What is the difference between Plugs and Gauges?

Plugs and gauges are types of accessories that you can use on your ears. They may vary in volume and also in thickness. For instance, you may use gauges when you want to make sure that you will be stretching the hole that you have made in your ear slowly without making the ear bleed. In order to do this, you need to stretch out the hole little by little. The jewelry that you would be using in order to do the stretching is called “plugs.” There are different sized plugs that are available. You can start with small ones first that are not too thick before you progress to bigger and thicker plugs.

Plugs and gauges are often confused with being the same, probably because of the causal use of the two words, most especially when it comes to ear stretching and piercing. At times, you will see children in grocery stores asking for gauges while what they should be looking for are plugs.

This is because the size of a gauge is bigger than that of a plug. A gauge, in this context, is never a material you can fix to your ear, but an instrument used to determine the volume of the jewelry like plugs, mostly in terms of thickness.

To understand this better, think of plugs as the jewelry that exists in different gauges, colors, shapes, and designs. What you can easily make of this is that plugs with smaller gauge are less expensive compared to plugs with a larger gauge. The gauge of the plugs also depends on the materials used in making them.

You might get confused when you are trying to decide whether you would use the term plug or gauge when you are trying to find the right ear accessory. When you say gauge, this would refer to the actual size of your ear. Those who would like to increase their gauge which means the hole on the lobe of the ear would need to increase so that the plug can be placed.

There are different-sized plugs that are available. The bigger the plug that you are going to choose, the more expensive the plug is going to be. People who would like to increase their gauge would need to increase the gauge one size at a time. They should not try to make the gauge bigger immediately.