Earth pressure is a critical foundation for retaining wall design and verification, but in the earth pressure calculation, the geometrical parameters of the retaining wall itself are not taken into account in the tests of the stability of the retaining wall. In order to obtain a more complete method for calculating retaining walls, this paper analyses the forces between the soil behind the wall and the retaining wall and shows that when calculating the Coulomb earth pressure, the earth pressure behind the wall only needs to stay within the limit state. The direction of the earth pressure can therefore only vary within a defined range of angles and there exists a direction of earth pressure which is the most unfavourable for the retaining wall out of many. this paper proposes a mechanical model for the most unfavourable active earth pressure in retaining wall design and derives a calculation formula; the calculation example proves that the calculation results are significantly different from Coulomb’s theory and the resulting earth pressure makes the retaining wall less stable during the verification.