Sandal thickness is such a big question mark for people and a potential point of contention in the barefoot community. You can’t just pick a number as the ideal and certainly shouldn’t tell someone else their shoes are too thin or too thick because you aren’t the one walking around on their two feet.
But how do you pick the number that’s right for you? That depends on several factors, including your current level of shoe minimalism, how well your feet work, how you walk, your targets, and the function of your entire kinetic chain.
Confused yet?
Quick recommendations for sandals (or any barefoot shoes):
- Thin generally means more flexible, which is a good thing
- Go as thin as you can for the best foot function
- Don’t go so thin you cause yourself harm
To get more specific:
💡 Going as thin as you can will generally give you the highest level of flexibility. However, often the tradeoff on this is that to get super thin, flexible sandal the shoe cannot have much tread. In fact, you’ll get almost none, and you will lose what you little you have much more quickly. You also won’t have as good a grip on slippery surfaces. Potential ouches.
💡 Your needs and desires will change. What’s right for you today might not be right for you next year. The further you go into minimalism will tend to lead you toward thinner shoes. But your daily activities may change, you might get injured, or you might take on a new hobby that leads you toward needing or wanting thicker models. Don’t get stuck in a purist mindset that says you must have thin or you’re failing at minimalist footwear. Give yourself permission to change your approach and flex across the spectrum of tread depth, flexibility, ground feel, and thickness.
💡 Go with the thinnest and most flexible sole for your comfort level to make your feet work. The closer you can get to barefoot, the more your gait will optimize and you’ll get the sensory feedback you need. Thinner sandals increase ground feel and are great for your mind-body connection, balance, and responsiveness to environmental conditions such as sharp objects. But none of that matters if your feet and legs aren’t ready, or you hurt yourself in the process because you’ve taken a slipper-like sandal on a rugged hiking trip.
Here are roll-ups/fold-ups of all the shown shoes, ordered as Bedrock Sandals Cairn Adventure, Shamma Sandals Warrior Elite, TreadLightGear Sandals, Earthrunners Circadian, Be Lenka Barefoot’s Lenka Summer, Tikki Vibe, Calpas Footwear’s optional barefoot sole in the Dream model, and Good Earth Sandals:
You can see in the above pictures that dressy sandals like Tikki and Be Lenka tend to be quite flexible. The most flexible by far is TreadLightGear, which in the middle of the thicknesses (see below for a 2nd gallery of measurements). It’s not a clear progression of thick to thin; hard to bend to highly flexible.
- Outdoor (most to least flexible): Earthrunners, Shamma (this particular model), Bedrock
- Dress (most to least flexible): Tikki, Be Lenka, Calpas
- Uncategorized and highly flexible: TreadLightGear
It’s important to remember that flexibility plays a huge role in how thickness feels on your feet. For example, the Bedrocks that most of my family wears are the thickest of all the options and some of the thickest in the zero-drop world (Luna definitely has a thicker model). That thickness affects the ground feel, which affects your sensory input (proprioception) and in some respects your balance. But flexibility in the shoes means that feet can bend fine in any direction.
Materials matter as well. The super-thin Good Earth Sandals are just leather, so they bring their own benefits with earthing and having the feeling of just growing a new layer on your skin more than actually wearing shoes. However, they are very thick leather, as leather goes, and are stiff, resulting in both lower ground feel and lower flexibility.
Construction matters, too. A stitched-down sandal like TreadLightGear will typically give you more ground feel than a glued sandal like Earthrunners because of the stiffening properties of glue, and simply the fact there is extra material between you and the ground. It doesn’t mean ER are bad (on the contrary, they are possibly the most versatile and attractive outdoor sandal we have) but it does affect what you feel.
Remember not to stress about any of this too much, especially to the point of only picking a sandal you can roll into a ball. Most of them can’t do that. That’s a great visual for any shoe and the point of doing that is that you can show that your foot won’t have to fight the shoe to act like a foot. But most of these sandals can at best be folded in half and it’s okay to be okay with that. Your foot still gets plenty of a workout and is maintaining it’s health.
If you pick a brand first, check the models carefully. This post goes into details about choosing your first barefoot sandals and you can see that most of them have multiple models with varying thickness. Luna Sandals has a sandal picker that will help narrow things down for you but for the rest you will need to check the models yourself to see which one might best fit your lifestyle and function.
Lists here on the blog:
- Barefoot Sandals for Kids
- Barefoot Sandals for Men
- Custom Barefoot Sandals
- Women’s and Master Barefoot Sandals lists (coming soon)
The following pictures are just for Foot Nerd fun. The caliper I’m using is a very inexpensive one off Amazon and it’s very easy to change the readings by several millimetres just based off the amount of pressure you use. I’m including them for comparison, not as any indication of exact readings. I simply find it interesting, especially considering the fact that the thinnest pair shown (Good Earth) is also the stiffest shoe of them all.
Pictures here are in the same order as above: Bedrock Sandals Cairn Adventure, Shamma Sandals Warrior Elite, TreadLightGear Sandals, Earthrunners Circadian, Be Lenka Barefoot’s Lenka Summer, Tikki Vibe, Calpas Footwear’s optional barefoot sole in the Dream model, and Good Earth Sandals.
Questions, comments, suggestions? Drop a line below or joint the fun on the Obsessed with Barefoot Shoes Instagram page. Several of these sandals have Reviews and also be sure to check out the Discounts page if you’re thinking of purchasing any of them. Don’t forget about Luna! I haven’t reviewed any yet personally, but they have a huge range of options.