AbstractResults of calculations of steady state capillary rise are presented for one‐layered and multi‐layered soil profiles ranging from coarse sand to heavy clay. The effect of the considered hydraulic conductivity function on the calculated height of capillary rise is shown by using four different methods of describing the relation for the same uniform sand profile. The methods include: power and exponential functions; a table of data derived from only the saturated conductivity and the soil moisture retention curve; a modified Brooks and Corey method calculating the coefficients from soil texture and organic matter content, including hysteresis; approximation of the data in the table by three power functions. A practical application of the steady state calculations is computing the groundwater table depth that yields the optimum production for a soil profile covered by gr