I had stools with a base like that. They had a flat rubber ring on the bottom, you can kind of see it in your picture.

There was some kind of reaction between the rubber & the finish on my floor in my previous house that caused discolored rings where the stools were. It was a factory finished engineered hard wood in a light color.

Of course the stools got moved around with use so there were several discolored rings from each stool before I noticed the problem. It was not dirt or anything on the surface that could be scrubbed off. They actually permanently changed the color of the finish.

Agree with the above, I would run away from those stools with a hardwood floor. Look for a traditional 4-legged stool that you can put the felt pads on, for sure.

Agree with getting 4-legged stools with felt pads. Your floor will thank you.

Thanks for the input. Will look for the 4 legged kind.

I purchased stools - the 4 legged kind - at Overstock.com. They are having a great cyber sale! My 2nd pair will arrive tomorrow. So far the stools are holding up, however, we only have kids in the house about 2-3 times a month.

We want to actually sit on some stools before we purchased. We never had stools of any kind in our house before and are not sure what kind we would like. Need to find some local stores that have a good selection to try. Once we get a better idea of what we like I won't mind buying online. I have a feeling the family is not going to all agree, so this may be worse then picking out granite, lol.

If you want a swivel stool, then think carefully about who will sit there and how they'll use them. Chairs that swivel and have hard wood or metal backs can bash into the edges of your counter and chip the backs and/or the counter edges. If it's just a couple of careful adults, this may not be an issue. If you have a few less-careful kids, then you might want to make sure that the backs are padded--including padding on the edges of the backs.

As a counterpoint...I have stools with round bases like you pictured. I've had them for 4 years or so, never had any damage to my hard wood floors. Off the top of my head I can't remember if they have foam/rubber around the bottom. I'm surprised by gin_gin's experience there.

A question that may be related. What height of stool is appropriate for 36 inch counter? (24 or 30?)

30" is for a bar-height counter. My Pottery Barn Tibetan stools for a regular 36" counter are 27". I think 24" is for a table-height counter.

My stools for my counter height island are 24".

I also measured my chairs and table, my table is 30" high and my chairs are 17".

I purchased 26" stools as they were the most comfortable with our counter height island. These were hard to find! 24" is too low, 30" too high.

Usually 12" -13" below the height of the eating surface is appropriate for seating height.

We have 11.5" from top of stool to eating surface. Once you sit down the seat compresses so it is about 12". So Pal, I think you are right with that range being the most appropriate. With lower seats we felt like little children.

I just measured - our seats dip in the middle so that's where I measured. We have 10" from top of seat to top of counter and it's perfect for us.

Debrak, if you have regular height counters (36") and 26" stools, how do end up with 11.5-12"?

From the floor to the underside of the counter is about 34.75". Our counter top on the island is about 2.75" thick. So its about 37.5" to the top of the counter. The leg clearance is the same as a regular 36" high counter. I'm sure that if our counter was 36" we would still feel more comfortable at 26".

We did a lot of mock ups and visited lots of stores trying different heights of stools and counters tops.

We originally thought our island would be 36" but the layer with the heating element added 1.5", much more than I expected. I thought the difference between the perimeter counters and the island would be noticeable but it isn't.