The purpose of any shoe or boot is to protect feet as well as to provide comfort. Well-made footwear must ensure that no blisters form, that more than adequate support is afforded to the soles and ankles, and that neither temperature extremes nor moisture penetrate to affect your feet.
Letting feet enjoy an environment free of bumps, bangs, scrapes, and other physical hazards is important. If your current footwear is not fulfilling these requirements, it's time to consider buying a pair of shoes or boots that do.
Toes need plenty of room in the front but support on the sides.
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Length, as such, means little to proper fit. You could, for instance, have plenty of space in front of your toes, and if your footwear otherwise fits correctly, it wouldn't matter. Basically, you want to be able to wiggle your toes and still have a snug fit from side to side. The diagram demonstrates adequate spacing in a shoe.
The widest point of the shoe or boot should be a line drawn from the joint of the little toe across the ball of the foot. This should be a snug, but not uncomfortably binding, fit, or your foot will move around inside your footwear.
Stress lines will form wherever your footwear flexes, primarily beneath the toe line, and with boots, where the ankle bends. If these stress lines are straight and perpendicular to the long axis of your shoe or boot, everything is fine. However, if they angle off, that's usually the sign of a bad fit.
For the most accurate determination of your footwear size, get measured with a Brannock Device®*. This is the standard shoe fitting tool - one found in any shoe store - incorporating overall length (heel-to-toe measurement) and arch length (heel-to-ball of foot measurement). Have each foot measured while in both sitting and standing positions.
Few adults have left and right feet that are exactly the same size, so don't be surprised if you have to try on quite a few pairs of shoes to find the ones that fit just right. In the event that one foot is half a size to a whole size larger than the other, you'll want footwear that accommodates the larger foot. There are accessories, commonly available in drugstores and discount stores, to snug down the larger shoe so it fits on your smaller foot.
*Illustrations and photo courtesy of The Brannock Device® Co. Inc.
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