What size of guitar is best for my child?

Of course, everyone is different and height varies greatly from student to student. As such, please take the following as a rough guide and not a definitive answer. It’s always best to consult your guitar teacher or try out a few guitars in a music shop to see what is the right fit for you. Thank you to Stretton Payne for the image above. I think they’re spot on with their recommendations but have sought to add some further advice and information.

3-6 years old
Ukulele, guitalele or 1/4 size guitar.
A guitalele uses a ukulele body but with has 6 strings tuned like a guitar. I have found this Yamaha GL1 guitalele to be particularly good at the price and would recommend this over most 1/4 and 1/2 size guitars which seem to suffer with more tuning issues.

5-7 years old
Ukulele, guitalele or 1/2 size guitar.

7-11 years old
3/4 size guitar. Check out our blog on “the best affordable guitar for young beginners in 2021” to see which guitar we’d recommend. Some students will purchase a 7/8 size guitar. This makes sense for smaller adults but children, I would recommend holding onto the ¾ size a little longer or growing into the full size.

11+
Full size guitar (sometimes described as 4/4). An important note for full size guitars is that, for acoustic guitars in particular, the body of the guitar can vary greatly as this article from Zing Instruments explains. One of the most common guitars in the world is the Yamaha F-310. It’s a perfectly decent instrument and good value for money. However, it has a large body that is mostly suited to taller adults. For acoustic guitars in particular, it really is vital to try different instruments to see which is the best one for you.

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