Product Review: SmartWool Socks

Dis­claimer: This is NOT a paid-per-post blog entry. I am NOT a paid-per-post blog­ger. This prod­uct opin­ion, and all opin­ions expressed on this blog, is most cer­tainly biased (based on my own expe­ri­ences) but is not influ­enced by the man­u­fac­turer or sup­plier of the prod­uct nor is it pur­chased by any third party.

Whether it’s due to the fact that I’m a Leo or just sim­ply the way I am, I tend to be a very loyal per­son. But my loy­alty is nei­ther eas­ily won nor blindly main­tained. I’m not a girly-girl and I’m not a brand-hound so bling and labels have no intrin­sic value. My cri­te­ria has to do with a product’s prac­ti­cal­ity, value, dura­bil­ity, qual­ity, inge­nu­ity, and main­te­nance requirements.

For my first Prod­uct Review post, I’m shar­ing one of our favorite cloth­ing prod­ucts: Smart­Wool socks. I love Smart­Wool socks and the only fam­ily mem­ber not fully out­fit­ted in Smart­Wool is The Husband.

Smart­Wool offers a huge vari­ety of styles with sock heights rang­ing from knee-highs to footies and sock cush­ion­ing rang­ing from super thin to extra heavy cushy.

My pre­ferred style is the mini crew with medium cush­ion­ing. I like the short length as it allows me to wear wool socks 8 or 9 months out of the year with­out the added warmth on my calves. Also, I like my socks to have a fairly sub­stan­tial inner cush­ion because I spend a great deal of time walk­ing around shoe­less on our wooden floors at home. The medium cush­ion and gen­tle com­pres­sion of the socks help ease the chronic foot and leg pain I expe­ri­ence as a symp­tom of Fibromyal­gia. SmartWool’s medium cush­ion socks pro­vide just enough cush­ion­ing with­out adding unpleas­ant or annoy­ing bulk in my every­day shoes.

The Son prefers SmartWool’s hik­ing socks. These are crew-length socks with medium cush­ion­ing. In the early years of buy­ing Smart­Wools, before I fig­ured out the dif­fer­ences in the styles of socks, we pur­chased sev­eral pair of Light Hik­ing socks, not to be con­fused with Hik­ing socks. The Hik­ing socks that The Son prefers have cush­ion­ing loops all the way up the calf whereas the Light Hik­ers have cush­ion­ing in the footbed only and stan­dard ribknit uppers.

Like me, The Son wears his Smart­Wool socks nearly year-round. The wool absorbs mois­ture and allows for very nat­ural, healthy breath­ing of the skin.

The Daugh­ter, odd ball that she is, prefers an ultra light­weight footie style. They pro­vide just the per­fect bal­ance of warmth and breatha­bil­ity for her with­out adding any bulk — these socks are as thin as any ultra-lightweight cot­ton footie she owns. The Daugh­ter has a much shorter Smart­Wool wear­ing sea­son than do her brother and I but she does really value her few pair dur­ing the win­ter months.

Smart­Wools socks are extremely well-made and durable. Although we’ve had to pass down many pair over the years because they’ve been out-grown, we have yet to retire a pair for being worn out. This is a sig­nif­i­cant acheive­ment in longevity if you con­sider that I’ve had some of these pair for at least 6 or 7 years and they get daily wear on our floors. The Son and I both have a few pair that are get­ting thin but none that have com­pletely giv­ing up the ghost.

Another great advan­tage to these socks is their low main­te­nance. Wool, unlike cot­ton, doesn’t need to be washed after each wear. I can usu­ally get three days out of each of my pair of socks. I encour­age The Son to change his every other day as he’s a stinky teenaged boy who fre­quently plays hard in his socks.

Wash­ing is easy — I let the dirty socks col­lect in a spe­cial laun­dry bas­ket and wash many pair at once. I put them in the machine and wash on the gentle/handwash cycle in cold water with a cold water rinse using wool soap from the local yarn shop. Smart­Wool says the socks can be machine dried (see more below) but I pre­fer to hang dry. They dry very eas­ily overnight on a great lit­tle plas­tic drip-dry multi-clip hanger I found a few years ago.

Make no mis­take, Smart­Wool socks aren’t cheap — typ­i­cally $12.95 — $15.95. But in my expe­ri­ence, they’re worth every penny — espe­cially since I never buy them full-priced (more on that in just a minute). Sev­eral years ago I let an REI employee talk me into try­ing REI’s cheaper Smart­Wool wannabe socks. I’m a huge fan of REI and their house-brand prod­ucts but that one pair of REI socks was the first and last pair I ever bought. The REI socks are denser and less flex­i­ble. They are sim­ply wool socks; they pro­vide none of the “walk­ing on a cloud” expe­ri­ence I get with the Smart­Wool socks.

My two favorite sources for Smart­Wools are REI and Sierra Trad­ing Post* (affil­i­ate link). I have found a few pair at Mar­shalls or T.J. Maxx (I can’t remem­ber which) a year or two ago but haven’t see them since. Thanks to the excel­lent sales I’ve found over the years, I’ve grad­u­ally been able to go from hav­ing a few pair worn on extra cold or snowy days to hav­ing a full wardrobe of socks for both The Son and I.

Siz­ing Tip: The Smart­Wool siz­ing guide assumes that the socks will be dried in a clothes dryer. If you use a dryer, go by the siz­ing chart. If you hang dry, buy one size smaller.

Accord­ing to the siz­ing chart, my size 10’s would require a size Large. But I pre­fer to hang dry my socks so I adjust my siz­ing accord­ingly and usu­ally buy size Medium. But this sizing/shrinking issue gives me a lit­tle extra wig­gle room when I’m bar­gain hunt­ing — if size Large is the only size avail­able or had a bet­ter selec­tion of col­ors, just a sin­gle trip through the dryer shrinks the socks down to the right size. And this shrink­ing process does not felt or oth­er­wise affect the feel of the socks.

Wash­ing Tip: I picked this tip up sev­eral years ago from a very help­ful REI employee. The best way to wash your Smart­Wool socks (and arguably all of your socks) is to wash them inside out. This allows the skin and oils to be released into the water and washed away instead of being trapped inside the socks and locked deep into the inner cush­iony loops.

image cred­its: REI and Eliz­a­beth

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