In microcellular plastics, an unfoamed skin that is integral with the foamed core can be created by allowing the nucleating gas to diffuse from the surfaces of a gas saturated specimen prior to foaming. In this paper, a semi-empirical model is proposed that predicts the skin thickness variation in microcellular foams as a function of gas desorption time. The model shows good agreement with experimental results on the polycarbonate-carbon dioxide system.