Piercing terms can be SUPER confusing, and all the time I hear people ask what a "gauge" is! In this week's blog I'm going to teach you everything you need to know about the gauge of your piercing. Soon enough you'll be able to eyeball it!
The gauge of your piercing is simply a term used to describe the thickness of the metal that goes through the piercing itself. You may see this indicated by "g", "G" or"ga".
Here the arrows are pointing at where the gauge would be measured on these jewelry types on some of our jewelry favorites!
Gauges are important because if the bar on your jewelry is thicker than the hole in your ear or belly or wherever your piercing is, you will not be able to wear the jewelry!
So simply put, the different gauges convert to millimeter measurements that you can find in this conversion chart:
| 20 Gauge | .8mm |
| 18 Gauge | 1mm |
| 16 Gauge | 1.2mm |
| 14 Gauge | 1.6mm |
| 12 Gauge | 2mm |
The higher the "gauge" the smaller the thickness is. 12 gauge is usually the largest you will see in body piercings, unless you are working with stretched piercings!
Theoretically you could just lay your jewelry on a ruler and measure it and be good to go, but unfortunately its not always easy to measure! If you cannot tell the thickness with your eyes and a ruler, with a caliper you would be able to accurately measure it yourself- otherwise it is best to seek the guidance of your piercer to determine the gauge of your piercing. Usually every piercer has a "standard" that they use for each piercing, so you could just call the shop and ask what gauge they normally do that piercing with.
With this being said, it is possible to stretch your piercings to a larger gauge! If you're interested in this you can learn how in last week's blog post. If your piercing is healed, you can easily wear smaller gauge jewelry in it- just keep in mind that if you leave it in for too long the hole may shrink down to that gauge depending on where it is located.
I hope this is helpful to you guys!
Until next week,
Kourtney 🖤