Does Footwear Affect Slip Risk?

Yes, footwear affects slip risk, but it is only one of six factors that determine whether a floor is genuinely safe, and it should never be treated in isolation. The interaction between a shoe’s sole and the floor surface changes how much grip is available at any given moment, but the floor’s own measured slip resistance determines how much footwear variation an environment can safely handle. Blaming a slip on footwear alone usually overlooks the bigger picture.

The short why

Different soles interact with the same floor very differently, particularly once water, grease or other contamination is present. A tread pattern designed for dry conditions can behave completely differently on a wet tile. But footwear is only one input into a much larger equation, and in most public facing environments, it’s also the input you have the least control over.

Why footwear cannot be managed in isolation

In a retail or shopping centre environment, staff footwear can be specified and enforced, but customers and visitors wear whatever they choose. On any given day, that might mean trainers, sandals, high heels or wet weather boots, often within the same hour. A genuinely safe environment has to work across that entire range, not just the footwear you’d prefer people to wear.

We use a framework called CHIMES to explain what actually drives slip risk on any floor, and heel is just one of six interacting factors.

A floor with strong surface grip can handle a wide range of footwear safely. A floor with poor underlying grip can be dangerous even for sensible, well soled shoes, particularly once contamination is added to the mix.

Why blaming footwear after a slip rarely holds up

This is worth challenging directly, since it’s a common reaction after an incident. It’s easy to point to what someone was wearing and treat that as the explanation. In practice, footwear is rarely the whole story. A floor with genuinely poor slip resistance will still pose a risk to people in perfectly reasonable shoes, and a floor with strong measured grip can often absorb footwear that wouldn’t be considered ideal.

Looking at footwear in isolation, without knowing the floor’s actual slip resistance, is similar to assuming a floor is safe simply because it looks clean. Both approaches skip the one measurement that actually tells you what’s going on, a proper pendulum test producing a Pendulum Test Value, or PTV.

What good practice looks like

Rather than relying on footwear policy alone in public facing areas, the more reliable approach is to test the floor’s slip resistance directly and treat that as the baseline for what conditions it needs to handle safely. Organisations that measure and improve their floors to handle realistic footwear variation, rather than assuming everyone will wear ideal shoes, typically see incident reductions of 57 percent or more, based on data from Slip Safety Services across thousands of sites.

What to do about it

Start by testing the floors in your highest traffic public areas, since these are exactly the places where footwear variation is greatest and hardest to control. Use the result to understand how much margin the floor has, rather than assuming footwear alone explains any incidents that occur. Where staff footwear can genuinely be specified, such as in back of house areas, choose it with the actual floor conditions in mind rather than general assumptions about what counts as safe.

Take the next step

If you want to know whether your floors can genuinely handle the footwear variation your site sees every day, the Slip Risk Scorecard is a straightforward way to find out. For the full method behind measuring and improving slip resistance properly, Slipology sets it out in detail.

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