How to Wear Cufflinks: The Complete Guide

Search "cufflinks" and you'll land on sixteen different pages on this site alone, each answering one narrow slice of the question — what to wear to a wedding, what counts as business-appropriate, whether your novelty pair is too much. None of them start at the beginning. This one does.

Here's everything in one place: whether you actually need cufflinks for the shirt you own, how to put them on, what to match them to, what a fair price actually buys, and where to go next for the specific occasion you're dressing for.

Quick answer

Your situation	What to do
Shirt has buttons down the cuff	You don't need cufflinks. They won't fit.
Shirt has a French (double) cuff that folds back with no button	You need cufflinks — any style.
Tuxedo shirt with no buttons down the front at all	You need a full studs-and-cufflinks set, not cufflinks alone — see cufflinks vs. a studs and cufflinks set.
Not sure which cuff you have	Check the cuff before you buy — see below.
Office, wedding guest, first pair ever	Silver-tone, plain oval or bar shape. It goes with everything and nobody will notice it, in a good way.

Do you actually need cufflinks?

Look at your shirt cuff before you buy anything. If it closes with a button, cufflinks have nowhere to go — they're not an upgrade you can bolt on. You need a French cuff: the kind that folds back on itself and has two aligned buttonholes with no button, held shut by the cufflink instead. Most shirts marketed as "formal" or "dress" shirts in the UK and US have one or the other clearly stated; if you're buying online and it isn't obvious, look for "French cuff" or "double cuff" in the listing before you order cufflinks to go with it.

A separate, more expensive mistake: a tuxedo or dinner shirt with a stud-front bib (small reinforced holes instead of buttons down the placket, not just the cuff) needs studs to close the front as well as cufflinks at the cuff. Buying cufflinks alone for that shirt leaves the front literally unfastened. We've written the full breakdown of that distinction, including how to check your placket in five seconds, in Cufflinks vs. a Studs and Cufflinks Set — worth a detour now if you're not certain which shirt you own.

How to put cufflinks on properly

Fold the cuff back on itself so the two buttonholes line up, front over back. Push the cufflink's post or toggle through both holes at once, not one at a time — trying to thread it through separately is the most common reason people find cufflinks fiddly. Once the post is through both layers, close whichever fastening mechanism your pair uses:

• Bullet-back / whaleback (most of what's on this site): a hinged oval toggle that swings flat to pass through the cuff, then swings back upright to lock. Push it through flat, then flip it vertical.
• Chain-link: two decorative faces joined by a short chain or bar. Pass one face through both cuff holes, then let it settle — there's no locking action needed.
• Button/stud-style: looks like a single button on a post; pushes through the same way as bullet-back but doesn't flip.

Do this before you put the shirt on, or right after, while your arm is easiest to see and reach — trying to fasten the second cuff one-handed once your jacket is on is the fiddliest way to do it.

Matching cufflinks to the rest of the outfit

Pick the tie first. Everything else follows from it. Once you know the accent colour you're building around, cufflinks are the easiest piece to get right, because nobody stands close enough to your wrist to judge fine detail — the metal tone matters more than the exact finish.

• Silver-tone pairs with a silver watch case, silver belt buckle, and works under nearly any suit colour. It's the safe, versatile default and the right choice if you're buying one pair to cover everything.
• Gold-tone reads warmer and slightly more traditional. It suits a cream or ivory shirt better than a stark white one, and looks deliberate rather than mismatched next to a gold watch or belt buckle — but clashes if everything else you're wearing is silver.
• An accent colour — a stone, an enamel inlay, a coloured face — is where the cufflink can actually pick up the tie or pocket square rather than just sitting neutral. This is the one place on the outfit where matching the accent colour, not offsetting it, works in your favour: a cufflink that echoes the tie reads as intentional, not as trying too hard, because it's small and load-bearing rather than another patterned surface competing for attention.

For the fuller logic behind building the whole look — tie, pocket square, cufflinks, belt, in that order — see How to Choose Cufflinks for Every Occasion, which goes deeper on pairing by shirt colour and pattern than this page needs to.

