Layouts / Compare
Colemak-DH vs Colemak
Colemak-DH and Colemak differ on 6 of their 36 letter and punctuation keys, about 17%. Neither has reliable evidence of being faster to type on: the honest reason to prefer one is hand comfort and shortcut habits, not speed. The real cost of switching is the few weeks spent below your old pace.
How different are Colemak-DH and Colemak?
Of the 36 letter and punctuation keys the two layouts share a position for, 6 produce a different character, so about 17% of the typing keys move. The number and modifier keys stay put. Here is the home row, the row your fingers rest on, in each:
Is Colemak-DH faster than Colemak?
There is no solid evidence that either layout makes you type faster. Controlled comparisons find that practice volume dwarfs layout choice, and the fastest typists in the CHI 2018 study of 136 million keystrokes (Dhakal et al.) win on rollover and rhythm, not on which layout they use. Optimized layouts do measurably cut finger travel and same-finger bigrams, which is a comfort and effort argument, not a speed promise.
How long does switching take?
Real alternative-layout timelines converge on roughly 8 WPM on day 1, about 53 WPM by day 30, and parity with your old speed near day 90 of consistent daily practice. For Colemak-DH: Similar to Colemak: a few weeks to comfortable proficiency. If migrating from base Colemak rather than QWERTY, expect a shorter adjustment since only three letters move. For Colemak: Most people report 2–4 weeks of regular practice to match their old QWERTY speed, with real comfort gains showing up well before that.
Which should you choose?
Colemak-DH: People already sold on Colemak's philosophy who want its most-requested ergonomic fix, especially if they're also considering a split or columnar keyboard down the line.
Colemak: QWERTY typists who want a meaningfully lower-effort layout without a full from-scratch relearn, and who don't want to give up their editor/OS shortcut muscle memory.
Colemak-DH
A 2014 community refinement of Colemak that pulls D and H down into the easier-to-reach bottom-row inner columns.
- Addresses Colemak's most-cited weak point (D/H home-row stretch) while keeping the rest of the letter layout identical
- Same shortcut-preserving philosophy as Colemak: Z/X/C/V stay in place
- Popular enough in the mechanical-keyboard and QMK/ZMK firmware community that it's a first-class option almost anywhere Colemak is
- One more layer of "which Colemak is this" confusion for newcomers, since DH, the original, and split-board "wide" variants all coexist
- The ergonomic case for moving D/H is strongest on split/ergo keyboards with an angle mod; on a straight ANSI board the benefit is smaller
- Even less mainstream OS/software support than base Colemak
Colemak
A 2006 QWERTY alternative that keeps Ctrl+Z/X/C/V in place while moving the rest onto stronger fingers.
- Roughly halves finger travel distance versus QWERTY by independent analyses, and cuts same-finger bigrams from the thousands to the low hundreds per typical novel-length text
- Z/X/C/V stay put, so undo/cut/copy/paste shortcuts keep working without remapping
- One of the most widely supported alternative layouts, built into most operating systems and every mechanical-keyboard firmware
- Still an angle-mod-free, straight ANSI layout, so the pinky and ring fingers on the outer columns do more reaching than a split/ergo-first design would ask for
- Smaller community and software support than QWERTY, obviously: some games and remote-desktop tools assume QWERTY key positions for shortcuts
- The claimed finger-travel and speed gains are real in aggregate but layout choice matters far less than practice volume for most typists