Wide Fit Walking Shoes: What the Width Letters Mean

If you have ever ordered a wide shoe that did not feel wide, the explanation may not be the shoe. It may be that the letter on the box is not a measurement at all.

It is a ratio — how wide your foot is compared to how long it is. Which means the same letter, at a different length, is a different number of inches.

Three rows from one published chart

Here are three sizes from the women’s width chart published by Blitzresults, quoted as printed:

US size	Narrow (AA)	Average (B)	Wide (C/D)	Extra-Wide (E)
5	2 13/16”	3 3/16”	3 9/16”	3 15/16”
8	3 3/16”	3 9/16”	3 15/16”	4 5/16”
11	3 9/16”	3 15/16”	4 5/16”	4 11/16”

Look at the two bolded cells. A size 5 in Extra-Wide and a size 11 in Average are the same width: 3 15/16 inches. One of those boxes says extra-wide. The other says standard. The feet inside them measure the same across the ball.

That is not a mistake in the chart. It is what the letter is for. A foot of 3 15/16 inches is unusually broad on a size 5 foot and perfectly ordinary on a size 11 one, and the letter is reporting that comparison rather than the width itself.

A second chart, same mechanism

The chart published by Healthy Feet Store is built differently — it runs from Super Slim out to 9X Wide — and it does the same thing:

US size	Medium	Wide	Extra Wide
5	3 3/16”	3 5/16”	3 7/16”
7	3 7/16”	3 9/16”	3 11/16”
8	3 9/16”	3 11/16”	3 13/16”

Size 5 Extra Wide and size 7 Medium: both 3 7/16 inches. Two charts, built by different people, showing the same relationship.

Both of those comparisons are ours, and they are arithmetic on the numbers those two pages publish. We are not claiming anything about charts we did not read.

And the two charts do not agree with each other

Here is the part that makes “just buy a 2E” unreliable advice. Take women’s size 8 on both charts:

Wide: 3 15/16” on the Blitzresults chart, 3 11/16” on the Healthy Feet Store chart.
Extra-wide: 4 5/16” against 3 13/16”.

That is a half-inch disagreement on what extra-wide means at a single size. Not a rounding difference — half an inch across the ball of the foot is the difference between a shoe that fits and one that does not.

So there is no industry answer to “how many inches is a 2E.” There are published charts, they are free to read, and the two we read disagree.

The same letter changes meaning between the men’s and women’s charts

One more thing worth knowing before you shop across the aisle. The Healthy Feet Store chart maps manufacturers’ letters onto named classes, and the mapping is not the same for both:

On its women’s chart, Medium covers B, M, MW, R and Wide covers D, E, 2E, EE, W.
On its men’s chart, Medium covers D, M, MW, R and Wide covers E, 2E, EE, W.

A D is the standard width on the men’s chart and a wide on the women’s. If you have ever been told to size into men’s shoes for more room, that is the mechanism behind the advice — and also the reason it is easy to overshoot.

Where the letters come from

The letters are not unique to one brand. A printable Brannock sizing chart — published by a running retailer, which notes it is “based on Brannock Device used in our retail locations” — prints the shared sequence 3A 2A A B C D E 2E 3E on a bar you slide against the side of your foot, with the instruction to “Align inside of foot on line for proper width determination.”

Note what that instruction implies: you read the letter off a scale positioned against your length. The device was built around the same relationship the charts show. The letter was never meant to travel on its own.

The scale does not stop at 4E

If you have been told that 4E is as wide as shoes get, that is a statement about what is easy to buy, not about the scale.

The Healthy Feet Store chart runs to fourteen named classes, from Super Slim out to 9X Wide, and publishes which manufacturers’ letters land in each one. Extra Wide covers EEE, 3W, 3E, 4E, X, XW; above that the chart lists 5E and 6E as 2X Wide, 7E and 8E as 3X Wide, and carries on to 19E + at the far end.

Whether shoes exist in those classes in the model you want is a different question, and often the answer is no. But the vocabulary exists, the chart gives an inch figure for every one of those classes at every size, and knowing the names is what lets you ask a specialist retailer a precise question instead of a hopeful one.

What to do with this

Measure the width across the ball of your foot in inches, not in letters. Our guide to how to measure foot size at home covers doing this on paper, including why both feet need doing.
Look that number up against your length, on a chart, rather than asking what letter you “are.”
Check the chart belonging to whoever you are buying from, because the two we read differ by half an inch at the same size and label.

That last step is the one that saves returns, and it is the same habit that turns any marketing adjective into something checkable — the way a published seat measurement does for a wide office chair. Which sneakers to put that number against is the subject of our guide to walking sneakers for wide feet.

What we have not done

We have not measured any shoes, and nothing here ranks brands. We read two published width charts and one printable Brannock chart; both retail charts are named and linked above so you can check the current figures yourself. We tried to add a major manufacturer’s own width chart and could not retrieve it, so no manufacturer’s numbers appear here — only the two charts we could actually read.

Frequently asked questions

Does a width letter mean the same measurement in every shoe size?

No — on both published width charts we read, the letter scales with length. On the chart published by Blitzresults, a women's size 5 in Extra-Wide (E) and a women's size 11 in Average (B) are both 3 15/16 inches across. Same width in inches, opposite labels. The letter tells you how wide a foot is relative to its length, which is why it cannot be read without the size next to it.

Is a D width wide or medium?

It depends which chart you are reading. The width chart published by Healthy Feet Store groups letters into named classes, and D appears under Medium on its men's chart and under Wide on its women's chart. So the same letter on the same shoe wall can mean the standard width or the wide one, depending on whose foot it was cut for.

How do I find my own width letter?

Measure across the ball of your foot in inches, then look that number up against your shoe length on a published width chart — not against the letters alone. Because the charts we read disagree with each other by as much as half an inch at the same size and label, it is worth checking the number against the chart of the brand or retailer you are actually buying from.