How to set up your monitor

Your monitor decides where your head spends the day. Knowing how to set up your monitor takes about five minutes and costs little or nothing, and it is one of the few desk changes that every major guideline agrees on. What the guidelines agree on less is the exact numbers, and the research behind them is thinner than the confident diagrams suggest. Here is what the guidance says, where it comes from, and where it is simply convention.

How to set up your monitor: the short version

Do these in order, sitting in your normal working position:

1. Set your chair first. The UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) checklist says to adjust the chair height so your arms are right for the keyboard, then adjust the screen to suit (HSE CK1). Our office chair guide covers that step.
2. Put the screen straight in front of you, with the keyboard in front of it, so you don’t twist (HSE).
3. Bring the top of the screen to about eye level, or slightly below (HSE; OSHA).
4. Set it about an arm’s length away (HSE).
5. Tilt it back a little, so you look at it face on (OSHA).
6. Turn it side-on to windows and check for reflections (OSHA).
7. If you wear varifocals or bifocals, lower it further (OSHA).

If you’re not sure what desk and seat heights suit your body, the desk and chair height calculator gives a starting point. The rest of this page explains each step and how solid it is.

How high should your monitor be?

The guidance is close, though not identical:

• UK HSE: “Top of screen level with eyes, about an arm’s length away” (HSE).
• US OSHA: the top of the monitor “at or slightly below eye level”, with the centre of the screen normally 15 to 20 degrees below horizontal eye level (OSHA).
• Cornell University: your eyes in line with a point about 2 to 3 inches (5 to 8 cm) below the top of the monitor casing (Cornell).
• American Academy of Ophthalmology: position the screen so your eyes gaze “slightly downward, not straight ahead or up” (AAO).

In practice, sit back as you normally work and look straight ahead. Your gaze should land at, or just below, the top edge of the picture. Most of what you read then sits a little below eye level. If you need to raise the screen, a monitor arm or stand is neatest, but NIOSH suggests a book or a box works too (NIOSH).

How good is the evidence for “eye level”?

Less solid than the diagrams suggest, and it pulls in two directions.

In the lab, the load on the muscles at the back of the neck rises as the head bends forward. A study of 36 young adults at three display heights found exactly that, and its authors wrote that the evidence for an optimal head and neck posture “is unconvincing” (Straker et al., 2009). Another study of 27 computer users raised the screen from 96.5 to 109.2 cm (floor to middle of the screen) and found no difference in the bending load on the cervical spine over 10-minute sessions (Kietrys et al., 1998).

Meanwhile, a study that followed 632 newly hired computer users found that a greater downward head tilt was linked to a lower risk of neck and shoulder symptoms (Marcus et al., 2002). So a screen that is too high can be a problem as well as one that is too low.

“Top of the screen at about eye level” is a reasonable compromise, not a proven optimum. Use it as a starting point and adjust for comfort. If you tip your chin up to read the top line, it is too high. If you find yourself leaning in, the screen is too far away or the text is too small, which is one of the everyday routes into forward head posture.

How far away should the screen be?

• HSE and Cornell: about an arm’s length (HSE; Cornell).
• OSHA: a preferred viewing distance of 50 to 100 cm (20 to 40 inches), and at least 50 cm (OSHA).
• American Academy of Ophthalmology: about 25 inches, around 63 cm, “right about at arm’s length” (AAO).

A quick check: sit back, reach forward, and your fingertips should land roughly on the screen.

If the text is hard to read at that distance, the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS) says it is better to increase the font size than to force a shorter viewing distance (CCOHS). NIOSH notes that a bigger font may reduce eye strain (NIOSH), and HSE advises choosing text large enough to read easily from a normal, comfortable working position (HSE INDG36).

What angle and position work best?

Straight in front of you. HSE puts it simply: “Screen and keyboard central, don’t twist your back” (HSE). Cornell adds that the screen should face you rather than being angled off to one side (Cornell). A screen pushed to the corner of the desk means a slightly turned neck for hours.

Tilted back a little. OSHA suggests tilting the screen so it is roughly at right angles to your line of sight, by no more than 10 to 20 degrees (OSHA). The same page warns that tilting the screen back can catch glare from ceiling lights, so if you see the lights reflected in it, reduce the tilt (OSHA).

