Violin size chart

How to measure

1. 1

   Extend the left arm straight out to the side

   Arm straight, parallel to the floor, palm facing up. Not reaching, not stretching — just extended naturally with the shoulder relaxed.

2. 2

   Measure from the base of the neck to the middle of the palm

   Start where the neck meets the left shoulder. Finish at the center of the open palm, not at the fingertips. A flexible tape measure is easiest; a piece of string measured afterwards works fine.

3. 3

   Read the size from the table below

   The arm length is the primary number. Age and height are useful cross-checks and nothing more.

4. 4

   If between two sizes, take the smaller

   This is the standard advice from every string teacher and it is worth stating plainly. Corilon puts it as the reverse of buying clothes: an undersized instrument is preferable to an oversized one.

The size table

Where the published charts disagree, and by how much

Sizing conventions are not standardized, and it is more useful to say so than to publish a single number and imply precision that does not exist.

Violin Lounge maps a 1/2 violin to roughly a 20-inch arm and ages 7 to 9. Corilon maps a 1/2 to an arm length of 500 to 570 mm — 19.7 to 22.4 inches — and ages 6 to 9. The two overlap substantially and disagree at the edges: Corilon’s upper bound for a 1/2 (22.4 in) is above Violin Lounge’s figure for a 3/4 (22 in).

What this means practically: a child measuring 22 inches is genuinely on a boundary, and either size is defensible. Take the smaller one, and if a teacher is involved, ask them — they can see how the child holds the instrument, which no chart can.

The physical check, which beats the chart

If the instrument is available, this takes thirty seconds and settles it.

1. Have the student hold the violin in playing position, under the chin, with the left arm supporting the neck.
2. Ask them to curl their fingers around the scroll at the very end of the instrument.
3. They should be able to reach it with a slight bend at the elbow. If the arm is locked straight or the shoulder lifts, the violin is too large. If there is a lot of slack in the elbow, it is too small.

Why oversizing is worse than undersizing

On too large a violin, the left hand cannot reach first position without the wrist bending inward and the shoulder rising. From that position, intonation is inconsistent no matter how carefully the student listens, vibrato is impossible later, and the tension becomes a habit that has to be undone.

On too small a violin, the student is slightly cramped and everything still works. Tone is a little thinner. Nothing about technique is damaged. Given that asymmetry, the smaller instrument is the safe choice every time.

How often the size changes

A child starting at six typically moves through three or four sizes before reaching a full-size instrument, roughly every 12 to 24 months during growth years. Each move is a purchase or an exchange, which is the single strongest argument for renting rather than buying — the violin rent-vs-buy page runs the numbers.