Sizing a child for snow, without standing in a shop

Why this site leads with size charts

Sizing a child for snow is the problem families actually have, and it is the one the industry answers worst. Search for a children’s helmet size and you get a table of ages, which is useless: two seven-year-olds can be four centimeters apart in head circumference, and four centimeters is a whole size.

So every chart on this site is built on a measurement you take yourself, at home, with a tape measure or a pencil and a wall. Age appears only as context. The three charts are helmet size by head circumference, ski length by height and weight, and boot size by foot length in millimeters.

How much room to leave for growing

The honest answer differs by item, and lumping them together is where most advice goes wrong:

• Helmet: none. Buy the size that fits now. Look for a dial adjuster with a published range instead, which is how one helmet covers two seasons of growth without ever being loose.
• Boots: half a size at most. A ski boot is a steering control. A boot with room in it turns a child’s day into a fight with the equipment.
• Skis: a real range exists. Ski length is chosen against a band, not a point, so choosing the upper end of the band buys a season. The chart shows the band.
• Jackets and pants: a full size is fine, and reinforced knees and adjustable cuffs make it more than fine.

What is worth buying for someone who will outgrow it

This is the arithmetic families come here for, and we run it on the buy versus rent page in full. The short version, computed on our published convention of two seasons at five days each:

• Buy the helmet and the goggles. A youth helmet with a rotational liner is around $110, which is $11 a day, and rental helmets fit worst of all the rental items because they have been adjusted by hundreds of other heads.
• Buy the socks, base layer and gloves. Nobody rents these and they get worn all winter regardless of skiing.
• Rent the skis and boots unless the child skis a lot. Many resorts and shops run seasonal lease programs that swap sizes mid-season for free, which beats every purchase option for a growing child.
• Clothing is genuinely borderline. The clothing page runs it properly, including the part where a second child changes the answer.

The second-child multiplier

Every cost-per-day figure on this site is computed for one wearer. If a jacket goes on to a younger sibling, halve it. If it goes to two, divide by three. This is the single biggest lever in family ski gear economics and nobody publishes it, because it is the calculation that most often says do not buy the expensive one.

One thing that is not gear

A child who is cold, or in a boot that does not fit, will not enjoy a lesson no matter how good the instructor is. Almost every reported case of a child hating skiing traces back to hands, feet or a badly fitted boot. Getting those three right is worth more than every other decision on this page combined, which is why gloves and boot sizing get their own pages.

Where the children’s picks live

Deliberately, not on this page. A children’s helmet roundup lives in the helmets section, children’s goggles in goggles, children’s jackets in outerwear. Keeping each category’s picks on one path means a single page carries the depth rather than two near-duplicates competing with each other. They are all tiled above.