exactly the reason above. It was wide enough for a keyboard and nothing else, and it mounted so far back under the desk that I had to sit further out than the chair wanted. It's now in the garage holding paint tins. If you go the tray route, measure your keyboard plus mouse plus elbow room first, and check the mounting depth against your actual chair position rather than the product photo.
Chair to your elbows, footrest under your feet, then measure. If the number is under 68 cm, cut the legs and stop fighting a desk built for someone else.
@back_of_envelope · 2w ago
The 29 inch convention is about 73.7 cm and it's a writing-desk height inherited from an era of paper, and it broadly suits people somewhere around 5'10" and up. Typing surfaces want to be lower than writing surfaces, which is why the whole population under about 5'7" ends up shrugging. Two numbers I'd hold onto: keyboard at seated elbow height, and at least 60 cm of depth so a 24 inch monitor can sit roughly an arm's length away — 75 to 80 cm of depth is noticeably more comfortable if the room allows it. Anything shallower and you'll end up leaning back to focus, which puts the strain in your neck instead of your shoulders.
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