How to Properly Test Conductivity Whether Grounding Shoes Really Work

After selling more than 10,000 pairs of grounding shoes, one of the questions I get asked most often is:

“How do I know if my grounding shoes are actually working?”

There are two main ways to test them:

1. Measure the electrical resistance of the shoe
2. Measure how much the shoes reduce your body voltage

Here’s how to do both correctly.

Test the Shoe’s Electrical Resistance

A common mistake is using a regular multimeter to judge whether a grounding shoe is conductive.

For professional footwear testing, standards such as IEC 61340 specify a defined test method, including a test voltage and a controlled contact area and load.

A regular multimeter usually applies less than 1V, and its probes have a very small contact area. That can give misleading readings when testing materials such as conductive rubber, conductive fabric, or conductive fibers.

These materials do not always behave like simple metal conductors. Their measured resistance can change with test voltage, pressure, contact area, humidity, and material structure.

That is why we normally use a megohmmeter with a proper footwear test setup.

“A regular multimeter can be used for a quick continuity check, but it does not reproduce the specified test voltage, electrode contact area, load, and timing required for standardized footwear resistance testing.”

For the test, you need:

• A megohmmeter
• A metal plate
• A conductive metal strip or electrode
• Metal shot or steel balls to apply pressure inside the shoe

Place the shoe on the metal plate. Put the conductive electrode inside the shoe, then fill the shoe with metal shot to create stable contact and simulate pressure.

Connect the meter between the inside electrode and the metal plate, then apply the required test voltage and record the resistance.

In general:

• Below 100 kΩ: Excellent conductivity, but very low resistance may provide less current-limiting protection in certain electrical fault conditions.
• 100–1,000 kΩ: Good conductivity with added resistance for a more controlled conductive path.

If you don’t have a megohmmeter or professional test electrodes at home, don’t worry. In this article,《Grounding Shoes Test by Multimeter: Measure Your Body Voltage Before & After》 we’ll show you a simple way to use a regular multimeter to measure body voltage before and after wearing grounding shoes, helping you verify whether they are effectively connecting your body to ground.