How to Measure Your Shoe Size at Home in 2024

It is important you know your right shoe size especially if you love to shop online. Online, you do not have the liberty to test different shoes to get the best-fit.

But buying an undersized or oversized shoes is a waste of money and you wouldn’t want that.

While there are various devices used to measure one’s shoe size, like shoe fitters used in footwear stores, there are other methods to get your shoe size at home. You wouldn’t need anything but paper, pencil, and a rule.

Let’s delve right in!

Table of Contents

Steps to measuring your shoe size at home

Here are the tools you’ll need:

A piece of paper (has to be larger than your foot, width, and length)
A pencil or any writing utensil
A ruler or measuring tape
Paper tape

Step One: Get the outline of your feet

Tape the piece of paper on a smooth, even-surfaced floor.
You will be tracing an outline and wouldn’t want the paper moving randomly.
Place your foot firmly on the piece of paper. Then bend your leg slightly so that your shin is in front of your ankle.
You can either sit or stand, whichever is comfortable for you.
Outline your foot by tracing it with your pencil. Try not to slant the pencil so it doesn’t decrease the accuracy of the measurement.

For this step, there are a couple of points to note:

While tracing the outline, do it with your socks on. The socks you’re likely to put on with your shoes.
This process is best done after a day of walking because excessive walking has been observed to temporarily expand the size of a person’s foot.
Try this process with both feet. Some people are known to have slightly unequal feet. Make use of the measurement from the larger foot. This will ensure you do not get smaller sized shoes. A slightly oversized shoe is so much more comfortable than a slightly undersized one.
Do not wear shoes during this process.
Draw a box around the outline to mark the length and width of the foot on the paper.

Step Two: Measure your feet’s outline

Use your ruler or measuring tape to measure the length of the foot, from top to bottom.
Make sure the ruler is held straight. Write this number down.
Do not round the number up or down carelessly. The more you approximate, the less accurate the measurement becomes.

Repeat step to determine the width of your foot. Only this time, you measure from left to right and write it down. Again, do not approximate unnecessarily.

What to do after you’ve measured your shoe size

Subtract 3/16th of an inch from each measurement to account for the width of the pencil shade used to trace the foot.
Use the length and width to locate your shoe size on a sizing chart. There are different sizes for men and women and different countries.
Also take into cognizance, the width of your foot. Some shoes are made wider than others, even with the same shoe size.

International shoe size chart

US/Canada	Australia	UK	China	Europe	Japan	Mexico
5	4.5	4.5	38	37.5	Nil	—
5.5	5	5	39	38	Nil	—
6	5.5	5.5	39.5	39	24	25
6.5	6	6	40	39.5	24.5	—
7	6.5	6.5	41	40	25	26
7.5	7	7	Nil	40.5	25.5	—
8	7.5	7.5	42	41	Nil	27
8.5	8	8	43	42	26	—
9	8.5	8.5	43.5	42.5	26.5	28
9.5	9	9	44	43	27	—
10	9.5	9.5	44.5	44	27.5	29
10.5	10	10	45	44.5	28	—
11	Nil	10.5	46	45	29	30
11.5	11	Nil	Nil	45.5	29.5	—
12	Nil	Nil	47	46	30	31
13	12	Nil	48.5	46.5	31	32