What height should my floor desk be?

Written by: Glo
Adapted from our YouTube video: How We’d Actually Build Our Floor Desk Setup (If We Start Over)

Table of Contents

1. It’s all about you.

2. Sitting Surface

3. The Desk

4. Conclusion

It’s been 7 years since we switched to floor sitting full-time at our workspace. Floor sitting continues to be something unconventional, but it’s much less “alternative” today. More people have adopted, or are at least curious about its benefits.

Common questions on our videos about floor sitting include: What height are our floor desks? Or what’s the ideal height for a floor desk?

Perfectly understandable questions, because if we get the height of the desk wrong, that would mean time, effort, and money wasted. On the other hand, getting it right could prevent many of the avoidable problems some beginners face when sitting on the floor.

A better floor sitting experience also means a lower likelihood of someone jumping too quickly to the conclusion that sitting on the floor is “bad” or not for them.

However, before we can determine what height a floor desk should be, we have to consider two other variables. Let’s find out how you can arrive at YOUR ideal desk height.

It’s all about you.

Every time a commenter on our videos asks us how tall our floor desks are, we hesitate when answering because just copying someone else’s setup specifications isn’t always going to work out.

The first few things we have to take into account are:

• How’s your flexibility and mobility?

• How comfortable are you with floor sitting (various positions) at the moment

• Which sitting positions do you want to prioritize in your setup?

• What do you hope to gain from sitting on the floor?

In fact that was how I unintentionally stumbled upon floor sitting many years ago. My flexibility and mobility became terrible after consecutive injuries, and I was looking for a way to stretch while going about my day. One of my priorities was the squat, so I simply placed my laptop on a dining chair (average surface height of a dining chair is about 45cm / 18”), regularly squatting, and sometimes kneeling, to work on my hip and ankle mobility. So, not exactly floor “sitting”.

But this makeshift setup worked well for me, and it planted the seed in my head that having a workspace closer to the ground could be beneficial for the body.

If you’re uncertain about the answers to any of the questions above, you could always just start with a temporary floor setup instead of committing to something permanent right away. It’s easy! You could use a chair or stack a few boxes; the good thing about floor sitting is that the barrier of entry is low, and the possibilities are limited only by your creativity. (Granted, you’ll need to have a laptop for this.)

Sitting Surface — The Often Overlooked Supporting Cast

While most of the attention is on the star of the show — the desk — we think the surface you’ll be sitting on may have an arguably bigger impact on your floor sitting experience. After all, many of the discomforts and complaints from new floor sitters can be fixed by using a more appropriate sitting surface.

Generally, we find that meditation stools and cushions work great because they are designed to support proper posture alignment during extended periods of meditation, which is traditionally done while seated on the floor. Our cushions are from Venn Design, and they provide about 15cm of elevation. We’re still looking around for meditation stools we like, but for now, we sometimes use our step stools as kneeling stools, although it’s just a tad too high.

Something between 10-20cm (4-8”) tall should work for 99% of people. The less flexible you are, the more height you’ll probably want. I’m less flexible, so I prefer the upper end of that range, and HL being more flexible, prefers the lower end of that range.

Another important question: Should a floor chair should have a backrest?

There’s no right or wrong answer (refer back to #1, it’s all about YOU), but our personal preference is no backrest. This may surprise some as the signature look of our workspace has always included the Muji floor chair with a backrest.

To be fair, the Muji floor chair isn’t a bad chair at all. The design and build quality have all been more than satisfactory, and we still use them for lounging and dining today.

The issue is that any chair with a backrest allows for passive sitting, where there’s little need to engage the muscles of your body. A “disengaged body” is what we want when we’re sleeping or relaxing at the end of the day, but it’s counter to our goal of avoiding sedentariness during work hours.

However, floor chairs could still be a feasible choice as a transitional tool for someone completely new to floor sitting, where some comfort and support are welcome. If you do opt for a floor chair with a backrest, we recommend leaning back only when you get really tired rather than over-relying on it. Other times, what we used to do was treat the floor chair like a floor cushion by sitting on the edge of the seat.

The Desk

Once you’ve figured out how you want to sit on the floor (You) and what you’ll be sitting on (Sitting Surface), determining a good height for your floor desk should be relatively straightforward.

If we could redo our floor desk setup, this three-part framework is how we would approach it. First, considering our body proportions and comfort level with floor sitting, experiment with different cushions or stools (height, shape, material, design) to find something that best suits us.

Then, seated on our chosen sitting surface in a natural, upright posture, the height at which our elbows rest will serve as a starting point for the ideal height of our floor desk. On 15cm (6”) tall cushions, that would be around 44cm (17”) for myself and 39cm (15”) for HL.

When in doubt, my personal recommendation is to add a few centimeters to that number. Err on the side of making the desk slightly taller, rather than risk making it too short. A floor desk that is too short is a hard-to-fix headache, but there are plenty of ways to conveniently raise the height of our sitting surface if needed; e.g. adding a thicker rug, floor mats or stacking additional cushions.

Ultimately, if we had to do it over again, our DIY floor desks would probably be between 42cm (16.5”) to 47cm (18.5”) rather than our original 33cm (13”).

Conclusion

Hopefully, this has been helpful in your search for the “ideal” floor desk height. We know we would have benefited from this guide back when we got into floor sitting, where resources on the topic were scarce.

Thankfully, today there are also other options on the market if you don’t want to risk DIY-ing something that you may not like. Our favorite of the bunch at the moment is the Uppeal Desk, which we have kept an eye on for years. You can watch or read our review to find out if they’re worth your hard-earned money.

In the end, you have to experiment and actually try floor sitting for yourself to know whether it will work for you. And don’t forget, even if your floor desk is at the absolute optimal height, you should probably still move more frequently than you think you need to.

Eat well, move more, and worry less — cheers!