The common understanding of the negative relationship between bond lengths and crystal-field splitting (CFS) is renewed by Ce3+ doped garnets in this work. We represent the contradictory relationship between structure data and spectroscopic crystal-field splitting in detail. A satisfactory explanation is given by expressing crystal-field splitting in terms of crystal-field parameters, on the basis of structural data. The results show that not only the bond length, but also the geometrical configuration have influence on the magnitude of crystal-field splitting. Also it is found that the ligand oxygen behaves differently with regard to multiple site substitution in garnet structure.