The Sit-Stand Setup Kit

A decision kit for a sit-stand desk and the chair that goes with it: two heights measured to the keys, a desk that reaches both, the price of an hour standing, a chair whose seat range and label fit you, and a standing habit built five minutes a week

ChairKey's Desk Height Calculator gives you two answers, a seated and a standing height, and its Sit-Stand Calculator counts the hours at the second. Neither checks the desk you are about to buy. A sit-stand desk is a height range, and nothing on the site asked whether that range reaches both of your heights, what the chair has to do when it does not, or what one hour of standing costs. The Sit-Stand Setup Kit does that arithmetic. In the worked example a 163 cm reader with a 3 cm keyboard needs a desk at 65.5 cm seated and 94.8 cm standing. A $299 single-motor desk that bottoms out at 71 cm is 5.5 cm short at the bottom, which the chair and a 5.5 cm footrest make up; a desk short at the top is simply out. With the footrest it costs 15 cents per standing hour at 2 hours a day over five years, against 23 cents for a $529 desk, and 59 against 92 cents if the reader only stands half an hour a day. A 98 kg reader needs a chair label of at least 123 kg (272 lb), so a common 250 lb label is not enough. The maker's rated capacity on the chair's label is the only capacity figure; the kit computes the minimum to look for and never claims what a chair holds. It is fit and comfort guidance, not medical advice. Every figure is computed by code from the site's calculators, and the desks, chairs and prices are examples. Included: 7 steps, 4 printable working pages, a heights-by-stature table, a minimum-label table, a quickstart, and a personalised sheet worked from the numbers you enter in the calculators.

Look inside

Two full pages from the pack, exactly as printed. Click either to read it at full size before you decide.

What is in it

• The Keys Rule: your seated and standing desk heights, measured to the keys
• The Top End Rule: a desk's range checked at both ends, and which shortfall the chair can make up
• The Standing Hour Rule: a desk's price per hour you actually stand, and a two-week standing log first
• The Seat Range Rule: the chair's seat range against the seat the desk needs
• The Label Rule: the minimum capacity to look for on a chair's label, and what BIFMA says
• The Three Angles Rule: seated and standing presets, angles checked, the screen set last
• The Five-Minute Rule: a standing habit built five minutes a week, never caught up
• Working pages: measurement sheet, desk and chair comparison sheet, standing log, presets card
• Heights by stature from 150 to 200 cm, and minimum chair labels from 60 to 150 kg
• A quickstart that closes the score loop, plus a personalised sheet from your calculator inputs

The kit picks up where the free Desk Height Calculator and Sit-Stand Calculator leave off. One gives you a seated and a standing height and the other counts the hours at the second, but neither checks a desk. The kit measures both heights to the keys, checks a desk's height range at both ends, prices the hour you will actually stand, fits the chair's seat range to the desk you choose, reads the chair's own label against your weight with a margin from our Chair Weight Capacity Checker, and builds the standing habit five minutes a week. The maker's rated capacity on the label is the only capacity a chair has. It is fit and comfort guidance, not medical advice, and every desk, chair and price in it is an example.