Like many people, I’ve been working from home since COVID hit in 2020. That means that my small home office, never intended as a full-time workstation, was hastily converted into one.

Most of us petites with desk jobs know the many assorted challenges of office ergonomics all too well. We have spent our entire careers working from cubicles or office setups that were designed with tall men in mind, not short women. From back and neck pain from sitting at a too-high desk or a too-big desk chair, to the woes of sitting at a conference table with feet dangling feeling like Lily Tomlin’s 5-year-old character Edith Ann from Laugh-In, we’ve all been there, right?

Lily Tomlin as Edith Ann on classic Laugh-In Office ergonomics for petites are no joke, and that’s the truth!

The thing is, office ergonomics were not designed with women in mind, let alone petite women. Standard desk heights were calculated to fit the average height male, and, ever since the 1960s, have been adjusted upwards to accommodate taller and taller male executives. We women have always been an afterthought, and, the more petite we are, the less our needs are taken into account.

This is a big problem for us petites, especially those of us who may spend 8 to 10 hours a day sitting at a desk. It’s bad for our bodies in so many ways. It’s also bad for morale when you feel like you don’t fit in any of the office furniture.

At the office, it can be hard to do anything about these problems. Some workplaces have budgets set up to allow for ergonomic accommodations, but usually those budgets are small and don’t allow for much. However, if you, like me, are working from home, there are a few more options. After all, if you own your own workspace, you should be able to customize it as much as you choose, right? Well, sort of.

Petite-friendly desk chairs

The most common problem for petites is finding a desk chair that fits. Sure, most chairs can be adjusted as to height. But that does nothing to help with a chair that’s too deep to sit at properly to offer lumbar support, or where the arms are too high or too widely spaced to fit a smaller woman.

My home office’s desk chair was a bit of a splurge about 10 years ago. It’s a Global Tritek chair that is fully ergonomically customizable: You can select the seat size, back height, arm height and width, you name it.

Chair: Global Tritek Midback with Small Seat, purchased 2014.

Chairs like these aren’t cheap. I think I paid over $700 CAD for mine nearly a decade ago, and I’m sure the price is probably easily double that by now. Obviously, there are far less expensive office chairs on the market, some of which are probably a good fit for petites.

But if your budget stretches to the Tritek (or if your company has a budget for ergonomics), the amount of customization you can do to ensure a good fit on a chair like this is seriously next level. They allow you to custom-select everything from the seat depth to the arm height and width to the lumbar support height.

The resulting chair is actually a really great fit. I can lower the height so my feet are flat on the floor. The seat width and depth, and the arm height, are all perfect for my frame.

So, problem solved, right? Well, not exactly.

Standard desk height woes

The problem? My desk is too high. If I were to sit with the chair low enough for me to put my feet on the floor, I wouldn’t be able to reach my key board or see my screen.

I’ve owned my computer desk since college, for nearly 25 years. It’s a solid wood piece from a Danish furniture store that has since gone out of business, and it’s of a quality that you can’t buy anymore. It’s now moved with me to 5 different addresses. Despite the fact that two of the drawers are loose and the paint is chipped, I love this desk beyond all reason and haven’t been able to bear to part with it.

However, like most desks, it’s at a standard 29″ height from the floor, which means it’s too high for me to sit at comfortably. I’m left with that age-old dilemma of either having my feet dangle awkwardly, or having to lower my chair to the point where I can’t comfortably see my screen or reach my keyboard.

Petite problems: My feet dangle a good 3 inches from the floor when I’m sitting at my desk.

According to ergonomic guides like this one or calculators like this one, the proper desk height for someone 5’1″ tall, which would allow me to sit with my feet comfortably and solidly on the floor, and my elbows at a 90 degree angle, is 23″ from the ground. That’s a full 6 inches shorter than my current desk. Not ideal.

But, good luck shopping for a desk that’s 23″ tall! I guarantee you that you’d be more likely to find a unicorn juggling fire ants. There simply aren’t that many desks out there that are made that short.

Solutions for petites

Footrests

My partial solution has been to invest in a footrest. I had this at work, and brought it home when the pandemic hit. It’s a bit cracked now, and probably due to be replaced. But it does give me somewhere to rest my feet.

Footrest: Kensington Solemate Comfort with memory foam, currently $70.99 on Amazon (old)

When I first bought this footrest about 8 years ago, it came with a “smart fit” system where you’re supposed to measure your hand, and use the colour-coded guide to set the footrest at the right height. It has four height settings, and you’re supposed to choose the one that most closely matches the size of your hand. The theory being, the smaller your hand, the shorter your legs.

