Rings are all the rage these days. You can hardly scroll on Instagram or Tiktok without seeing women with heavily-decorated hands.
If you’ve never worn rings before but want to, start with one ring you really love and then build your ring collection around that. Once you have more than one ring in your collection, then it’s time to think about how to match your jewelry pieces together.
We want to help you with that, which is why we’ve written this guide to help you style rings.
Understand the Meanings of Each Finger
While we all know the second finger on the left hand is the “engagement” and “wedding” ring finger, it’s not the only finger with symbolic significance.
Each finger has its own meaning, whether you choose to buy into that idea or not. Outside of marriage-finger meanings (which differ by culture), finger significance comes from eastern medicine and palmistry beliefs.
All finger meanings below assume the wearer is right-handed:
- Right thumb: Ambition, willpower, assertion
- Left thumb: inner conflict
- Right index: Leadership, confidence, self-esteem
- Left index: willing team member
- Both middle fingers: responsibility, head of the family
- Right ring: capability
- Left ring: relationship
- Right pinky: negotiation, communication with others
- Left pinky: good internal communication, self-awareness
Like we said above, you can choose to read into these finger meanings or not. Sometimes you get a ring, and it only fits on a particular finger. Maybe that ring pre-decided what it should mean to you, or it’s random. You get to decide.
Rings on Every Other Finger
If you’re going to wear multiple rings, you can either space them out over your hand or stack them. We’ll go over tips for stacking rings next.
A good rule of thumb (get it?) is to wear a ring on every other finger. That way, each ring can be appreciated, and they don’t clang into each other.
Alternatively, you can mirror your rings on each hand, so one on your left pinky, one on your right, and so on.
If you’re mixing ring metals, like silver and gold, alternate these as well, or keep one hand silver and the other gold (like the Girlscouts’ song).
You should space your smaller rings next to your more oversized rings so that the sizes balance out. Otherwise, your rings may look overwhelming and gypsy-like.
Stacking Rings
Wondering how to style rings if you have multiple? Try stacking them together. Some ring sets come pre-styled for stacking.
If you’re going to stack your rings on one finger, you want to keep balancing bigger rings with smaller ones. The tops of your fingers are skinnier than the bottoms, so you can wear rings that don’t usually fit that finger higher up in your stack.
Try not to mix metals on each finger or stick to one base color like rose gold and gold or silver and platinum.
How to Style Rings to Match Your Personal Style: It’s Up to You
If you like to wear jewelry, how you style rings is completely up to you. Just like the “rule” that you can’t wear white after labor day, these are more traditional guidelines than style laws.
For more tips on the different styles of jewelry and how to build your personal jewelry style, follow our fashion site.
