Ring Thickness vs. Width: What’s the Difference?

We understand that most guys out there haven’t spent a lot of time rocking rings. Unless you’re one of those dudes who wears his class ring or you happened to be on the 2018 Boston Red Sox or something and proudly rock your World Series ring, chances are, you’ve never worn any finger jewelry.  

And when you come in flying blind, every little bit of info regarding men’s wedding bands might hit you with the nose-pinching stank of mumbo jumbo. That’s fully understandable. You can trust that we aren’t here to give your ignorant a$$ s&$t for not knowing the ins and outs of the ring game. Quite the contrary — we’re here to help you sort through every aspect of your acquisition so you end up with the perfect ring for you.

So let’s dip into an all-too-common question from guys on the hunt for their first ring: What in the hell is the difference between ring thickness and width? Are they perhaps the same damn thing? No, sir, they are not. Clarity, here we come. 

The Quick and Dirty (It’s Actually Pretty Clean)

Okay, so imagine you’re already rocking a wedding band on that ring finger of yours. Make a fist and look down at that big meaty hand. The width is the amount of ring you’d see looking back at you, all that metal — or wood, or bone, or meteorite — taking up space between your first and second knuckle. 

Pretty simple, right? 

And the thickness? That’s the amount of metal — or silicone, or antler — you see when you look at the ring from the side when you’re checking out its profile. 

Again, pretty simple, yeah? That’s all there is to it. Sometimes, refreshingly, the right answer is the obvious one. 

What Most Dudes Are Rocking 

So what widths and thicknesses do guys generally go with? 

Most fellas end up going with wedding bands between 6mm and 8mm wide. And once again, the width, gentlemen, is the surface area the ring takes up between your knuckles. But we can drop that width all the way down to 2mm and bump it all the way to a seriously wide 10mm. 

And the wider the width, the thicker the thickness. 

Here’s a quick look at the standard breakdown of our ring thicknesses. You’ll see the rings get thicker as they get wider: 

3mm-4mm: 1.9-2.0mm

5mm-6mm: 2.2-2.3mm

7mm-8mm: 2.3-2.4mm

But What’s My Ring Size???

Of course, we also realize that dudes simply have no clue what size ring is going to fit perfectly on their ring finger. And playing the guessing game is not the move here. You need precision, but you know we have you covered here, too. Check out this handy men’s ring sizing chart for tips on getting that size right. 

And not to toot our own horn (though we are indeed about to toot our own horn), but time and again, we’ve found our Manly Ring Sizer to be the most accurate/most efficient approach for getting that size just so. 

So there you go, fellas. We’re there to take all the mystery out of this wedding ring game. Of course, we’re also here to make sure you end up rocking the manliest possible wedding band.