How To Measure Your Saddle- and Handlebar-To-Floor

Why Measure This Stuff?

Saddle-to-floor and handlebar-to-floor measurements help us figure out how your current touch points relate to each other. If your handlebars are 2 inches lower than your saddle, for instance, and you’re experiencing hand pain, we know what actions to take based on these numbers, and a few other questions we’ll ask you.

How to Measure It

Cool. Now follow these steps. You can take the measurement in inches or centimeters. Either works for us.

1. Lean your bike up against a wall so it’s as close to perfectly vertical as you can get it.
2. Pick a location with a level floor, like a poured concrete slab that’s not lumpy.
3. Get out your trusty tape measure, the kind with the rigid tape that snaps back and bites you when you let go of it.
4. Feed the tape down to the floor, try to keep it perfectly vertical, measure straight down from the top of the saddle right where your seatpost clamps the saddle’s rails. That's your Saddle to Floor measurement.
5. Now repeat this process for the handlebars, measuring from the top of the stem clamp down to the floor. That’s your Handlebars to Floor measurement.

For remote fits we pair this information with your own physical body’s measured height (not the height you wanna be but the height you are), current weight (think of us like unjudge-y doctors, the truth is better), PBH, and current saddle height (measured along the seat tube from the center of the bottom bracket spindle to the top of the saddle). We’ll have some follow up stuff to ask you about, but this is where we start.

Want to dig a little deeper? Check out our Enlightened Bike Fit guide for our approach to getting comfortable on a bike, or How to Choose the Right Frame Size if you're figuring out what size bike you need in the first place.