People, my high school math is failing me today. Or I may just be having a brain fart. 

I’m planning a 5-tier (14, 10, 8, 5, and 3”) stacked cake soon and cannot remember how to calculate how to make the tiers appear to be the same height. They can’t all be 4” high, otherwise the 3” diameter cake will look like a double barrel and the 14” will appear squat. Not the look I’m going for. 

I prefer the look of an 8”x 3.75” cake vs. an 8”x 4”.  Having said that, I think the calculations are coming back to me, but any help is appreciated. 

i just eye ball it -- i left the lid off my high school math and it evaporated long ago hahahaha 

i have no clue how to do it mathematically even when i sit here and scrunch my face up thinking -- 

but i mean you don't want the 14 more than 6" tall -- so go from there -- but from there you've got a four inch difference in tier size to the 10 then two inches to the 8, three inches to the 5 and two inches to the 3 --

• so on top of the 14 there's a two inch ledge which will make it look even bigger
• on top of the 10 a one inch ledge
• on top of the 8 a 1.5 inch ledge
• on top of the 5 a one inch ledge 

honestly i would set this up with dummies to see what i could see -- end of story

That’s what I decided to do. Start with the 14” at 4” high, and make up the difference with a 2” high Cake board. The 10” x 4” gets a 1+” board. The 8” will be just under 4” tall and the smaller cakes successively shorter by 1/4” such that the top will be 3” x 3”. 

I tried with the dummies and it came out great.                                

K8memphis, you’re right. A 14” x 6” cake would have had to count as twice as many servings!  I’ve done that before when someone wanted a big cake that wasn’t stacked 4-5 cakes high. 

I was curious to see the answers here.  I wonder if it has anything to do with the angle from the top tier to the edge of the top of the tier below it?

It’s aspect ratio is all. For all the tiers of a cake to LOOK like they’re the same height, you can’t actually MAKE them all the same height. You have to fool the eye by making the larger cakes appear taller (dummies are great for this) and the smaller ones shorter (myself, I don’t go less than 3” for a top tier). 

Yes, I was having a brain fart. 

now that we got that straight -- your 14" x 6" cake is not really double servings -- you need to cut bigger slices because the usual is 1x2x4 and yours will be 1x2x3 -- so it's about a quarter less cake unless you adjust for a larger serving