What sort of gloves are suitable for paintball?

Most players wear gloves when paintball. A paintball welt on your trigger finger can be both extremely painful and ruin your day's play. If you're playing in the winter, then they'll help keep your hands warm.

Gloves come in 3 main types:

1:     Basic 'armoured' paintball gloves

2:     'Pro' paintball gloves

3:    'Other' Gloves not designed for paintballing.

These pages are designed to help both new and experienced woodsball players alike in choosing their equipment.

Basic 'armoured' paintball gloves

Most new players purchase these gloves. The synthetic palm aids grip of the marker, while the hard plastic backing will provide excellent protection from injury caused by paintball welts. These gloves come in full finger and half finger categories and usually cost in the region of £6-£10.

Pros

• Cheap
• Offer Good protection

Cons

• Can be sweaty - gloves usually not ventilated
• Dye can sometimes come off - users left with blackened hands
• Care must be taken when cleaning - dye residue can stain other clothes if not washed separately.
• Paintballs unlikely to 'bounce' off the outside of the glove. Hard plastic will ensure paintball breaks and wearer is eliminated.
• Can feel less ergonomic and stiffer than pro gloves - full finger gloves may make rapid trigger pulls more difficult.

Pro Paintball gloves

Pro paintball gloves are usually constructed of lightweight material reinforced at key points by materials such as kevlar and rubber. Although not always offering as much protective coverage as fully armoured plastic covered gloves, they offer greater flexibility while still protecting key areas such as knuckles.

Pros

• Offer superior ventilation to armoured gloves
• Paintballs more likely to bounce off back of glove due to use of rubber and other flexible materials.
• More ergonomic than armoured gloves. Easier to facilitate rapid trigger pulls.
• More lightweight than armoured gloves
• Usually made of superior materials to armoured gloves

Cons

• Expensive - can cost between £30 - £35 for a top of the range pair
• May not offer as much protection as fully armoured gloves, although this depends on model.

Other Gloves

A wide variety of gloves for other sports and occupations can be used for paintballing. These may offer superior protection, comfort or grip than pro paintball gloves, although are unlikely to be superior in all three areas as they are not designed for paintball play. Other types of gloves used for paintball include:

• Nomex flight gloves: Light weight 'second skin' gloves worn by pilots and SWAT teams to provide some protection while facilitating sweat free grip and comfort.
• Thin ski-gloves: Thin ski gloves that have material on the palm for gripping ski poles can be used for paintballing, although they may not offer a great deal of protection.
• Rugby gloves: fingerless gloves that offer some protection but very good grip while allowing exposure of trigger finger for rapid firing. Offer limited protection for back of hands and fingers however.
• Operator/HRT gloves: Gloves used by SWAT/Hostage Rescue teams etc. These come in a variety of flavours and offer varying amounts of comfort/protection/grip etc depend on make and model.
• Thin goalkeeping gloves: cheap basic cotton goalkeeping gloves with thin rubber grips can be used for paintballing, although they won't usually offer much protection on the back of the hands.

Avoid:

• Thick ski gloves
• Professional goalkeeping gloves.

These types of gloves will be too thick to facilitate rapid fire.

Recommendation:

Unless you have appropriate 'other gloves', then purchasing a pair of armoured gloves is a key first step.

Once playing regularly you can then decide if/what type of pro or other glove you wish to use.