Where the wrist-height rule comes from
Stand upright with your arms hanging. The crease of your wrist is roughly 48 or 49 percent of your standing height off the floor, a proportion that holds well enough across adults to be useful. That is the traditional starting point for a general woodworking bench, and the reason it works is mechanical rather than mystical: at wrist height your hands rest naturally on the top, your forearms are close to horizontal, and you can put shoulder and body weight over a tool without bending your back to do it.
For a 70 inch person that lands near 34 inches. You will see 34 to 36 quoted constantly as the standard bench height, which is a reasonable range for a person of average height and a mediocre one for anybody else. The proportion is worth more than the number.
Why the task moves it, and moves it a long way
The forces and the sightlines are different for different work, and they pull the height in opposite directions.
| Work | Direction | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Hand planing, heavy stock removal | Lower | You want to be above the tool and pushing with your body, not your arms |
| General mixed work | Wrist height | The compromise, and the right one if the bench has to do everything |
| Assembly and glue-ups | Higher | You reach into the work rather than pressing down on it, and bending over a carcase for an hour is what wrecks backs |
| Sawing and chopping joinery | Higher | The workpiece is held up in the vise and you need to see the line |
| Carving and detail | Highest | Small forces, close eyes, and the piece needs to come to you |
The spread between the low and the high end of that table for the same person is often eight inches or more. That is why shops that do all of this end up with two or three benches at different heights rather than one bench at the average, and why the honest answer to what height a bench should be is another question about what you do at it.
Depth, and the part of a bench that stops being a bench
The far edge of a deep bench against a wall is out of reach, and the moment it is out of reach it becomes a shelf. This is not a hypothesis; it is what happens to every deep bench. The reach figure here is an approximation of how far across a top you can comfortably work while leaning over the front edge, and anything past it should be designed as a tool well, a shelf or a back fence on purpose rather than becoming one by accident.
An island bench you can walk around is a different animal, since you reach from both sides and the effective depth doubles. It also costs you the floor around it in a shop that probably does not have floor to spare, which is a trade you can price with the workshop layout planner.
Overhang, dog holes and the details that make it usable
Two things separate a workbench from a sturdy table. The first is that the top overhangs the base, front and ends, by enough that a clamp head has somewhere to go — commonly two to three inches. A top flush with a heavy base looks fine and cannot be clamped to on three of its four sides, which you discover on your first glue-up.
The second is dog hole spacing set slightly inside the vise capacity. If the vise opens nine inches and the holes are eight inches apart, then any workpiece length can be caught between a dog and the vise, because the vise can always take up the leftover. Space them at ten and there are lengths you cannot clamp, which sounds like a small thing until it is the length you are working on. Right-handed workers usually put the front vise at the left front corner and run the dog row from there.
The last variable is what you stand on. An anti-fatigue mat and thick boots raise you an inch or more, and a bench sized without them is an inch low for as long as you use them. Build the bench for the floor you actually stand on, and if the mat moves around, expect the bench to feel different. Beyond the bench itself, the woodworking beginners guide covers what to put on it first.
Questions people ask
What is the standard workbench height?
There is not one, though 34 to 36 inches is what gets quoted, and it fits people around 5 ft 8 in to 6 ft doing general work. The proportion is more useful than the number: wrist height with the arm hanging is about 48 to 49 percent of standing height, so a 5 ft 4 in person lands near 31 inches and a 6 ft 4 in person near 37. Building to the standard rather than to yourself is how short people end up bent over a bench and tall people end up with a sore back from stooping to it.
Should a workbench be lower for hand planing?
Generally yes, and the difference is felt immediately. Planing works when you can get your shoulders over the tool and push with your body weight travelling forward, which needs the top lower than a bench you would assemble on. Some hand-tool woodworkers go as low as the knuckles of a hanging hand. The counterweight is that a low bench is uncomfortable for everything else, so if the same bench also does assembly and joinery, sit nearer wrist height and accept that planing is slightly harder rather than making four other tasks worse.
How high should an assembly table be?
Higher than a hand bench, because the work is reaching into and around an assembly rather than pressing down on it, and bending over a cabinet carcase for an hour is a genuine injury risk. Many shops land in the mid to high thirties for assembly. There is a second consideration that has nothing to do with your arms: a lot of shops set the assembly surface at exactly table saw height so it doubles as an outfeed table, and that constraint usually wins because the value of a shared surface in a small shop is larger than a couple of inches of ergonomics.
What spacing should bench dog holes be?
Slightly less than the maximum opening of your vise, so that any workpiece length can be clamped between a dog and the vise jaw with the vise taking up the remainder. A nine inch vise pairs with eight inch spacing. If the spacing exceeds the vise capacity there are lengths that fall in a gap and cannot be held, which is a frustrating way to discover a layout error in a finished top. Round to a whole number that divides your bench length sensibly and keep the row parallel to the front edge and close to it, so the clamping force runs along the strong part of the top.
Does the bench height change if I stand on a mat?
Yes, and it is one of the most common reasons a carefully calculated bench feels wrong. A three-quarter inch anti-fatigue mat plus a boot sole with a heel can raise you well over an inch, which is a meaningful share of the difference between one task height and another. Decide before you build whether the mat is permanent. If it is, add its thickness to your height in the field above. If it moves around the shop, expect the bench to feel different depending on where you are standing, and consider a mat that stays put.