What does the manufacturer of the vent hood recommend?

24-32 " above cooktop. thank you!

Go higher than 24 ... you don't want to be staring into your hood while you are cooking.

Also check the spec on the cooktop/range. Some of those specify the minimum distance to the hood.

I would look at 28-30 inches from cooking surface to hood bottom. That seemed to be common from what I remember. Do you have a cabinet height that would put the hood bottom in/near that range?

I have mine at 31" above the counter. I rather like the height, and I'm 6'

Actually 30"-36" between cooktop and bottom of hood is standard. I've never seen a 24" recommendation except for an over-the-range microwave. You could also post on the Appliances Forum; there's a bunch of venting experts there. Or do a search on that forum for threads on hood height.

Go visit several showrooms, big box stores, or model homes today. Take a tape measure. Higher is often better aesthetically, lower is better functionally. How wide and deep the hood is relative to the cooking surface matters, as does blower cfm. Kaseki is the expert on this, his discussion on the expanding cone of effluent was very helpful to me.

Here is a link that might be useful: relevant recent post by Kaseki

Do you have Gas or Electric/Induction? You may want to get a recommendation from the Building Department/Building Inspector in your town/city.

^^beachpie is correct: you must know the code for your city/town/county on cook top surface to height of vent hood. It's not just the manufacturer specs/recs any more.

Also watch height from cooktop to lateral cabinets if they align with cooktop (i.e. immediately adjacent).

24" does seem extremely low? Would be right in most peoples face. My hood and range specs were 30" to 36". I went with the max for both head clearance and line of sight (it's a peninsula) ...works fine at that height.

My current hood is 24" and I HATE it. I'm short enough that I am not looking into it, but it does seem to get in the way, a lot .... try and take spaghetti out of a pot on the stove, or ladling something out of a stock pot..... It's one of the things that I am looking forward to changing.

Echoing the above advice, MAKE SURE YOU CHECK CODE before making any design decisions. Our range specs (Bertazzoni 36" 6-burner gas) were 25.5-31.5.Our strict city code says no greater than 26", though, so we ended up with 26". The allowed distance would probably be greater for electric or 4 burners.

I am 5"8 and DH is 6'3". Works fine for us.