People buy cushions, supports and ergonomic accessories for discomfort that a fifteen-minute adjustment would have prevented. The setup comes first and it is free.

The Order to Work In

Chair height, then desk relationship, then screen, then accessories. Adjusting them out of order means redoing the earlier ones.

Where Cushions Fit

After all of the above, and for the problems the setup cannot solve.

A seat cushion helps where the seat itself is hard or cannot be replaced. A lumbar support helps where the backrest gives no lower back support. Both are worth having, and neither substitutes for the adjustments above. Cushions designed to move between a desk chair, a car and elsewhere, of the kind at xtreme-comforts.com, suit the situations where the seat is fixed.

Chair First

Set the height so your feet rest flat on the floor with knees at roughly a right angle, or slightly lower than the hips.

If the desk then forces your shoulders up, the desk is too high, and the answer is to raise the chair and add a footrest rather than to sit uncomfortably.

The backrest should support the inward curve of the lower back. Where a chair does not provide that, a lumbar cushion does, and that is the one accessory worth adding early.

Then the Screen

• Top of the screen at or slightly below eye level
• Roughly an arm’s length away
• Directly in front, not off to one side
• A laptop needs a stand and a separate keyboard to achieve this
• Two screens: the primary one straight ahead, not both angled

Then the Arms

Elbows at roughly a right angle, close to the body, with forearms level. Wrists straight rather than bent up or down.

Keyboard and mouse close enough that you are not reaching forward, which is a common cause of shoulder and neck discomfort blamed on chairs.

Movement Matters More Than Position

The single most consistent finding in this area. No sitting position is good for hours at a time, and the best posture is the next one.

Standing, walking or simply changing position every thirty to sixty minutes does considerably more for comfort than any equipment. Attaching it to something regular, the end of a meeting or a kettle boiling, is what makes it happen.

Prolonged Sitting Itself

Beyond comfort, extended uninterrupted sitting is associated with health effects that no chair addresses, and on very long journeys or flights it is associated with reduced circulation in the legs.

Moving regularly, and stretching the legs on long journeys, is worth doing for reasons beyond a sore back.

Standing Desks

Useful as a way to change position rather than as a replacement. Standing still all day produces its own problems.

Alternating is the point, not standing.

When to Get Advice

Pain that persists despite a good setup, or that radiates into an arm or leg with numbness or tingling, warrants a physiotherapist or GP rather than more equipment.