Monitor positioning and eye comfort.

A monitor sits in the line of sight for the entire workday, so its height, distance, and angle shape how the neck holds the head and how hard the eyes work. Small changes here are often felt quickly, because the body spends so many hours reacting to where the screen is.

Set the height first

The common guideline is to place the top of the screen at or slightly below eye level when you sit upright. With the top edge there, your gaze falls naturally onto the upper third of the display and tilts down slightly to read the rest, which keeps the neck in a relaxed position rather than craning up or dropping forward.

Laptops complicate this, because the screen and keyboard are joined. Raising a laptop on a stand to bring its screen to eye level means the built-in keyboard becomes too high to type on comfortably, so a separate external keyboard and mouse are usually needed once the laptop is lifted. This is one of the few cases where a single accessory, a stand, changes the whole setup for the better.

Find a comfortable distance

A starting point for viewing distance is roughly an arm's length, often cited as somewhere between 50 and 70 centimetres for a typical desktop monitor. Larger screens sit a little farther back so the whole panel stays in view without sweeping the head from side to side. The right distance is the one where text is comfortably readable at a normal font size without leaning in.

Arranging two screens

Dual-monitor setups are common for remote work. How to place them depends on how evenly they are used:

• Equal use — centre the seam between the two screens in front of you, so each turn of the head is modest and balanced.
• One main screen — place the primary monitor straight ahead and angle the secondary one inward beside it, since the second screen is glanced at rather than read for long stretches.

Angling the screens slightly toward you, into a shallow curve, keeps both roughly the same distance from the eyes and reduces the head movement needed to scan across them.

Managing glare and winter light

Glare is a particular issue in Canadian homes through the darker months, when much of the workday happens under artificial light and a single window can swing from dim morning to bright midday on a clear, snow-reflected afternoon. A screen positioned so a window or a ceiling light reflects off it forces the eyes to fight the reflection all day.

Positioning the monitor perpendicular to the window, rather than facing it or backing onto it, removes most window glare. For overhead lighting, tilting the screen slightly forward at the top can deflect a reflection away from the eyes. Matte screens scatter reflections more gently than glossy ones, which is worth noting when a display is being chosen.

Breaks help more than any setting

No position eliminates eye fatigue entirely. A widely shared habit is to look at something farther away for a short pause every twenty minutes or so, which lets the focusing muscles relax. Pairing that with occasional standing breaks addresses both the eyes and the rest of the body.

Further reading

For broader workstation guidance, including monitor placement within the wider setup, the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety provides public office ergonomics resources.