Not sure what her finger ring size actually is? These tips from our company will help you answer the question "What is her ring size?" without tipping her off about your plan for a surprise ring gift!
How to Secretly Find Out Her Ring Size
"I want to buy her an engagement ring, but I don't know her finger size. I don't want to ask her. That would ruin the surprise. Help!"
Sound familiar?
It's a common problem for men all over the world - probably not as common as finding a good parking spot at the mall on a Sunday afternoon, but that’s because you can shop til you drop but for all intents and purposes the gift of an engagement ring is meant to be a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing rather than an every-other-weekend kind of thing.
Although we have encountered a lot of couples where the men allow their girlfriends to shop for their own engagement rings (for fear of screwing up and choosing something awful ugly), still there are more than a few traditional blokes who take on this task themselves, wanting the whole thing to be a surprise to their lady loves (totally old school!).
Now, if you're among these increasingly endangered species of male husband-to-be, one of the problems you'll surely encounter is knowing your girlfriend's ring size so you can buy the perfect engagement ring.
Of course, you can't ask her outright. If you could, you wouldn't be reading this now, would you?
So, how are you going to find out what her ring size it without her realizing what you're up to?
Here are 7 tips on how you can accomplish your mission, should you choose to accept it:
- The easiest way would be to "borrow" one of her existing rings you know to fit and have it measured. Of course, you need to do this in secret. Be careful though - if you get caught, it would appear you're trying to steal her jewelry and she could dump you right then and there. Then who would you buy an engagement ring for?
What are you looking for? The easiest thing to get is the millimeters in diameter, which is the distance from one edge of the interior of the ring to the other interior edge across the widest middle of a circle.
With that, any jeweler can tell you what her ring size is in any of the ring sizing systems around the world (yes, though we show our rings as United States sizes on our website by default, there are multiple international systems for ring sizing).
- Maybe the worst way would be to hold her hand and observe which of your fingers comes closest to the size of her ring finger (maybe your pinky), then have that measured. This may not work, though, if you've got really large hands and your girlfriend has small ones -- or the other way around. We include this option because it can be a possible way to get a ring that probably fits-- assuming you know she'll likely have to take it off after you put it on her...to get it re-sized more accurately.
In all honesty, we’ve worked with men who could really only get themselves to do this step, and in most cases they ended up having to get the ring re-sized after the proposal or other gift giving (just as we warned them). The point here is to create a point of comparison so you can do your best to guess a close enough estimate, but don’t expect this tip to get top results.
- If she's a deep sleeper, measure her finger with a thin strip of paper. Make sure it's not wound too tightly (the loop should pass through her knuckles easily). Cut the paper (or mark it) to the correct size and bring it to a jeweler for measurement-- or simply measure in millimeters the length of the paper that equates to around her finger. This works pretty well. When you are measuring this way, you want to get the circumference-- the distance around-- her ring finger. With that number, we can get the diameter by dividing by 3.14.
diameter = circumference/3.14 (and with the diameter, any jeweler can help you know her closest ring size).
What do you do if she suddenly wakes up while you have a paper looped around her finger? Well, it's time for some quick thinking! You can plan to do one of two things: a) pretend you're doing a prank and planned to tie her finger to the post of the bed or to your dog's tail; or b) say “I was holding your hand while you were sleeping and felt this paper so I'm taking it off or it might cut you. It must have come from your nightgown or something, want some coffee?" (If it's still the middle of the night, you can leave that last part off). Sure that second one seems like gibberish, but since when are you totally clear upstairs when you just woke up suddenly?
- Secretly ask a friend of hers who has any ring to say something like, "I just am not sure if I love this ring, can you try it on your finger so I can see how it looks on another hand?...". Ask the friend to give you some feedback on if it was big enough that it didn't get stuck on a knuckle, and fit at least well enough to use as the proposal ring (you can always size it smaller if needed later). Just don't let your friend with much larger fingers do this or her ring might look like a small bracelet on your girlfriend-- and tell you nothing of value for the trouble.
- Ask a college friend of hers to pretend to be buying her a college ring as a 2-for-1 deal with her own college ring because "we're offered this awesome deal by some jeweler" or similar. Obviously, she needs to know your girlfriend's ring size (then the friend can just say later that the deal with the jeweler is off for some reason). This might work if she went to college. And if she has friends that don't mind telling a white lie whopper on your behalf. And if that friend can keep her mouth zipped so as not to ruin your surprise. Lots of ifs.
Really, there are better ways unless you're desperate-- but we've talked men through this one if she isn't a big ring wearer already with a ring you can "borrow" to get measured. See #1. See #3.
- If you're an artistic person, create a plaster cast sculpture of your hands holding each other (you can find videos of this on Youtube) and use that for measurement (remember you want the diameter, which you can get by measuring the distance around her ring finger, circumference, and then divide that by 3.14).
She won’t suspect the reason you wanted to plaster cast her hands. You can even make the finished plaster cast sculpture as a gift for her. Then when you're married, you can use it as a mantelpiece decoration. Cool, huh? This is the coolest and smoothest in our expert opinion. But if you’re not artistic, probably better to choose any of the options above.
- Ask her mom. Then swear mom to silence. Good luck with that!
When measuring her finger, you can always use a paper, mark it and then match that up against a ruler. Honestly it's not the most accurate way to measure because there is a ton of room for error. If you want to be official and "high-tech", we can help you out with an at-home ring sizer kit (free for paid customers, email/call for discount code to change cost for this product to $0.00).
Need extra help? We got you.
Just use the contact form on this page-- below or to the right-- to let us know.
Trying to figure out your own ring size? Check out our ring size and ring sizing resources here.