Choosing by occasion

The right pair depends less on taste than on how much attention the room can spare for your wrist. Three occasions cover almost everyone:

• Work / business attire: understated wins — plain silver or gold-tone, a simple oval or rectangle, nothing that needs explaining in a meeting. Full picks in Best Cufflinks for Business Attire.
• Wedding guest: classic first, personality second — this is someone else's day, not the moment to introduce your novelty collection. See Best Cufflinks for Wedding Guest Style for guidance by dress code.
• Black tie / tuxedo: this is almost always where the stud-set question applies rather than cufflinks alone. Studs and Cufflinks Set Tuxedo Guide covers metal tone, face material and how to coordinate with your watch and shoes in full.

Novelty and conversation-piece cufflinks

A spirit level, a steering wheel, a Superman shield — these aren't a compromise on the "proper" way to wear cufflinks, they're a different job entirely. One novelty pair, worn with an otherwise plain shirt and suit, is a conversation starter. A whole outfit of them is a costume. Keep everything else — shirt, tie, suit — deliberately quiet, and let the cufflinks be the one thing anyone comments on.

Full guidance on how far to take it (and when a themed pair is genuinely too much for the room) is in How to Wear Novelty Cufflinks for Men. If you're buying for someone else rather than yourself, our DJ turntable and Superman cufflinks, plus the wider steampunk collection, are the three most-searched-for novelty pairs on the site — a reliable place to start if you know a little about the person and nothing about cufflinks.

What your money actually buys

We'd rather be plain about this than impressive. Almost everything in our cufflinks range sits between £10 and £18, and at that price the base is brass, not solid silver or gold — finished in a silver-tone or gold-tone plating that looks right and wears well, but isn't the metal itself. Where a listing says mother-of-pearl, that's genuine shell material, the one claim in the range that's exactly what it says. Where it says an onyx or stone "effect," that's glass or resin doing the job a mined stone would otherwise do, and a fair price reflects that.

None of this makes a £12 pair a worse buy — it makes it an honest one. A cufflink that sees a handful of wear a year for the next decade doesn't need to be solid metal to do its job; save that budget for something you'll wear daily, like a watch. What it does mean is that a listing anywhere promising "premium" or "luxury" materials at this price point is telling you something that isn't true, and we'd rather just say what's actually in the box.

Cufflink size and fit

There's no single "standard" cufflink size the way there is a shirt collar size — cufflinks are sized to look proportional on a cuff, not to fit a measurement. Most sit somewhere around 15–20mm across the visible face; anything much larger starts to look costume-y on an ordinary dress shirt, and anything smaller can look lost against a wide French cuff. If you're buying your first pair, a mid-sized oval or rectangular face is the safest call — it's what you'll see on almost every plain silver-tone pair in our range, and it's proportional on nearly any cuff width.

Care and storage

Keep pairs together — a cufflink separated from its match is as useless as a single earring, and it's the single easiest way to lose half a pair in a drawer. A small dish or the dedicated cufflink box works better than a jewellery tray for this reason alone. Wipe plated finishes with a soft dry cloth rather than jewellery polish, which can strip plating over time; genuine mother-of-pearl should stay dry and out of direct sun to avoid the surface dulling.

FAQ

Do you need a special shirt for cufflinks?
Yes — a French (double) cuff shirt, the kind that folds back and has no button at the wrist. A standard button-cuff shirt can't take cufflinks at all.

Can cufflinks go on any shirt?
No. Only shirts with a French/double cuff. Check the wrist before you buy — see "Do you actually need cufflinks?" above.

Do you wear cufflinks with a suit?
Only if your shirt has French cuffs. A suit doesn't require cufflinks on its own — it's entirely about the shirt underneath it. Plenty of good suits are worn with an ordinary button-cuff shirt and no cufflinks at all.

What's the difference between cufflinks and studs?
Cufflinks fasten a cuff. Studs fasten the front of a tuxedo shirt that has no buttons at all. Most people only need one or the other, not both — full breakdown in Cufflinks vs. a Studs and Cufflinks Set.

Where do cufflinks go on a suit?
They don't attach to the suit itself — they fasten the shirt cuff, which then sits at your wrist, usually showing about half an inch beyond the jacket sleeve.

Is there a standard cufflink size?
Not formally. Most sit around 15–20mm across the face; a mid-sized oval or rectangle is the safest choice for a first pair.

Where to start

If you already know your shirt takes cufflinks and just need a pair, the full cufflinks collection runs from £10 plain silver-tone options through to novelty and mother-of-pearl pairs at the upper end. If your shirt is a stud-front tuxedo style instead, go straight to the studs and cufflinks sets collection — four finishes, each sold as a complete eight-piece set so there's nothing else to buy before the event.