Is it Rude To Ask A Guest To Take Their Shoes Off?

Who’s the rude one when a request to leave your shoes at the door is made: The host who asks or the guest who scoffs at the request?

That’s the issue at the centre of a fiery debate on X (formerly known as Twitter) in the wake of The New York Times’ Guide to Partying (Without Regrets), published late last week. 

Two entries in the guide took aim at hosts who ask their guests to take their shoes off before entering their homes. 

“Please don’t ask people to take off their shoes when entering your apartment,” party planner Rebecca Gardner advised. “It’s rude.”

Chef Romilly Newman told the Times she thinks it’s ill-mannered, too. “When you invite people into your home, you need to let go. You can’t be like, ‘You can’t touch this’ and ‘You have to take your shoes off’ and ‘If you spill something, you are in trouble.’ Hosting is letting your guests enjoy themselves.”

On the X and Threads social media platforms, some wondered if Newman or Gardner had ever visited an Asian household, where taking your shoes off is often expected (or at least appreciated).

“When you find out who doesn’t have Asian friends,” Indian American comic Hari Kondabolu joked.

People from other “No shoes inside, please” cultures chimed in as well. 

“My Ghanaian mom would like to have a word,” one woman tweeted. Canadians and Swedes and Finns are also often “no shoes” enforcers.

It’s clearly a polarizing topic: Two years ago, The Wall Street Journal received blowback when it published an opinion piece with the brazen headline Here’s Why I’ll Be Keeping My Shoes on in Your Shoeless Home.

“Here’s why you won’t be invited and escorted off the premises,” one woman joked. 

The pro-shoe camp is just as convinced that they have the correct take. 

It’s “absolutely right” that hosts shouldn’t expect guests to walk around in their socks, tweeted Tom Nichols, a staff writer at The Atlantic, this week. “If you throw a party, expect that human beings are going to wear shoes. Clean your floors the next day,” he said. 

The counterpoint is that being a good guest means respecting the house rules of your host, said Jose Santos Ardivilla, a Filipino student pursuing a doctorate as a Fulbright scholar. The pithy, Emily Post-style advice in the Times piece simply failed to acknowledge the cultural nuances of the conversation. 

“Culturally, taking your shoes off shows a sense of deference to other people’s homes, which many of us consider as places for rest and safety,” he told HuffPost. “It’s a simple symbol of consideration for the homeowners.”

Sara Jane Ho, an etiquette expert and author of the new book Mind Your Manners, said she enjoyed the New York Times’ party guide, but you’ll never see her walk into her home with shoes on.

“For as long as I can remember, I’ve never worn shoes in the house. It’s extremely hygienic,” she said, before explaining why.

“Let’s say you go to a restaurant, you use the restroom, you go grocery shopping or you go to the market. You’re tracking all sorts of bacteria and germs and uncleanliness from the streets,” she said. 

A 2023 study conducted on Manhattan’s Upper East Side found high concentrations of bacteria ― most concerningly,  E. coli, which is known to bring on some nasty cases of stomach cramps, diarrhea and vomiting ― not only on outdoor sidewalks but also on people’s shoes, indoor floors and carpets.

“Taking your shoes off is a no-brainer,” the study’s co-author Alessandra Leri, a chemistry professor at Marymount, told Gothamist.

Ho said that in Asia, taking your shoes off is second nature, in part because of wet market culture: “If you’re shopping at a wet market, they’re not always clean. There’s always a lot of livestock around. You don’t want to bring that into the home.” 

In many Asian cultures, it’s also a holdover from when people used to sit on the floor to eat at low tables. If you sit on the floor, naturally you don’t want to track filth close to your food.

“In China, it was only later when northern invaders came and conquered parts of the country that people began eating at higher tables,” she said. “But keeping your shoes on in public areas while taking them inside is still a sign of respect in a private area.”

There’s an expectation to take off your shoes, too, in most Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and Jain temples, as former New York state Rep. Yuh-Line Niou noted this week in response to the Times article.

Iranian American novelist Porochista Khakpour grew up in the San Gabriel Valley in California ― a bustling suburban region just east of downtown Los Angeles with large Asian American populations.

″[No shoes] has been non-negotiable in my communities,” she said. “We didn’t even have fancy Persian rugs, and yet we always did this!”

“I even recall asking my parents why on American TV shows were people wearing shoes indoors? She didn’t have an answer,” she added. (Don’t get Khakpour and others in the shoes-off camp started on movies and TV shows where people jump on their couches and lie on their beds with shoes on.) 

When Khakpour, who had been surrounded by her Iranian family and her mostly East Asian friends, moved to New York, she realised the custom wasn’t the norm in most predominantly white spaces. 

“I think my college roommate thought me being barefoot or in socks was like some hippie bohemian thing?” she told HuffPost. “And then I just started to realise more and more that certain white people never knew about this.” 

Khakpour is of the belief that you can do whatever you want in your own home. When you’re in someone else’s, though, you should lean into their rules. The advice in the Times that suggests a guest can do whatever they like in someone’s home is weird to her.

“Maybe you don’t want people smoking indoors? Stealing your books? Pooping in your sink? Whatever else?“ Khakpour said. “There are basic rules, and no shoes is the most basic — truly the bare minimum.”

Hospitality is key in many Asian cultures, Khakpour said, and, if anything, the no-shoes thing is part of that.

“You know you are in a space that values cleanliness as well as respect for people’s sacred spaces,” Khakpour said. 

“The only exception for me is something tied to disability or illness, and then I get it!” she said. “But when a host insisted on shoes, I’ve felt very awkward clomping around indoors in my heels that have been on city streets.”

If you’re heading to someone’s house, it might help to be prepared for such a request: Wear socks that are fresh and presentable. 

Tsai-Ni Ku, a public relations executive who is first-generation Taiwanese, grew up in South Africa and Boston. In both locations, her mom would explain the shoeless custom to those who didn’t get it. 

“Growing up, my mom would always ask kindly, but there were some guests of different cultures that were unaware of the nuances involved,” Ku told HuffPost. “Many Asian Americans are taught to change into ‘house clothes’ or pajamas as soon as you get home since these are clean, indoor clothes.”

In exchange for going shoeless, guests in Asian households are often given indoor slippers to put on.

“In my home, we don’t expect our guests to be barefoot either!” Ku said.