The Best Plantar Fasciitis Shoes for Me

After some research and self-study, I found what were the best shoes for my case of plantar fasciitis. On this page you'll find what shoes worked well for me and what didn't work so well, how I knew what to buy, how I adjusted to them, and some tips on choosing the right footwear, since every foot is different.

Note: The footwear brands and models I've worn since I was diagnosed with plantar fasciitis all came in either wide widths or tended to be wide in their medium width.

The Shoes I Tried

Birkenstocks

I have many pairs of Birks.  They have very consistent footbeds, with major arch support, and the cork soles have just the right amount of bouncy support. Because of the firmness of the cork, they don't flatten or get squished as cushiony shoes do (SAS brand, for example), but they do still manage to give me good shock absorption for non-impact walking. High-impact sports, not so much. In fact, I got a stress fracture in my foot about ten years ago from wearing Birks to a dance.

Birkenstock makes different footbeds, but they're consistent within the lines.  I wear the Classic line mostly (moderate arch), but occasionally the Footprints line (lower arch) or the Papillio line (gentle-to-moderate arch).

I practically lived in my three-strap nubuck Florida sandal.  I wore the Paris shoe to work; it's a clog-like shoe with the Classic Birkenstock footbed with a back.  It's been discontinued; at least, they sort of still make the Paris style, but with a new "soft" footbed I haven't yet tried.  When you have plantar fasciitis, going barefoot is not recommended so I wore the waterproof Birkenstock Super Noppy sandal - this one is a massage sandal, and not for everyone.   I also bought a non-massage waterproof sandal that's slightly narrower than I'd like, but that still fits me with the straps adjusted.  It's pretty cheap for a Birkenstock and called the Birkenstock Atlantic sandal.  The Milano sandal was my sandal when I wanted a back strap.  For dressy occasions, I wore the Mary Jane style Annapolis shoe.  The casual Phoenix sandal (discontinued) and Santa Fe sandal (discontinued) became my favorite fisherman sandals.  After the Paris was discontinued, I wore the similar, though more masculine-looking, London shoe)

Ecco

The Ecco Alpha sandal (discontinued) was a fisherman-style leather shoe that had great cushioning.  It was wide enough for my foot and I loved it. Unfortunately, they stopped making it, so when mine wore out, that was it.

Dansko

I wore the widish Sonja clog.  Although it was okay, I didn't like the slightly raised heel that all Dansko clogs have, and I never could get used to being so  high above the ground - I was always afraid of tripping and falling. I would not really recommend them to anyone with ankles that had any weakness at all.

Chaco

I liked the Chaco Z2 Sandal, a sports sandal for when I needed to be more active, and was very glad it came in a wide width.  It had a great arch support and its special feature was a totally adjustable strap that wraps around your foot in several places to fit it closely.  There is a toe strap that goes around the big toe, though, and I never could get used to that.  But I did wear these sandals a lot - just not as much as my Birks.

New Balance

I tried the New Balance 576 and 883 running shoes.  They're for a neutral gait, with lots of cushioning.  Since they felt pretty similar, I sent back the more expensive one, the 883.  (Note: for an update on my New Balance 576 athletic shoes, see this post.)

Lowa

The Renegade hiking boot was the only hiking boot that fit my wide feet comfortably and was stable going up and downhill, and I tried on more than ten brands!  I hiked for many years in this boot with the help of my Soles.  It lasts a long time through some really rough treatment.

Haflinger

I wear the Haflinger Grizzly Clog as my indoor house slipper. It's also fine for going out in, but the sole wears faster on concrete.  It fits a lot like the Birks.  It's Haflinger's widest clog as far as I can tell, but because it's made of wool felt, not leather, it doesn't stretch at all, so when I've been in them for several hours and my foot swells, the fabric can over time get pulled from the sole. Also, I'm terrible about cutting my toenails, and long, sharp toenails WILL carve a hole in the toe part.  Because I like these so much, I tend to forget cosmetic considerations and wear these in the summer and winter, because wool felt both breathes and insulates.  I replace them these days about once a year.

Brooks

For high impact stuff, I wore the Brooks Adrenaline.  The shoes were okay,  well built, but designed for people who overpronate, so I'm not surprised they didn't particularly help my plantar fasciitis.

How I Figured Out Which Shoes Would Work for Me

Below I have outlined exactly what I did after I was diagnosed with plantar fasciitis several years ago and the shoes that helped me.

Finding the  Right Shoes

To give the arch of my foot proper support, I stopped going barefoot and found the right shoes for my feet.

To do it, first I had to learn the idiosyncrasies of my own feet.  I didn't want to go visit a doctor again (I really hated going to doctors and took for granted having health insurance at the time).  So I figured it out for myself.

Here's how I figured it out.

Was I an Overpronator?  Oversupinator?

First, I wanted to know if I overpronated, oversupinated or had a normal stride.  Overpronation is turning the foot inward too much as you walk or run and is associated with flat arches.  It is fairly common.  Oversupination, also called underpronation, is putting your weight mostly on the outside of your feet as you walk or run.  Oversupination is associated with high arches and rigid ankles, and is much less common than overpronation.

I looked down at my feet as I walked and ran.  I saw that my toes pointed straight forward in the direction I was facing, not slanted outward or inward (left or right).  I noticed my whole foot seemed to contact the ground - first heel, then forefoot.  That suggested a normal stride, neither overpronating nor underpronating.

