After the Hype: Are Standing Desks All They’re Cracked Up to Be?

Phil Kendall
Jul 21, 2017 · 9 min read

The hype around standing desks reached critical mass roughly two years ago. For a brief period between 2014–2015, you couldn’t move online for articles talking about this new-fangled furniture, with websites as varied as BBC News, The Economist and Gizmodo putting standing desks under their respective spotlights and musing upon the purported health benefits.

Now that the dust has finally settled, though, are standing desks all that they’re cracked up to be?

As one of the few people in the UK who actually jumped on the standing desk bandwagon, I wanted to share my experiences of using one—and discuss whether, now that they’re no longer the trendy thing to have, they’re really worth the investment.


Why I Chose a Standing Desk

The main reason I decided to invest in a standing desk (or rather a “sit-stand” desk, since it could be used as either) was my health.

Prior to coming to RotaCloud, I‘d been working from home for almost two years, editing a news and pop culture site based in Tokyo. I loved the work I was doing and the team I did it with, but the combination of the time difference and the nature of the content we were producing meant that I’d often be at my desk from 8 in the morning until 8 or 9 at night. Trips to the kitchen, bathroom, and my local shop were pretty much the only times I was on my feet from Monday to Friday, and it was starting to take its toll on my body.

I’d suffered a prolapsed disc in one of my upper vertebrae a couple of years earlier. It was definitely on the mend, but sitting all day definitely wasn’t helping. My neck, too, thanks to an injury I sustained in a car accident a decade ago, often got stiff and led to tension headaches. My arse (not to put too fine a point on it!) frequently hurt due to the amount of time I spent sitting on it.

I was a mess of aches and pains to begin with, but sitting hunched over a keyboard from morning until night was definitely making things worse.

Like most of the Internet-addicted public, I’d read a lot of articles online about the purported benefits of electric sit-stand desks. The thing that appealed to me most, naturally, was the claim that standing up to work could help improve my posture and reduce my back and neck pain. I was also conscious, however, of my own fondness for gadgetry and was concerned that I might end up putting the thing on eBay barely six months later, hurriedly trying to get it out of my life to stop my wife saying, “I told you so…”

Taking the Plunge

After moving house and spending a small fortune on “boring” things like sofas and kitchen appliances, however, I decided that I deserved a “treat”. If I was going to spend this much time working from home, I resolved, I should have a decent office setup. If I could fix some of my physical ailments in the bargain, then all the better.

With only a slight feeling of trepidation, I pulled out my debit card and put in an order for one Ikea’s stylish Bekant Sit-Stand desks. At well over £400 (then around $550), it certainly wasn’t cheap, but I saw it as a kind of investment—a way of forcing myself to commit to a healthier lifestyle.

Three days later, it arrived—a lot bigger than I’d expected and weighing about as much as a baby elephant in its flatpack box thanks to its chunky metal legs and hidden motors. An hour, a pack of screws, and a lot of swearing later, it was all set up and I was ready to see what all the fuss was about.

Teething Problems

As sleek and sturdy as my new desk was, standing up to work felt decidedly odd at first. I was struck by a sensation that I can only liken to mild vertigo—ever so slightly dizzy and with a curious sense that I might fall over at any moment—most likely because I wasn’t used to focusing on a computer screen without being seated.

My cat wasn’t exactly helping me focus, either. Always eager to claim a high perch, she leapt from the floor up onto the top of my desk twice in the space of half an hour, scaring the life out of me on both occasions and knocking a cup over on one, until I distracted her with a fresh bowl of food (actually her snubbed breakfast, pushed around a bit in the bowl) and quietly closed the door behind her.

Once I’d found my standing desk legs, however, I started to really enjoy the feeling. My back was noticeably straighter, I noticed. I wasn’t hunching my shoulders quite so much and I felt much more alert. There might have been a bit of buyer’s buzz mixed in there, but there was definitely something to this “standing up” business that I liked. I spend the rest of the day working with a newfound vigour, adjusting the height of my desk by an inch or two every so often with the same kind of glee that I experienced as a child when the dentist let me press the buttons on his chair.

Day two, however, wasn’t quite so good.

Although I’d taken care during my first day to alternate between sitting and standing, I’d clearly overdone it with the latter. Like a gym noob who tries to run 5k on the treadmill on their first day and is barely being able to walk the next morning, after years of sitting down to work my body simply wasn’t used to being upright for so long. My feet and my knees were absolutely killing me.

Much to the amusement of my wife, who’d asked on several occasions whether I was sure my new desk was really worth the money, I went back to sitting for the next couple of days so as not to exacerbate the situation, occasionally glancing at the pile of cardboard in the corner and wondering if I’d made a terrible mistake…

Everything in Moderation

Mercifully, it didn’t take long for me to settle into a healthy, non-knee-destroying, routine.