First of all, that isn’t necessarily true. There are petite people like me with long legs for our height who happen to have very small hands and feet. There are also petites who are the opposite, with large hands and feet but shorter legs and a longer torso.

And secondly, I was bemused to see that my hand is smaller than the smallest setting. Which begs the question: Why are all these tall people with giant hands buying footrests in the first place? Kensington, a word of advice: Know your market!

The other disadvantage to a footrest is that it gets in the way of the legs of the chair. So to be honest, I don’t use it as much as I should. Instead, I do the very bad thing of resting my feet on the interior shelf of the desk:

This is terrible for my back, my neck, and my posture. But I got in this habit years ago and haven’t really been able to break it. I don’t recommend it, though.

What about adjustable desks?

Desks that allow you to adjust the height do exist. But here’s the catch: Most of them are made to allow you to convert them from sitting to standing desks. Which means they adjust to be taller, not shorter.

For example, a quick search for adjustable desks on Wayfair.ca returned plenty of examples like this one, which adjusts from a minimum height of 28.75″ to a maximum height of 48″. That’s all well and good if you’re a tall dude who wants to stand up. It’s not that useful if you’re a small woman who wants to sit down.

There simply aren’t very many desks on the market that adjust downwards to a sufficient degree to allow them to be comfortable for petite woman. The adjustable feature sounds nice in theory, but it isn’t all that useful for us in practice.

If you do want to go this route, there are a few options, but they’re very expensive. For instance, the Desky Sit-Stand desk is a simple melamine desk on two adjustable legs. The height range adjusts from 23.6″ to 49.2″, meaning that, at its lowest setting, it might be a good fit for petites. But for this privilege, you’ll pay a whopping $729 CAD plus tax! For a simple table on two legs.

Desky Dual Laminate Sit/Stand Desk, $729 CAD

There are a few even pricier options than this, for desks with even fewer features. But all of the reasonably priced options I found for adjustable desks started at a lowest height of around 28″, which is still too high for most petites.

DiY desk hacks

So if you can’t buy a shorter desk, how about hacking yours to cut it down?

Sites like ikeahackers.net have lots of ideas on how to do this, from using a saw to cut down the leg height of an existing desk, to completely making your own desk using other furniture components. While there aren’t many hacks designed specifically for petites looking to make a desk shorter, there are loads of them explaining how to make a desk taller for tall people — or how to make your own standing desk. The same principle applies, except that it’s usually easier to subtract height than to add it.

All of these hacks require significant DiY skills, tools, and effort. And what you’re left with is probably still a cheap particleboard desk that lacks useful features like drawers or shelves. Sure, you can always buy freestanding ones and add them separately. But it’s kind of a hassle. All to create something that should be sold standard. After all, 50% of adult women are petite. Why are 0% of desks designed to fit us?

How about kids’ desks?

One solution for us petites might be to buy a desk designed for children. After all, surely, they won’t be too tall for us, right?

The problem is, kids’ desks are rarely suitable for adults who need a sturdy workspace. They’re usually meant for children to play at, and they aren’t set up for computer monitors, workspaces, filing drawers, and large enough surfaces to be usable.

And, ironically, whenever you do find a kids’ desk that is big enough to serve as a proper office desk, it invariably is just as tall as an adult desk! Ikea’s LÄRANDE desk, for instance, marketed as a children’s desk, is actually 29.5″ high! How many children do you know who are over six feet tall?

Custom desks

So if none of the above options work for petites, how about splurging on a completely custom-made desk? Surely, with a big enough budget, it should be possible to design a desk that checks all the boxes and sits at the perfect height for us shorties, right?

Well, I’ve actually looked into this. And you know what I’ve found. Not much.

Oh, there are plenty of companies out there advertising custom office desks. But they mean you can customize the surface area, colour, material, and finishings. Those offering custom heights usually are only able to make them higher than the standard height, not lower. It seems that the higher end companies out there advertising custom desks seem to feel that their market is made up of exclusively tall men. Petite women willing to splurge still find ourselves out of luck.

The bottom line

Office furniture has a long way to go before it is truly inclusive. In order to accommodate people of all heights, we need more options for shorter desks, smaller and shorter chairs, and adjustable setups that can allow us to sit as comfortably at our desks as our taller male counterparts.

Until then, we will have to muddle through with partial solutions that don’t really solve much. It’s very frustrating.