Best File Cabinets For Standing Desks

In Search of Standing Desk Storage

When transitioning from a fixed-height desk to an adjustable-height sit-stand desk, most new users come face to face with a challenge they may not have considered before buying: the sudden lack of drawers.  This lack, however, is par for the course with almost all adjustable height desks. 

The vast majority of manufacturers do not offer drawers on their standing desks for a number of reasons, including: 

• Their highly-cantilevered weight would induce a lot of “side-loading stress” on the linear actuators, potentially leading to squeaking, straining or premature failure of expensive componentry.
• A lot of “interference” issues with other components typically found on the underside of the desktop, such as crossbars, top support arms, cables and handsets. 
• Assembling drawers can be a total pain for the user, and can easily add an hour or more to the assembly of a standing desk. 

That said, there are some new desks about to enter the market with built-in drawers that are creatively slung underneath the desktop. These are going to be optional on some higher-performance desk models with sufficient excess lift capacity for the task. We’re currently reviewing pre-release samples and expect to see them in-market by early 2021. Subscribe to our free monthly newsletter to learn about them as soon as they are available for sale.

But for today, the popular solution for most users is one of the mobile file pedestals we’ve reviewed here. Specifically short ones—generally under 22″—that won’t interfere with the free movement of the desk when it is lowered to sitting height. Being a standalone piece of furniture separate from the desk, these pedestals do not subtract from the weight lifting capacity of the desk itself. More importantly, they won’t induce life-shortening “side loading” on the lifting legs either.

For more information about some of the alternative storage options for adjustable height desks, see our separate round-ups of the Best Storage Options For Standing Desks and the Best Standing Desks With Built-in Drawers.

Evaluation Criteria for Standing Desk File Cabinets

When we first started reviewing adjustable-height desks in 2013, there was no such thing as a matching file pedestal. Back then you basically had to trot down to Office Depot and pick out some generic file cabinet that didn’t match your desk style, much less frame color or desktop finish. 

Things have changed, and we now see pretty much all of the major online sellers of standing desks (iMovR, Fully, UpLift, StandDesk, Vari and Autonomous, to name a few) offering matching file cabinets to go with their desks. The degree to which they match varies widely, however. Autonomous, for example, only offers cabinets in white. Vari, similarly, only offers most of their cabinets in slate gray. Fully offers four colors to “match” the legs of their standing desks but there are significant variations in the non-black colors between the cabinets and the desk frames. iMovR takes a different approach, manufacturing all their file cabinets on-demand—in all 58+ desktop finishes that they offer on their desks—for the only true match.

The next thing we look at is the quality of construction. Here’s where the field splits into two very clear groups. In one tier you have Chinese-manufactured cabinets made of light steel or aluminum, in most case with sloppy tolerances, welds, and paint quality, but priced in the $169 to $279 range. There isn’t a lot of distinction between them, and they mostly weigh 36–50 lbs. These risk tipping over if a heavily laden upper drawer is opened too far, because they just don’t have a lot of heft to them. As a workaround to avoid tip-overs, some manufacturers distribute the payload by adding a fifth caster wheel that protrudes from the front edge of the bottom drawer. This works well for the bottom drawer only, but the extra wheel looks like a prosthetic aid for the cabinet, which we find decidedly inelegant.

In contrast, iMovR’s cabinets are more like fine office furniture, made of solid wood materials and with ballasts built into the rear of the cabinet to counteract any tipping force. At 75 lbs these are the heaviest storage cabinets you’ll find for standing desks. iMovR’s 3D-laminated finishes—in a whopping 22 colors—are manufactured to a tolerance of 1/5000ths of an inch. Surfaces are ergo-contoured to match their desktops, with hermetically sealed, healthcare-grade laminate that’s as durable as it is gorgeous. A bonus in the age of COVID is that you can use hospital-grade disinfectants on these cabinets and never compromise the integrity of the seams or fade the color.

The 36 stain+species combinations in natural hardwood offer a degree of elegance you simply can’t match with sheet steel. But of course, they cost more, ranging in price from $399 to $999.  iMovR is the only manufacturer at the moment in this second tier, and the only one offering cabinets that match the desktop as opposed to the desk legs.

Frequently Bought With File Cabinets