Proper Seat Height In Relation to Frame Size
 

I’m sure that we’ve all seen the ads from magazines, catalogs, etc. of road bikes. All these bikes have their stems mounted way low and the seat height up in the moon!

I look at the pictures of various bikes in this forum and I see a variety of seat heights and stem angles. A lot of bikes here emulate what I see in the ads. Others look more “mild” with lower seat heights, angled stems or tall stem tubes, etc. Of course there are extremes of low and high as well.

I always thought that if you have the correct size frame, you don’t need to have 8” or more seat tube showing (but you don’t want it bottoming out either). Is this correct? I look at the Performance Bike catalog and all their road bikes have seat tubes with 12” or more showing on the mens bicycles, while the women’s bikes are showing less than 8”. What am I missing here?

The notion of a proper fit. Most (some choose to do it themselves) bikes here have been fitted to the rider by a professional.

People with longer legs relative to overall height generally need more seatpost showing on a given frame size. So, the proper height will vary accordingly. As to the ads, yes, a big drop to the bars just looks cool.

I always figured the tall seat/short bars combo stemmed from the typical racing geometry -- it's easy to imagine a fit rider perched high on the bike, crouching way down to the bars. It looks cool because that's what we associate with fast bikes and fast riders.

Of course, what's optimal for racing is not necessarily what most of us want when we are actually on the bike.