Piercing jewelry has a great impact on our overall appearance and personality. For example, it affects your mood, nature, and temperament. Nowadays piercings are not only for your earlobes and nose but also available for other body parts like eyebrows, septum, conch, tragus, helix, daith, rook, naval, and nipples. In all cases, it is important to choose the right size of piercing. With that in mind, read what you need to know about jewelry sizing.
How Body Jewelry Sizing Works
So, here you can learn about how you can measure body jewelry and select the right one for you. Body jewelry has three main aspects. These three are gauge, diameter and length.
1. Gauge / Thickness
The gauge stands for the thickness of the jewelry that goes through the piercing hole. Your piercing jewelry has a standard gauge size that would be perfect for your body. Contrary to what you may think, the lower the gauge size, the thicker the jewelry bar. For example, a barbell of 10 gauges is much thicker than the 20 gauges.
2. Diameter
The diameter is measured for round jewelry types like hoops, horseshoe, and circular. It is measured from the inside of the round jewelry types.
3. Length
The length of body jewelry is simply how long it is. So this is measured from top to bottom. By the way, it should be clear here that the length includes the wearable part of the jewelry that goes through your piercing.
How to Measure Your Piercing
Measuring gauge, length, and diameter for your piercing jewelry can be a little difficult and confusing task. But we will make it easy for you. As we said earlier, the lower the gauge the thicker the bar. Try to remember this. Then all you have to do for measuring the gauge is get a gauge measuring tool online. Next, hold your jewelry in one hand and try matching the size on the gauge wheel. It is important to hold your jewelry from the edges to get a perfect size. You can also use a caliper or measuring tape to measure the length, diameter, and gauge of the jewelry.
Nose Piercing For A Hoop
Use existing jewelry to measure the size of your nose piercing jewelry. Take your gauge wheel out and check out the thickness of the hoop by holding the hoop vertically. You can check the inner diameter simply by using the ruler or a measuring tape. For a precise and accurate size use the Caliper to check the diameter.
Septum Piercing
If you do not have any existing jewelry for your septum piercing and want to measure the exact size for order, take a strip of paper and put it in your nose near the septum piercing and mark till you feel comfortable. Take a ruler and measure that mark. That is the best diameter for your septum piercing.
Ear Piercing
To measure your ear piercing, the minimum diameter of the earrings should be from the piercing hole to the earlobe tip. For this, you can use the above technique or simply measure it with a ruler. Remember, this only works for hoops and horseshoe type of jewelry. For studs, you can use the gauge wheel with an existing jewelry stud.
Helix, Tragus or Conch Piercing
For helix piercings, you can use the paper strip technique. Mark the paper from the outside of your ear to the piercing hole. This would be the diameter of the piercing hoop. For tragus and conch piercings, you can measure the gauge using the gauge wheel and we recommend using the standard length to avoid discomfort and irritation.
The Importance of Jewelry Sizing
Everyone has a different body size. You can look at the average sizes above as we mentioned. You can also go to your piercer and ask him/her about your body jewelry size. It is very important to know the right jewelry size for your piercings as wrong sizes can create problems such as infections, irritations, and rashes. The size chart may vary for each body so we recommend visiting your piercer for better guidance.
You can also learn online about body jewelry types and their sizes, how to measure them, and have a better understanding.
The Difficulty with Jewelry Sizing
Having the body jewelry of an adequate length and gauge is very important for your appearance as well as your health. Oversized or undersized piercing jewelry can cause infections, irritation, and discomfort. To avoid the hassle let us guide you on perfect body jewelry sizing. Before getting into sizes let’s see what body jewelry types there are.
- Flatback
- Barbell
- Hoop
- Horse Shoe
- Curved Barbell
The Average in Jewelry Sizing
Check out the average or standard sizes for all the above jewelry types.
Flat Back and Barbell
Flatback and Barbell jewelry types that are mostly used for earlobes, helix, conches, and tragus piercing have 6mm to 6.5mm in length. The gauge for earlobes jewelry would be 20, 22 and for helix, conches, and tragus it would be 16, 18. For nose piercing the length would be 6mm to 6.5 mm and the average gauge would be 18, 20, or 22.
Hoop and Horse Shoe
The standard/average size for hoops and horseshoe jewelry types vary as follows. For septum, nose, eyebrows, earlobes, helix, rook and tragus the average diameter is 8mm and the gauge is 16 and 18. And for the conch and lip piercing, the average diameter is 10 to 12 mm.
Curved Barbell
The curved barbell jewelry type is very popular for eyebrow, daith, and rook piercings. The average length of this piercing jewelry type is 8mm.
Takeaway
So this was an honest try to provide you a piercing jewelry sizing guide. We hope you would find this helpful and measure your body jewelry more efficiently. Remember, your body jewelry should fit but most importantly be comfortable to wear. If you are still confused and not sure what to do, we always recommend going to your piercer for the best advice and help in body jewelry sizing.
