How tight should dress shirt cuffs fit?
The cuff should fit comfortably around your wrist but be tight enough that when buttoned it doesn’t slide over your hand. A proper fitting cuff is just as important as proper sleeve length to insure that the sleeve comes to the right point on the hand. Our general rule of thumb is that the cuff size should be ~1.75” larger than the measurement of your wrist tight to the skin.
Cuff size on barrel vs French cuff style cuffs
The way we size our shirt cuffs, you should be able to switch between French (fold back) and barrel style cuffs without needing to adjust the cuff size. Generally speaking, the way we design our button and buttonhole placements on cuffs the same size should work equally well with both styles. However, keep in mind that the style of cufflinks used to close the French cuffs can make a big difference in how tight the cuffs feel. Some cufflinks will squeeze the cuffs closed very tight whereas others will keep them very loose.
Accommodating a watch
If you have a watch that needs accommodating, you can increase that cuff size separately using the watch allowance option.
Caution: French cuffs and slim fitting blazers
If you’re having French cuffs, one extra thing to check is to make sure the cuff fits through the sleeve opening of your blazer smoothly. Modern, slimmer blazers can have narrow sleeve openings that will hook on a French cuff if it is too large. In these cases, decreasing your cuff size by .25” or .5” might be useful to ensure a good fit.