Buying shoes for a growing kid is mostly a sizing problem. Feet change fast, the numbers jump between “little kid,” “big kid,” and youth, and once your child is near the top of the kids’ range, the best-fitting pair is often a women’s or men’s size. This guide shows you how to measure at home and convert a kids’ size to women’s and men’s, so you can shop every pair we carry, not just the kids’ rack.
How to measure your kid’s foot at home
You need a sheet of paper, a pen, a ruler, and two minutes.
- Measure in the evening. Feet swell over the day, so an end-of-day measurement keeps you from buying too small.
- Put the paper flat against a wall. Have your child stand on it, heel to the wall, with weight on the foot.
- Mark the tip of the longest toe, then measure from the wall edge to that mark in centimeters.
- Measure both feet and use the larger number. Add about 0.5 cm of growing room, enough to last without being so much that they trip.
Foot length in centimeters is the one measurement that works across every brand, which is why we lead with it. US size numbers shift from brand to brand; the centimeter length doesn’t.
Kids to women’s and men’s size conversion
Here’s the approximate conversion for US big-kid (youth) sizes. Treat it as a starting point, then confirm against the size chart on the specific shoe’s product page.
| US Big Kid (Youth) | Foot length | US Women’s | US Men’s |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3.5Y | ~22.0 cm | 5 | n/a |
| 4Y | ~22.4 cm | 5.5 | n/a |
| 4.5Y | ~22.9 cm | 6 | n/a |
| 5Y | ~23.3 cm | 6.5 | n/a |
| 5.5Y | ~23.7 cm | 7 | 5.5 |
| 6Y | ~24.1 cm | 7.5 | 6 |
| 6.5Y | ~24.5 cm | 8 | 6.5 |
| 7Y | ~25.0 cm | 8.5 | 7 |
Two rules of thumb: a women’s size runs about 1.5 sizes up from the same-length youth size (a 7Y is roughly a women’s 8.5), and a youth size is about the same number as the men’s size where the two ranges overlap (a 7Y is roughly a men’s 7). Men’s shoes generally start around a 6–7, so only the largest kids’ sizes cross into men’s. These are approximations, and brands can vary by up to half a size, so measure and check the chart before you buy.
Why this matters for back to school
Our kids’ selection is focused, but bigger kids and teens often fit best in a women’s or men’s pair, which opens up hundreds more options. The same Samba, Campus, Superstar, and running silhouettes come in adult sizing. If your child wears a 6Y–7Y, check the women’s and men’s listings too; you’ll usually find more colorways and more sizes to choose from.
Start with the Back to School collection and the full Kids collection. For bigger kids sizing up, browse women’s and men’s shoes and use the chart above to land on the right size.
A quick fit checklist
Once the shoes arrive, check the fit the same day: there should be about a thumb’s width of space between the longest toe and the end of the shoe, the heel shouldn’t slip when they walk, and the shoe should feel secure without pinching across the top. Growing room is good; a shoe they slide around in is not.
Verified, and shipped from Portland
Every pair we sell is authenticated and shipped from our Portland warehouse, usually the next business day. If a size runs off, returns are simple, so it’s low-risk to measure, order your best guess, and adjust.
A few kids’ pairs worth starting with:
Why buy from West Coast Deals?
Fair question, and you shouldn't take our word for it. Any seller can claim they're reputable. What matters is whether independent, public feedback backs it up, so here is where to look, none of it on a page we control.
- Judge.me: our customer reviews are rated 4.9 out of 5 on Judge.me, a third-party platform. Reviews are tied to verified orders, and the negative ones are still up because we don't remove them.
- Whatnot: we stream live nearly every day to 150,000+ followers, with 224,000+ units sold and 46,700+ reviews on our Whatnot storefront.
- TikTok Shop: another 86,200+ units sold and 9,150+ reviews on TikTok.
That adds up to more than 310,000 pairs shipped and over 55,000 public reviews from customers who actually paid us. It's timestamped, it's on platforms we don't own, and we can't delete any of it.
The live selling is the part we'd weigh most heavily if we were you. Streaming nearly every day means our staff hold real product up to a camera in front of a live chat that can ask anything and screenshot everything. Sneakerheads are not a forgiving audience. If we were moving replicas, it would take about one stream for someone to freeze-frame a stitch pattern and post it. We've been selling since 2017 out of our own 25,000 square foot warehouse at 2555 NW Nicolai Street in Portland, Oregon, which is a real address you can look up.
We go through the whole business in is West Coast Deals legit, including how to run the same check on any sneaker seller.
Why are the prices under retail?
This is the question underneath the legit question. When a pair here costs less than it does at retail, people reasonably wonder whether the gap is hiding something. It isn't the shoe.
Every season, brands and retailers end up holding product that didn't sell through: overstock, past-season colorways, closeout runs, canceled orders. That inventory moves through wholesale and liquidation channels to buyers who purchase in volume and take it as-is. We hold wholesale accounts and buy directly from retailers, distributors, and brand partners. What you're saving is the retail markup and the seasonal calendar, not authenticity. Same shoe, sourced through authorized channels.
We don't buy from consignors, we don't take trades, and we don't run a marketplace where a stranger ships you a box. There is no third-party seller between you and us, which removes the single most common source of counterfeit risk in this industry. The longer version is in why everything at West Coast Deals is under retail, every day.
More sizing help: our school shoes buying guide and the back to school shoes guide for 2026.
— Anthony from West Coast Deals