Although I’d initially envisaged myself spending the bulk of my day on my feet, I quickly learned that splitting the day into one-part standing, two-parts sitting (and limiting myself to just just 30–40 minutes of standing at a time) was a far more realistic goal.

I’d start my day on my feet, remaining standing until I’d waded through my emails, then take a seat while I checked on the website’s various social media channels and scheduling a few posts. I’d stay sitting if I had any research to do (sitting seemed to work best for close reading), then get back on my feet when writing (which seemed to get the creative juices flowing), and alternate between sitting and standing during Skype chats depending on the person I was talking to and the topic under discussion.

Much like coffee, booze and hypothetical gym stints, it seems, standing up to work should only be done in moderation. Sitting down all day might be killing us, but we’ve grown so used to it that doing too much of anything else is a severe shock to the system—do too much of it and you’ll do more harm than good.

Down and Out

Sadly, barely two months after starting out on my standing desk journey—and just as it was becoming a completely natural, everyday part of my working life—my standing desk dream came crashing down.

Or, rather, whirring down and then refusing to go back up.

Quite what caused the motor to short never became clear. I hadn’t overburdened the desk (all it had on it was a 13-inch laptop, a keyboard and mouse, and a 28-inch monitor); I hadn’t put too much weight on one side of the desk and caused the mechanism to jam. Whatever the cause, my lovely, new workspace just stopped working one day and, after waiting for an engineer to come out and a replacement part that never arrived, I ended up dismantling it and sending it back to Ikea.

Don’t you die on me!

Snowed under with work and unwilling to spend another afternoon fighting with brackets and screws, I never actually got around to ordering a new one. The thought crosses my mind every so often, and I’m always envious when I spot someone else online or on TV using one, but there always seem to be other things (vet’s bills; broken boilers; mortgage repayments…) to spend my money on.

Should You Buy a Standing Desk?

Having read my ramblings here, you might well be expecting the answer to the above question to be a big, fat “no”. Aches, pains, short-lived seasickness and a broken motor don’t exactly make for a five-star review, after all.

Whenever anyone asks me if I’d recommend buying a standing desk, though, I usually respond in the affirmative.

Sit-stand desks aren’t cheap. Not by anyone’s standards. They’re the kind of investment that you should only make if you spend the majority of your day at a computer and can’t see that changing for a long time to come. You’ll also need an anti-fatigue mat (or at the very least a pair of comfortable, cushioning shoes) to prevent your feet aching. Last but by no means least, you’ll need a monitor that can be positioned at eye-level. (Don’t use a laptop unless you can put it on an elevated stand, otherwise you’ll spend your day looking down on it and hurt your neck.)

A standing desk won’t fix your posture overnight, either. We humans are great at finding new ways to develop bad habits, and, even when you’re on your feet, it takes a degree of willpower not to slouch or rest your weight on your forearms.

Entering productivity mode…

Even so, they do have a lot going for them.

Sit-stand desks give their users an enormous amount of flexibility. Take to your feet when you’re feeling sluggish or bloated after lunch, for example, and you instantly regain some of that lost energy. Lower your desk when you’re taking a conference call or need to focus on a difficult task, and you suddenly feel much more contained and able to focus.

It might not work the same way around for everyone, but for me standing is great for productivity and idea generation. Sitting, meanwhile, puts me in a frame of mind better suited to proofreading and analysis and helps me spot mistakes in my work. Like moving away from your desk to a comfortable lounge or group work area when you’re stuck in a rut, simply changing the height of your desk can have a huge impact on your mood. It’s also a great way to signal to your colleagues that you’re either open for business or are in the flow and would rather not be disturbed. Throw in the purported health benefits of being on your feet for a couple more hours a day, and you’re onto a winner.

I no longer work from home, so the kind of desk I use each day is down to my employer’s discretion. Since we’re in the process of moving to a bigger office, however, I’ll definitely be floating the idea of sit-stand desks to my manager—perhaps one that can be raised and lowered manually rather than electronically so as to save the company a few quid…

They might not be the game-changers that early reports suggested, and overuse can lead to just as many health problems as staying seated all day, but the fact is that standing desks do work. If you’re looking for a way to inject a little energy into your daily routine, and if have the cash to splash, then I’d absolutely recommend picking one up.

They’re a much safer bet than an exercise ball or a desk with a treadmill attached, anyway…

RotaCloud — Staff Scheduling Solutions

Small business & office-themed tips & rants from the RotaCloud team.

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Phil Kendall

Written by

RotaCloud — Staff Scheduling Solutions

Small business & office-themed tips & rants from the RotaCloud team.

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