BJD Sizes: A Comprehensive Guide to Doll Scale and Proportions

Will you have a tiny army? Are you partial to carrying your doll in a banana stroller? Maybe you just want a doll that is easy to carry in your arms. In this post, I’ll answer one of the most frequently asked questions in the BJD community.

What are the different BJD sizes?

If you are new to the hobby and find yourself wondering what the different sizes are for BJDs, then stick around because this post digs into just that.

When you are buying various BJD things it’s a bit confusing. One of the major concerns being how do you make sure that you are getting the right size doll for you?

As we start, let me clarify something. I’m not recommending any sizes here. I’m just telling you what the various sizes of BJD dolls are. This will actually help you decide on all the other stuff like clothing, shoes, and hair when you buy your dolls.

You must have already heard of the terms SD, MSD, and YOSD.

Interestingly enough, SD, MSD, and YOSD are coined terms that we, the BJD hobbyists, have been using for different sizes of dolls. In reality, it’s a VOLKS’ terms. VOLKS is one of the pioneer BJD companies. They had set their doll sizes to SD, MSD, and YOSD.

SD – Super Dollfie

MSD – Mini Super Dollfie

YOSD – Yo comes from the Japanese term referring to children and child-like things

If you come to think of it, SD is your large doll, MSD is the middle-sized doll and YOSD are the smaller ones.

These were the conventional sizes that the BJD community usually talks about. But there are a couple of other sizes out there as well.

Hounds/Half-scale Dolls and Tinies

If you want to imagine a hound, imagine a one-year-old standing up. All these dolls are amazingly huge but very gorgeous to see in real life. On the other end, there are dolls smaller than your YOSDs. These are what we call tinies, 1/8th, or 1/16th scale. Tinies can be around 11 cm and sometimes even smaller.

The Number System

The funny thing about people calling these dolls SDs, MSDs or YOSDs is that they were actually just terms that VOLKS used to distinguish their own dolls. But if you want to be a tad bit more accurate you might want to use the number system to categorize non-VOLKS dolls.

This is more of what is becoming the trend these days. The dolls come in the fractions on scales that are, I guess, average of the human size. Some of these are:

⅓ – Large Range

These are like your ‘SDs’. They come in the large size category of your BJD dolls.

¼ – Medium Range

This size actually corresponds to your ‘MSDs’. You can imagine all your middle-sized dolls in this size.

⅙ – Small Range

These are the smaller ones and correspond to your ‘YOSDs’.

As you go bigger from the ⅓ you enter into the ½ category. As you go lower than ⅓ you go into the 1/8th or 1/16 category. 

What do these sizes look like?

One thing to keep in mind is that even though some of your dolls will be labeled as SD, MSD or YOSD, different companies will give them different measurements. One companies “SD” doll might be larger or smaller compared to others.

Nothing is universally set across all companies. There are also some dolls available in interesting sizes like my Obitsu named Sophie that comes in a 50 cm height. I consider her to be a really tall MSD doll.

If you are into making couples out of your dolls, make sure you look into the exact centimetres height of the dolls so that you can get a better idea of what they would look like next to each other.

Why does the size matter?

The size of your doll will affect the size of the eyes they will use, the hair, the clothes, the shoes and any of the other accessories for that matter.

When you purchase all these items for your dolls you should have a page for measurements. This should come in the description of your doll. If not, I highly recommend you ask other people who own the doll for guidance. That is the key to you finding the right things for your doll.

This is where it gets a bit tricky too. In the market that we have right now, some companies simply label the doll items as SD, MSD or YOSD size. This is tricky because speaking from personal experience, there are times I have ordered things that were labeled SD for my SD dolls and find they did not fit.

Unfortunately, that is a risk that you will have to take if it is not labeled with the measurements. Sometimes they will tell you the sizes of dolls that will fit into the size you are buying and sometimes it won’t. A good thing to do is to find someone who already has the doll and ask them about things they have found fit that doll.

Shoes – a nightmare

If you think finding shoes in your size can be a real drag sometimes, BJD shoes can be even harder. Mainly when you are starting out, getting right with the shoes is tough. It’s really overwhelming. You don’t have any idea what 3.5 or 4.5 means and are at sea when it comes to deciding the right shoes for your doll.

One of my dolls is listed to have a foot of 7.5 cm but he is currently wearing an 8.5 shoe. That’s a good 1 cm difference which is okay considering we also buy shoes that are only 1 size bigger than us just so it feels comfortable.

So a rule of thumb is to try to stay within 1 cm of your dolls foot size when shopping for BJD shoes.

Also, if you are trying to put on a pair of socks on your doll’s feet be weary if you are thinking about getting a doll shoe that matches the doll foot size exactly. You’ve gotta leave some wiggle space for those resin tootsies. These are a few things to consider when going shoe shopping for your dolls.

The eye size

All dolls come with a recommended eye size. Some people like to change it up and try different sizes close to it’s recommended size. It totally depends on you in the end.

Also know that some things are actually just impossible to do. For example: A doll with a 12mm eye socket cannot get a 20mm eye shoved into it. One – it will look weird and two – it just won’t fit right.

Some dolls have different eye sockets that are fit only for a specific eye that the doll-makers recommend to you.

Usually, it’s best to keep the recommended size in mind when doing your BJD eye shopping.

Wigs too

Onto my FAVORITE part! Wigs!! Depending on what doll you have your wig size is going to vary. That was obvious because we’ve already seen the different sizes either in the SD, MSD or YOSD terminology or in the number system.

SDs or 1/3 dolls will typically use 8 to 9 inch wigs

MSDs or 1/4 dolls will use 7 to 8 inch wigs

YOSDs or 1/6 dolls will use 6 to 7 inch wigs

Dolls smaller than YOSD can sometimes use 5 to 6 inch wigs

Let’s say you have a doll with a 15cm circumference head. What does that mean? If you are lazy like me, you can go to a converter and convert cm into inches. 15cm is 5.9inches which is where we get the 6 to 7-inch wig scale that you can purchase for your doll.

I just highly recommend that you see what size wig the company recommends and also ask others that own the doll what they have used. I know that sometimes it can be a rough journey finding the right wig for your doll but once you find “the one” your doll will feel so much more complete.

Go Forth

That’s pretty much it for my BJD size guide for all you BJD hobbyists out there. I hope it was helpful for any newbie who was running nuts wondering what to do and what all the abbreviations were.

As always, if you have any questions comments or concerns, feel free to reach out to me. I will do my best to help you out.

Keep coming back for more tips, tricks, and articles on BJDs. I’ll try my best to keep it coming.

Also, if you are not a newbie, what’s your tip for buying clothes, shoes, wigs, or eyes for your dolls? Let me know in the comments section.