Getting the Length Right: A Guide to Body Jewellery Lengths and Diameters

Getting the Length Right: A Guide to Body Jewellery Lengths and Diameters

Gauge gets most of the attention when people talk about body jewellery sizing, but length and diameter are just as important. Wrong length on a healing piercing is one of the most common reasons piercings get irritated, take forever to heal, or get abandoned altogether. Here's what you need to know.

Length vs diameter, what's the difference?

Length refers to the wearable shaft of a straight or curved piece, the bit that actually sits inside the piercing. Diameter refers to the inner measurement of a ring or hoop. Which one you need to know depends on the style of jewellery you're buying.

• Barbells, labrets, and curved barbells: you need the length
• Rings, hoops, segment rings, and horseshoes: you need the diameter

Barbell and labret lengths

Lengths are measured in millimetres or fractions of an inch. Common lengths for standard piercings in New Zealand are:

These are starting points. Your piercer will size your initial jewellery to your specific anatomy, and that length will usually be longer than your long term wear length to allow for swelling during healing.

Why your initial jewellery is longer

When a piercing is fresh it swells, sometimes quite a lot. A longer post gives that swelling somewhere to go without the jewellery embedding into the tissue. Once your piercing has settled, usually a few months in, your piercer can downsize you to a shorter length that sits closer to the skin. Downsizing is an important step that a lot of people skip, and it makes a real difference to how cleanly a piercing heals and sits long term.

If you're buying replacement jewellery for a healing piercing, match the length of your current piece rather than assuming a shorter one will be fine. If in doubt, ask your piercer.

Ring and hoop diameters

For rings the measurement you need is the internal diameter, the distance across the inside of the ring. Common diameters for NZ piercings:

Again these are general guides. Anatomy varies and what fits one person won't necessarily fit another.

The most common sizing mistake

Buying jewellery that's too short for a healing piercing. It feels logical to go shorter once the swelling goes down, but going too short too soon puts pressure on the tissue, restricts circulation, and can cause embedding. Let your piercer downsize you at the right time rather than doing it yourself too early.

The second most common mistake is buying the right gauge but the wrong length because the listing only showed one measurement. Always check both before you order.

A note on inch measurements

If you're browsing body jewellery online, particularly on international sites, you'll often see lengths listed in fractions of an inch rather than millimetres. Here are the most common conversions:

At Staple we list both measurements on every product so you're not left doing the maths.

When in doubt

Take your current piece to a reputable New Zealand piercing studio and ask them to measure it. It takes thirty seconds and saves you ordering the wrong size twice.