How to Choose the Right Necklace - handmade gifts

A Complete, Easy to Use Guide to Choosing the Right Necklace for Women

Choosing a necklace, whether for yourself as a gift for somebody else can be a little daunting with so many styles and lengths available.

It’s especially difficult if the necklace will be a gift, knowing if a specific length or style will suit somebody else can be difficult to judge.

The key to finding the right necklace length is to consider the persons physical attributes first to discover the most flattering length of necklace.

I have created an easy to use guide which can help you choose the correct length of necklace based on either a specific physical attribute or the outfit it will be worn with.

To make life easier for you, each necklace available from my shop has the necklace name and length in the description along with the illustration guide below so you can easily decide if the necklace you are viewing is right for your needs.

6 Main Necklace Lengths for Women

depicts necklaces of different lengths on model

There are six main lengths of women’s necklace which have specific names, of course there will be necklaces which have lengths that fall in between these main categories but these are the most common lengths and fall into specific style categories.

Necklace Suitability Guide

The table below details the most common necklace lengths and body attributes. It also shows which style of top/dress the necklace length works best with and for which situation the length works well for too.

Necklace Style	Length Inches/CM	Placement on body	Accentuates	When/Where to wear it	Best Neckline	Height	Neck Type	Face Shape	Body Shape
Collar	12-13/30-33	Tightly around neck	Neck	Anything Anytime	Crew Scoop, V-Neck Off-the-shoulder Boat	Average	Long Thin	Oval Heart Square Rectangle	Athletic
Choker	14-16/36-41	Against base of neck	Neck	Anything Anytime	Asymetrical, Off-the-shoulder, Square Scoop Boat, Sweetheart, V-Neck, Strapless Crew	Short Average	Long Thin	Oval Long Heart Square Rectangular	Athletic
Princess	17-18/43-46	On or just below collarbone	Collarbone	Anything Anytime	Strapless Scoop Square Crew High necks Plunging	Short Average	Wide	Oval Long Heart Round Rectangle Diamond	Pear Athletic
Matinee	20-24/51-61	Between bust and collarbone	Bust Collarbone	Business Formal Casual	Plunging	Tall Average Short	Short Wide	Oval Round Diamond	Pear Athletic Hourglass
Opera	28-36/71-91	Just below bust	Height Bust	Evening	High neck	Tall Average	Wide	Oval Round	Athletic Inverted-Triangle
Rope	36-51/91-130	On or below waist	Height Bust	Business Evening	Sweetheart V-Neck, High necks	Tall Average	Wide	Oval Round	Athletic Inverted-Triangle

How Necklace Length is Measured

The length of a necklace is measured from end-to-end including the clasp. The example below measures 38cm long so it is a choker length necklace.

Adjustable Length Necklaces

Some of my necklace designs have adjustable lengths and as such may fall into two length categories depending on the length you choose to wear it at. I will detail the maximum and minimum lengths and the associating names for these two sizes in the product description.

The green necklace pictured below is adjustable so I have classified it as princess and matinee lengths.

The minimum length is princess and the matinee classification was chosen because the maximum length of the necklace is closer to “matinee” than “opera” and can be worn at the shorted matinee length.

Extra Tips

Some other things to consider when choosing a necklace:

Ladies with very long necks can opt for a wide choker style.
Ladies with short necks can elongate the neck area by wearing necklaces with a dropped neckline and fine chokers are also good.
Slim boned ladies can wear long beaded necklaces.

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How to choose the right colours for you

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