UKH

I mainly sport climb, so my reference for fitting shoes is on the tight side. Now I’m trying to size some shoes for grit trad and crack climbing but I feel blinded by what I think is a good fit for sport shoes. 

I've found some shoes where the shape feels good, and I'm inclined to say the half size smaller feels better, (little snug) and the bigger size feels 'big'- but I'm not sure if I'll be cursing that decision and actually the the bigger size isn't 'big' at all.

How comfy do people go? Can you wiggle your toes?

I'd like to find a balance between comfy for jamming and also still effective on grit, but I have no idea how big a shoe can be before it'll be a problem edging.

(I realise the shoes won't turn me into a pro, I'd just like to not be in pain but also be able to trust my feet on pebbles). 

It's more important to have good 'smearing' shoes for grit, your limestone shoes will still be fine for jamming.

To be honest I'd only bother with baggy, comfy shoes for long mountain routes where you'll have them on for ages 

Sadly my limestone shoes being small and downturned are agony jamming!

I understand the smearing is more important, but it’s the edging (or smedging?) I’m concerned about when it comes to size. Otherwise I’d happily just size up and smear away moccasym style. 

The shoes I’m looking at which fit well (after so many tried on) seem to fit the bill for grit while being low profile for cracks, (they’re the UP version of the Anasazi lace) I just don’t know how big they should be.

For grit crack shoes want pretty comfy, probs half size up from your sport shoes, maybe full size up from bouldering shoe. Means they also work well for smearing. If you go full size up can always wear socks which is good for protecting the ankle bone, keeping your feet warm and tucking into trousers, always a plus point for crack i think where i look at my foot jams a lot. Don't want curled toes at all in your crack boot, but also no baggyness in the end, as inevitably half of the route won't be crack, we don't really have pure splitters! 

About half a size up from your lime size is fine, comparatively speaking. 

Stiff shoes are good for finger cracks, softer shoes are good for bigger cracks and smearing. 

Don't be afraid of a little downturn as long as the shoe is softer - for example Skwama is really surprisingly good in cracks but also smears well. 

It's also important to have a good heel fit for offwidth, especially when you need to invert. Torquing the heel is a big part and I've had heels slip before when inverted. 

I wear Kataki for edging and thin cracks and Skwama for steep or wide. The S-Heel fits me very well. 

In terms of fit I don't go bigger for cracks because I lose the heel fit which is important. 

Obviously we're talking a performance fit here and easy stuff will go in basically anything 😉

Shoe choice make a huge difference IMO closer to your limit and is a very legitimate question. 

Mythos, and so both very comfortable and flat-toed (important for jamming). I've seconded grit 5c in Mythos and the shoe was definitely not the limiting factor. That said, I'm less happy with my current (female) pair than I was with my old (male) pair despite them being half a size smaller, and I can only put that down to the rubber difference (XS Grip instead of XS Edge). They feel less reassuring on small edges to me.

I am the punteriest punter punting though, so take my opinion with an appropriate pinch of salt.

Very.  I don't climb hard enough (E2 at a push) to justify uncomfortable feet.

Amazing, thanks all. There’s been some really good points here and just the points of view I was hoping for. Hadn’t occurred to me how handy socks might be in this situation too! 

Hard to size up from my limestone shoes being as they’re different makes, but good point about the softness of the shoe regardless of the downturn. 

I think this does leave me opting for the larger size, and I imagine my feet will probably thank me for that! Cheers all. 

Second this, same shoes for everything, all comfy AND resoled a number of times (E1 some time ago in the long distant past, when we could climb)

Seconded grit E4, lead E2 and bouldered f7a in shoes that are comfortable enough to wear all day. Boreal Jokers in my case, or Betas as I now have.. loving the Velcro.

I would approach your shoe choice from the other direction. If there's any chance you might try multi-pitch trad/sport, I would buy a pair of all-day comfortable shoes next.

Then amaze yourself at how good they are for all sorts of other climbing. You can go on to add other sorts of shoes on a 'when and if needed' basis.

Why not use an old pair of your limestone shoes. Ones that have lost some of their stiffness or shape.

For the sake of balance and without criticism of others and their valid choices: 

Every time one of these threads pops up, a hoard of people always come and post about how you should buy the comfiest shoes possible. Whilst it is of course important that you can wear your shoes without significant discomfort, buying shoes too big will simply lead to owning shoes which don't fit and thereby offer sub-par performance on rock. In turn, this limits your technique which limits your overall ability. 

I come at this from a somewhat different perspective in that I buy my shoes looking for performance, but in the end I have happily climbed multipitches up to 700m in shoes only 0.5 sizes bigger than my usual performance fit. With this in mind I'm always sceptical of anyone suggesting that it's necessary to size up 1-2 full sizes. Often these people tend to be thinking of objectives which are so straight forward in terms of technicality that good fit no longer plays a role - if this is you then by all means buy a very comfy slipper, but do understand it will limit the function considerably. This is just reality. 

If you're currently climbing E2 and would like to push your grade (especially onsight) then a well fitting, softer pair of shoes rather than an upsized pair is the way to go. If you want to compare sizes to your current shoes, I recommend using https://sizesquirrel.com/ which is an excellent resource. 

Hope this helps. 

If went 0.5 below my streetshoe size for blues used for mountain multipitch days and 1 size below for single pitch grit. FYI. The 1 size down took a bit of use before they were comfortable though.