What stool height do you need for a standing desk?

Short answer: subtract 9 to 11 inches from your desk height. A 42-inch standing desk needs a seat somewhere around 31 to 34 inches off the floor. A 36-inch counter needs about 25 to 28. The table below does it for every desk height from 36 to 48 inches, and the arithmetic behind it is in the next section so you can check it against your own body rather than an average.

This matters more than it sounds, because a great many stools advertised as standing-desk stools cannot reach a standing desk. On our own standing-desk stool roundup the published ceilings run from 24 inches to 34.6 inches. Both of those products are sold with the same phrase in the title.

On a perch stool your elbows still have to land on the work surface. So the gap between the top of the seat and the top of the desk is your sitting elbow-rest height - the distance from the seat surface to the underside of your elbow when your shoulders are relaxed.

That measurement is published. Across the range from a 5th-percentile woman to a 95th-percentile man it runs from 7.5 inches to 11.4 inches, with a median of about 9.5 inches. Subtract that band from your desk height and you have the seat height a stool has to reach:

• Seat height = desk height minus 7.5 to 11.4 in. Use the middle of the band (9.5 in) as a starting point.
• For a 42 in desk: 42 minus 9.5 = 32.5 in, with a plausible band of 30.6 to 34.5 in.
• For a 38 in desk: 38 minus 9.5 = 28.5 in, band 26.6 to 30.5 in.

The whole calculation assumes your desk is at the right height to begin with. A standing desk should put the work surface at your standing elbow height. Published figures put that between 37.4 in (5th-percentile woman) and 46.5 in (95th-percentile man), which is why 42 in is the number everyone quotes: it is roughly the middle.

If your desk is fixed and wrong, no stool fixes it. If your desk adjusts, set the desk first, then buy the stool - our seat-height table gives the standing-desk height for your own height alongside the seated figures.

Two reasons, and they are both structural rather than accidental.

The first is that the same gas cylinder is used across a manufacturer's range. A cylinder that gives 21 to 31 inches is a common, cheap part; one that gives 25 to 35 inches is not. So a brand adds "standing desk" to a title and ships the cylinder it already buys.

The second is that a lot of these stools started life as classroom seating, where the target surface is a 30-inch table. The Giantex wobble stool is honest enough to say so in its own listing - it suits children over 7 and adults, in that order - and its 24-inch ceiling puts it at a 31-to-35-inch surface. That is a dining table.

Height is not free. The taller a stool goes, the further your feet are from the floor at the top of its range, and a perch with dangling feet puts your whole weight onto the front edge of the seat. Two fixes, in order of preference:

1. A footrest ring on the stool itself. This is what a drafting chair gives you that a bare stool does not, and it is the reason we treat drafting chairs as a separate category rather than a variation.
2. A separate [under-desk footrest](/support/footrests) or a taller platform. Cheaper, and it works - but it has to be tall enough. Most footrests top out around 6.5 in, which is not enough if you are perching at 32 in.
3. An [anti-fatigue mat](/support/anti-fatigue-mats) under the desk, for the half of the day you are actually standing. It does nothing for the perching half, but a perch stool is only ever half the setup.

Your desk height minus your measured elbow-rest height. Write it on your hand. Then read the seat-height range in the product's own specification - not the marketing phrase in the title - and check your number falls inside it with an inch to spare at each end.

If the listing does not publish a seat-height range at all, that is not a minor omission. It is the single figure that decides whether the product works for you, and we treat its absence as a disqualifier - which is why two otherwise-interesting stools sit on the excluded list of our standing-desk stool roundup rather than in the rankings.