Then I examined my shoes.  I looked at the wear on each pair of my shoes, checking out what sections on the sole were worn.  The most wear, consistently, was on the outer corner of each heel.   The rest of the sole looked virtually unworn, with the exception of slight wear on the inside of the shoe at the forefoot.

As I understood it, overpronating would yield the most wear on the inside of the shoe, while oversupinating would show wear along the entire outside of the shoe. I was pretty sure I didn't severely overpronate or underpronate, because my wear pattern seemed to suggest I started a step by supinating, then ended up with the foot turning inward a bit - which my research indicated was a pretty normal stride.  I deduced that at most, I supinated very slightly.

Off Topic Note:  Over the years, I have had a couple of sales people at shoe stores tell me that I overpronated.  That's right - not supinated, pronated.  I found no evidence of it myself, but I completely trusted their expertise.  When I bought running shoes for overpronation, they were not very good - they didn't help at all and ultimately only seemed to make things worse.  Could I be wrong?  Sure.  Maybe one day a podiatrist will tell me I pronate excessively.  But truthfully, I think the sales people saw that I was overweight, knew how common overpronation was amongst larger people, and saw what they expected to see.  Because of my experiences, I don't trust anybody these days to tell me what's happening with my stride unless I can see the results, myself.

What Kind of Arch Did I Have?

I also wanted to find out what kind of arch I had - flat, normal, or high.

I got two sheets of white copy paper and put them on the bare floor (not carpeting).  I dipped each foot in water and then made a wet imprint of my foot on each sheet of paper.  The wet areas created a pattern, a picture of how my foot hit the ground when I stood.

I saw three sections of foot represented - the forefoot (the toe part), the heel, and between them, the arch or instep.  On my paper, the forefoot and heel were connected by a medium-width band on the outside edge of the instep.

This meant that I had a normal arch.  If the band connecting them had been narrower or hadn't been there at all, I'd have had a high arch.  If the band had been wider, spanning most or all of the width of the foot, I'd have had a flat arch.

The Shoes I Needed

I was glad that my feet did not seem to need shoes designed especially to counter a flat arch, high arch, excessive supination or excessive pronation.  I did some more research and decided that I needed basic shoes with good arch support and adequate cushioning.  Since I already wore shoes that were very "squishy" - like those grandmotherly SAS brand shoes that old-fashioned nurses wore or bouncy athletic shoes - I concluded that as far as the best shoe for me went, being supportive was more important than being well-cushioned.  Luckily, I had a job where I could dress casually, which  opened up a lot of possibilities, since most comfort shoes at the time were for casual wear.

Unluckily, the comfort shoes I needed pushed me into a new price bracket of shoe buying.  I'd basically been a Payless Shoes kind of gal before.  No more.  After I got plantar fasciitis, a new pair of shoes rarely cost me less than $80.  The plus side, though, was that these kinds of shoes tended to last me for years.

The shoes I tried and wore were listed above at the beginning of this article.  I also tried on several brands that didn't work for me, including:

• Mephisto - These were awesome shoes, but too narrow for me.
• Naots - Nice shoes, too narrow.
• Earth - Didn't like the negative heel.
• Clarks - Not enough arch support.
• Merrell - Never fit me quite right.
• SAS shoes - Too cushiony, wear out too fast.  No arch support. A bit wobbly.
• Birkenstock Boston clog - For some reason, this style of Birkenstock has never fit me well.   I also don't like the higher-arched Tatami line.

Learning to Adjust

My new shoes changed my life.  I believe they helped my plantar fasciitis heal AND prevented recurrences for a long time.  But they also made my feet, which tended to hurt a lot anyway, feel a lot better in general.  My feet had hurt since I was a kid, when I did lots of walking in flat shoes.

On the rare occasion I didn't wear these "plantar fasciitis shoes," as I called them, but instead wore supposedly comfortable dress shoes like Rockport or Easy Spirit or other random shoes, my feet began to hurt after standing for less than an hour.

I followed my doctor's advice and broke in each new pair of shoes slowly.  Ten minutes the first day.  A few more minutes the next day.  I increased the length of time every day as comfort dictated until the muscles in my foot and legs stretched to accommodate the intense arch support and I could wear the shoes all day.  And if a shoe didn't feel good, I stopped wearing it, temporarily at least, and sometimes permanently.

That, by the way, is a really important point.  Previously, I'd believed shoe salesmen when they claimed that whatever shoes I was buying just needed to be broken in.  After getting plantar fasciitis, I learned it was not true.  If it hurts, it doesn't fit, or something's wrong.  You can't force a good shoe fit.

Some shoes can be tweaked:

• Your feet may have to adjust to shoes as I described above.  
• Some shoes (like Chaco sandals and Birks) have straps that can be adjusted to fit your foot better.  Sometimes a cork arch support will mold to the shape of the foot over time. 
• If your foot slides around like it's in a boat, you can put some heavier socks on to see if that will fill in the extra space, but that only works to a degree.

But most shoes won't change their shape drastically.  

• A narrow last will always be a narrow last and a wide one, a wide one.  Stretching the leather around it won't help but a little.
• A tight instep will remain tight, even if it's made of leather.  
• If the shoe feels too tight or too narrow on any part of your foot the first day, it always will. 
• If the arch doesn't seem to be in the right place - too far forward or too far back - it never will be.

To summarize:  Shoes should fit.  If they don't, stop wearing them.

Shoes also don't last forever.  I made sure to replace my shoes when the arch support or cushioning was no longer effective.  Note that the shoe can still look great on the outside when it's lost its arch support oomph or cushioning pizzaz.  You have to really pay attention to how the shoe feels.