Desk Shelves

It lifts your monitor to a better height and hands back the surface underneath. The strip of desk a screen normally occupies becomes usable again: the keyboard slides under when you're not typing, and notebooks, chargers and the usual desk clutter tuck away out of sight. Your screen sits closer to eye level too, which most people find more comfortable over a long day.

Small desks benefit most. The shelf occupies a strip at the back, but because the space beneath it stays usable you end up with more working room than the bare desk gave you. On a compact 60cm desk the difference is significant: the monitor, speakers and oddments move up a level and the desk itself stays clear.

Far more than anything you'd put on a desk. A single monitor, dual screens or an ultrawide are all fine; the board is built on an AA-grade Baltic birch plywood core and would take a person's weight. There's no need to check your monitor's specs against it.

Match the length to your desk: 90cm suits compact desks, 120cm covers most standard desks, and 150cm spans a wide setup or a dual-screen arrangement. All three are 25cm deep, which carries a monitor or laptop with room to spare. Undersizing works well too: a shorter shelf sits centrally with space either side for a plant or speakers.

The shelf stands around 12cm above the desk. For most people that brings the top of the screen close to eye level, which is where ergonomic guidance points; your monitor's own stand adds the rest.

Yes, and it's one of the best uses. Raising a laptop with a separate keyboard turns it into a proper primary screen instead of something you hunch over; that's exactly how Adam, our founder, runs his own desk. Add any keyboard and mouse and the laptop becomes the monitor.

No. The riser legs sit on anti-slip cork pads, so the shelf stays planted and nothing hard touches your desk surface. The pads grip well enough that it doesn't wander when you slide things underneath.

Yes: oak, walnut and birch plywood plus the two Formica surfaces are the same materials as our desk tops, so a shelf can match your desk exactly. A deliberate contrast works well too, an oak desk under a white shelf for instance, with the exposed plywood edge tying the two together. The black legs are chosen to sit with either, alongside the keyboard and mouse that are usually black anyway.

No, it stands freely on your desk; nothing fixes to the wall. If you're after shelves to hang above a desk, our shelf boards and brackets cover that.

A quirk of two rigid, flat surfaces: even half a millimetre of variation between desk and shelf can show as a slight rock, though neither is out of true; no desk is expected to be engineering-flat, and it's never noticeable until something rigid sits on it. Every set includes spare cork pads for exactly this: doubling up under one corner trues the shelf to your desk in seconds, invisibly. We tried levelling feet and adjuster screws in development; the pads won because they're simpler, silent and permanent.