How to Measure Your Foot Width at Home

Almost everyone knows their shoe size. Almost nobody knows their foot width, which is a problem, because width is the measurement that decides whether a shoe fits or just about goes on. Here is how to measure yours at home in about two minutes, with a piece of paper and a ruler.

There is a review of the footwear research that should make all of us sit up. Across the studies it pulled together, between 63 and 72 percent of people were wearing shoes that did not fit the length or the width of their feet.¹ Two thirds of us, give or take, walking around in the wrong shoe.

Length gets the blame, but length is the bit we already measure. Width is the one nobody checks, and it is the one that does the quiet damage: the pressure across the ball of the foot, the seam that leaves a mark, the little toe that never gets a say. If you have ever bought a bigger size to stop a shoe pinching across the front, you have already met the problem. You were solving a width problem with length, and that is why the heel started slipping.

The good news is that measuring width is easy, free, and takes about as long as boiling the kettle.

Ben Parnham

Senior Copywriter, The Comfort Co

Host of The Comfort Walk & Talk Podcast, where he has interviewed podiatrists, physios and healthcare professionals about what actually keeps feet working. Connect on LinkedIn.

Why width is the measurement nobody takes

A shoe has to accommodate two dimensions at once. Length is the easy one, and it is the one printed on the box. Width is the one that decides whether the widest part of your foot has anywhere to sit.

That widest part is the ball of the foot, the broad span just behind your toes.² It is also the part that spreads every time you take a step, and swells as the day goes on. So a shoe that is a fraction narrow at nine in the morning is properly tight by six in the evening, which is exactly when most people notice and assume they have bought the wrong size.

Width also changes over a lifetime, and not in the direction anyone hopes. Research comparing foot shape across age groups found that women in the youngest group had significantly smaller foot width and ball-of-foot circumference than older groups.⁴ Feet broaden. The size on the box does not.

It is not just an older-feet problem, either. When RMIT researchers measured the feet of 107 Australian women, women with an identical foot length varied by as much as four centimeters (about an inch and a half) in width. One size number was never going to cover that. We broke that study down in most women wear shoes that don't fit.

What you need

• A sheet of A4 paper, bigger if you have large feet
• A pencil or pen
• A ruler or tape measure
• A hard floor and a wall or skirting board
• Whatever socks you would normally wear with the shoes you are buying

Two small rules make the whole thing more accurate. Measure at the end of the day, when your feet are at their largest.² And do not do it sitting down: standing up puts your weight through the foot and lets it spread the way it will inside the shoe.

How to measure your foot width at home

1. Put the paper down and stand on it. Hard floor, not carpet. Put the paper against the wall and stand with your heel back against the wall, foot flat on the paper, weight through the foot.
2. Trace around your foot. Hold the pencil upright rather than angled in under your foot, which is the most common way people end up with an outline smaller than the foot that made it. Keep the pencil against your skin the whole way round.
3. Find the widest part of the outline. It sits across the ball of the foot, just behind the toes, and it will be the broadest span on the tracing. Not the toes themselves. Mark a dot on each side.
4. Measure straight across. Ruler between the two dots, in a straight line. Inches or centimeters, whichever your ruler gives you, as long as you are consistent. Write it down.
5. Now do the other foot. Feet are rarely the same size, so measure both and fit to the wider one.³ While you are there, measure length too: heel to the tip of your longest toe, which is not always the big toe.

Keep the tracing. It is more useful than the number, as the next section explains.

What your measurement is telling you

Here is the honest bit. There is no universal chart that turns a measurement into a fitting, because width fittings are not standardized across brands. What your tracing gives you is something better: a life-size template of your actual foot that you can hold against your actual shoes.

Take the shoes you wear most, put the tracing on the floor, and stand the shoe on top of it. Then read the results.

In our own range, the fittings mean roughly this:

The thirty-second check, if you cannot be bothered measuring

No paper handy? Take off the shoe you are wearing and pull the insole out, if it lifts out. Stand on it. If your foot spills over the sides at the ball, the shoe is narrower than your foot, and no amount of wearing them in will change the width of the last underneath.

If the insole does not come out, the next best test comes from the podiatrists: if you can see the outline of your feet pressing against the sides of your shoes, they are probably too narrow.³ Look down. It is usually obvious once you know to look.

While you are down there, check the length as well. You want a gap of about a centimeter, a bit under half an inch, between the end of your longest toe and the front of the shoe.³

Why there is no single number for a wide fitting

This is the part that frustrates people, so it is worth saying plainly: a wide fitting is not a fixed measurement. Different brands build on different lasts, and a wide in one range will not be identical to a wide in another. Our own size guidance says the same thing, which is why we point people to each brand's chart rather than pretending one chart covers everything.

What that means in practice:

• Your measurement is a starting point, not an answer. It tells you whether to be looking at wide fittings at all, which is most of the value.
• Judge the shoe, not the label. The tracing test above works on any brand, because it compares your foot to that specific shoe.
• Expect to try more than one. If a wide in one brand still presses, that is information about that last, not a verdict on your feet.
• Ask someone who fits feet for a living. This is the whole reason fitting services exist.

When width is not actually the problem

Width gets blamed for a few things that are not width. Worth ruling these out before you go hunting for a wider shoe:

• Depth and volume. If the pressure is over the top of your foot rather than across the sides, you need depth, not width. A high instep in a shallow shoe feels tight in a way that a wider last will not fix. An adjustable shoe usually solves this faster than a width change.
• Length. If your toes are hitting the front on downhills, that is length, and it will feel like the shoe is squeezing your toes together.
• The footbed. A bulky orthotic takes up room and can make a correctly fitted shoe feel a size too small. Take the original insole out before you judge the fit.
• Something that needs a podiatrist. Persistent pain, numbness, a joint that is changing shape or a spreading forefoot are worth a professional look rather than a bigger shoe. Bunions, Morton's Neuroma, Calluses and Lesser Toe Deformities all change what a good fit looks like for you.
• A shoe that just needs breaking in. Some materials give a little, some never will. Our guide to whether your shoes will stretch covers which is which. Width built into the last is not one of the things that changes.

What to do with your number

You have a measurement and a tracing. Here is where each of them takes you:

• If your foot is wider than the shoes you own, start with our full guide to the best wide-fitting shoes, which covers what makes a wide shoe actually work rather than just measure wider.
• If you are on your feet all day for work, the wide-fitting work shoes guide is the one for long shifts.
• If you walk for exercise or for the dog, the wide-fitting walking shoes guide covers distance, where width matters most.
• If the fit is more about the shape of your arch than the width of your foot, read understanding your arch type next.