If you work on a laptop, the screen and keyboard are joined, so these rules need a workaround. That has its own page: working on a laptop without straining your neck.

Varifocals, bifocals and reading glasses

Varifocal and bifocal lenses put the reading zone at the bottom of the lens. With a screen at standard height, you tend to tip your head back to see it clearly.

OSHA’s advice is to lower the monitor below the usual recommendation so you can keep a comfortable neck posture, or to use single-vision glasses designed for computer work (OSHA). CCOHS says that for bifocal, trifocal and progressive lens wearers, the top of the screen slightly below eye level may be more comfortable (CCOHS).

A field study of office workers with general-purpose progressive lenses lowered their monitors. Their heads tilted back less, and the change was linked with fewer musculoskeletal symptoms; the authors concluded the screens should have gone lower still (Weidling & Jaschinski, 2015).

In the UK, if you use a screen daily for continuous spells of an hour or more, your employer must provide an eye test if you ask, and pay for a basic pair of glasses if you need them specifically for screen work (HSE INDG36; HSE).

How to set up two monitors

CCOHS gives the clearest advice (CCOHS):

• One main screen: put the one you use most directly in front of you, as if it were a single monitor, and the second to one side, angled towards you.
• Both used equally: put them in front of you with the edges touching, angled into a shallow semicircle.
• Either way: both at about an arm’s length and at the same height. A laptop used as the second screen therefore needs raising to match.

OSHA adds that a monitor should not sit more than 35 degrees to your left or right (OSHA).

The research on two screens is small. In a lab study of 10 people, a dual set-up increased head and neck rotation by 9 degrees compared with a single screen, and raised activity in the right sternocleidomastoid, one of the muscles at the front of the neck (Nimbarte et al., 2013). A study of 17 people found that whether a centred or offset layout was better depended on the task, and recommended a monitor arm so you can swap which screen sits in the middle (Burruss et al., 2021). Nobody has followed dual-screen users for years to see whether they get more neck pain. The practical rule is simple: whatever you look at most goes in front of you. If you’re a programmer, or anyone else whose main screen changes with the task, a monitor arm makes that swap easy.

How to cut glare and eye strain

Glare does more than annoy. OSHA notes that reflections on the screen can cause eye strain and headaches, and can push you into awkward postures to see past them (OSHA).

• Turn the screen side-on to windows. OSHA recommends placing the screen at right angles to windows and bright light sources (OSHA).
• Find the source. HSE suggests holding a mirror in front of the screen to see where reflections are coming from (HSE CK1).
• Use blinds and shaded lamps, and keep the screen clean, since dust adds to glare (OSHA).
• Match brightness to the room. HSE says to adjust brightness and contrast to suit the lighting (HSE INDG36). Dark text on a light background is less prone to showing reflections (HSE CK1).
• Treat anti-glare filters as a last resort, after moving the screen and the lights (HSE CK1).

Screens also change how you blink. The American Academy of Ophthalmology says people normally blink about 15 times a minute, but only 5 to 7 times a minute at a screen (AAO). HSE’s advice is to look into the distance from time to time and blink often (HSE INDG36). It is also clear that screen work does not cause permanent damage to the eyes (HSE). Whether the popular 20-20-20 rule helps is covered on the microbreaks page.

What a good monitor set-up can and cannot do

A Cochrane review of 15 trials with 2,165 office workers found no clear evidence that most physical workstation changes prevent neck and arm problems. The one trial of workstation adjustment found no effect on pain (Hoe et al., 2018). An earlier Cochrane review of workplace changes for people who already had neck pain found low-quality evidence that neither supported nor ruled out any specific approach (Aas et al., 2011).

That is not a reason to leave the screen on a pile of papers. A badly placed monitor fixes your head in one position for hours, and that is easy to change. But the set-up is the floor, not the fix. OSHA puts it well: “Regardless of how good your working posture is, working in the same posture or sitting still for prolonged periods is not healthy” (OSHA).

So set the screen, then stop thinking about it, and spend the effort on moving more often. If you’d like a check on where your head sits now, the wall posture test takes a minute. And if you want a nudge when your head starts drifting towards the screen, Bavelu uses your AirPods’ motion sensor to notice when your head leans forward and lets you know (how AirPods posture tracking works). Its two to four minute desk routines are designed and filmed by physiotherapists.