Blood pressure chart: what your numbers mean

You have a number on the display and want to know what it means. That is quickly answered – but only if two things are clear: where it was measured and how often.

Because different thresholds apply at the doctor’s surgery and in your living room. Anyone who applies the surgery values to their own measurements at home will systematically rate themselves as less at risk than they are.

The chart for measurements at the doctor’s

This is the classic classification, also used by the German National Disease Management Guideline on Hypertension (Nationale VersorgungsLeitlinie Hypertonie). All values in mmHg.

Category	Systolic		Diastolic
Optimal	below 120	and	below 80
Normal	120–129	and/or	80–84
High normal	130–139	and/or	85–89
Hypertension grade 1	140–159	and/or	90–99
Hypertension grade 2	160–179	and/or	100–109
Hypertension grade 3	180 and above	and/or	110 and above
Isolated systolic hypertension	140 and above	and	below 90

Important regarding “and/or”: the less favourable of the two values always counts. At 135/95, the upper value is in the high normal range, but the lower one is already at grade 1 – the classification is grade 1.

The chart for measurements at home

At home, the stress of the surgery situation falls away, so readings are lower on average. To arrive at the same medical conclusion, the thresholds are set correspondingly lower:

Category	Home measurement
Not elevated	below 120/70
Elevated	120–134 / 70–84
Hypertension	135/85 and above

This is where most self-measurements are misinterpreted. 135/85 at home is already hypertension – the same number at the surgery would still be “high normal”. We have broken down exactly this case in detail in Blood pressure 135/85.

For individual, frequently looked-up pairs of values, we have written up the interpretation separately – because very different situations can lie behind the same two numbers: 160/80 (high upper value with a normal lower one), 105/65 (both values evenly low) and 100/70 in women.

What changed in 2024 – and what didn’t

There are many half-truths circulating on this topic, so here is the clear statement:

The threshold for diagnosing hypertension remains unchanged at 140/90 mmHg at the surgery. Nothing has changed there. The German care guideline, the European hypertension guideline and the guideline of the European cardiologists all agree on this point.

What is new is something else: in 2024, the European cardiologists introduced an intermediate category, “elevated blood pressure”, between 120–139 systolic and 70–89 diastolic. The point is not to declare more people patients, but to be able to act earlier: anyone in this range who also has additional risk factors should not wait until 140 is reached.

Specifically, the guideline provides for such people to adjust their lifestyle for three months first – and only if their readings are still above 130/80 after that should drug treatment be considered. This decision belongs in the doctor’s consulting room, not at the kitchen table.

In Germany, the care guideline continues to use the classic classification above. So depending on the source, you will encounter both systems. They do not contradict each other – they just divide the same blood pressure range at different levels of detail.

Does this apply regardless of age?

Yes. The threshold of 140/90 at the surgery and 135/85 at home applies regardless of year of birth. Charts in which normal values rise with age – such as 150/90 for seventy-year-olds – have no basis in the current guidelines.

Why blood pressure nevertheless rises on average with age, why the treatment target is still adjusted individually for very elderly people, and what matters in later life instead of an age chart is explained in detail in Blood pressure chart by age: what really applies.

The same applies to sex: there is no separate threshold chart for women. Before the menopause, women have slightly lower values on average; afterwards this evens out – the classification stays the same.

A single reading does not classify you

This is the most important sentence on this page. Blood pressure is not a constant but changes continuously – with breathing, the time of day, temperature, the last flight of stairs. Two measurements taken two minutes apart regularly give different numbers without anything being wrong. Why this is so is explained in Why your blood pressure is different every time you measure it.

The classification only becomes reliable like this:

1. Measure every morning and evening for seven days, taking two measurements one to two minutes apart each time.
2. Sit quietly for five minutes before each measurement. Without these five minutes, you are measuring your day.
3. Write down all readings – including the uncomfortable ones.
4. Leave out the first day of measurement (habituation effect) and calculate the average from the rest.
5. Compare this average with the home measurement chart, not with the surgery chart.

However, the average at the end of this week has a limit of its own: it does not show how long your readings were actually within the target range. Why this time span carries a meaning of its own is explained in Blood pressure target range: why time in range matters.

The most common mistakes are covered in Measuring blood pressure correctly: 7 mistakes that distort your readings. A prerequisite is an upper-arm device validated according to DIN EN ISO 81060-2 with the correct cuff size – see Which blood pressure monitor is the most accurate?

The third number nobody mentions

The chart assesses two values separately. The gap between them – the pulse pressure – does not appear in it, but it says something about the elasticity of your large blood vessels. 160/80 and 160/110 land in the same row of the chart and yet describe very different situations. More on this in Pulse pressure: what the gap between your blood pressure readings reveals.

When you should seek medical advice

• If your weekly average at home is at or above 135/85 mmHg
• If individual readings are repeatedly above 180/110 mmHg – even without symptoms
• If the gap between the upper and lower value is persistently more than 60 or less than 30 mmHg
• If you have headaches, visual disturbances, shortness of breath, dizziness or a racing heart

In the event of a sudden severe headache, chest pain, speech or vision problems, or one-sided paralysis: call the emergency services immediately on 112 (the European emergency number). Never change existing blood pressure medication on your own based on a chart.

Charts classify numbers. They do not show what happened immediately before – the BPER blood pressure event recorder records exactly this course, beat by beat.