What "Slip-Resistant" Actually Means: ASTM F3445 Explained

The short version

“Slip-resistant” means nothing on its own. In the United States it is not a regulated term. No test is required before a manufacturer prints it on a box, a listing or an outsole.

ASTM F3445 is what gives it meaning. It is the standard that measures how much grip a complete shoe actually has on a wet, contaminated floor, and reports it as a coefficient of friction.

If a listing does not name F3445 — or the older F2913 — then nobody has published a test result. You are reading a marketing word.

What we found when we checked

We took the five work and nursing shoes in our own catalogue, all of them sold on Amazon as slip-resistant or non-slip, and searched each full listing page for any mention of a testing standard.

None of the five cited a slip-resistance standard.

Shoe	Slip claim in title	Standard cited
Skechers Summits Colsin Bungee	Yes	ASTM F2892 — electrical hazard only
Cherokee Melody Nursing Clog	Yes	None
Hawkwell Slip-On Nursing Shoe	Yes	None
AEHAO Waterproof Work Shoe	Yes	None
NORTIV 8 ActiveBreeze	No claim made	None

Five shoes, four slip-resistance claims, zero slip-resistance tests published.

The most revealing one

The Skechers listing is worth looking at closely, because it is the strongest evidence in the table.

That listing does cite an ASTM standard. It states the shoe has an “Electrical Hazard (EH) safe design tested ASTM-F2892.”

F2892 is a real standard. It covers soft-toe protective footwear, including protection against electrical hazard. It has nothing to do with grip.

So this manufacturer names a standard when it holds one, and prints “Slip Resistant” in the same title with no standard behind it. That is not an oversight. Certification costs money, and companies advertise what they have paid for.

An ASTM number on a listing is not the same as a slip-resistance standard. This substitution is the single easiest thing to get wrong when comparing work shoes, and it is easy to spot once you know to look at the number rather than the letters.

What F3445 actually measures

Three things distinguish it from a manufacturer’s own claim:

It tests the whole shoe. Not a flat sample of outsole rubber in a lab rig — the complete shoe, with its real tread geometry and real flex. A compound that grips well as a flat disc can perform quite differently once moulded into a sole with the wrong channel pattern.

It tests contaminated surfaces. Dry grip is easy and nearly meaningless. The test uses wet and contaminated conditions, because that is where people fall — a wet tile floor, a greasy kitchen, a spill nobody has reached yet.

It produces a number. A coefficient of friction, not an adjective. 0.5 or above on a wet surface is the benchmark generally used for occupational footwear.

One caveat worth carrying: results are reported for specific surface and contaminant combinations. A shoe tested on wet ceramic tile has not necessarily been tested on greasy quarry tile. If your floor is one and the test was the other, the number is weaker evidence than it looks.

F3445 or F2913?

Both indicate a genuine test.

F2913 is the older test method. It describes how to measure the coefficient of friction on whole footwear.

F3445 is the current specification. It builds on that method and adds performance requirements — it does not just describe how to measure, it states what counts as a pass.

Seeing either is good. F3445 is the one currently in use.

How to check a listing in ten seconds

1. Open the full product page, not the search result.
2. Ctrl+F for “ASTM”.
3. Read the number, not just the letters:
   • F3445 or F2913 — a slip-resistance test was carried out.
   • F2892, F2413 or similar — a real standard, but for toe protection or electrical hazard. Not grip.
   • Nothing — “slip-resistant” is a marketing word on this listing.

Certified products almost always say so prominently. Absence is informative.

One certified option, and what it teaches

Having said all that, it would be a poor guide that identified a problem and offered nothing.

We went looking for a shoe that genuinely names the standard, and found one: the Hawkwell Cloud Zero Active. Its listing does not merely say slip-resistant — a feature bullet states “ASTM F3445 CERTIFIED OUTSOLE”, and the standard appears in the product title.

That is what a real claim looks like.

The part that matters more than the product

Hawkwell sells four nursing shoes. Here is what each listing cites:

Model	Slip standard cited
Cloud Zero Active (ASTM F3445 listing)	ASTM F3445
Cloud Zero Active	None
Cloud Zero Active	None
Slip On Lightweight Comfort	None

Same brand. Same product line. Only one names the standard.

This is the single most useful thing on this page. Certification is granted to a specific model, not to a manufacturer. Finding that a brand certifies one shoe tells you nothing whatsoever about the pair sitting next to it, even under the same product name.

So brand reputation is not a shortcut here. The specific listing is the only thing that answers the question.

The honest caveat on this one

The Cloud Zero Active’s outer material is knit.

Certification covers grip. It says nothing about fluids. A knit upper will not stop a spill reaching your sock, which is the reason we argue against mesh uppers in healthcare in our women’s nursing shoes comparison.

So this is not a clean win. It is a shoe with tested grip and an upper we would not choose for a ward. If your floor is the hazard, that trade may be worth making. If fluids are the hazard, it is not, and as far as we can find, nothing currently solves both.

We would rather say that than pretend the one certified shoe we found is the answer to everything.

Does this mean uncertified shoes are unsafe?

No, and it would be dishonest to imply it. An untested shoe may well grip perfectly adequately. Plenty of good outsoles have never been submitted for certification, particularly from smaller brands where the testing cost is significant relative to the product.

What the absence tells you is narrower and still useful: nobody has published evidence. You are trusting the manufacturer’s word rather than a measured result.

For a floor that is dry most of the time, that may be a perfectly reasonable risk. For a commercial kitchen, a hospital ward or anywhere fluids reach the floor regularly, it is a risk worth paying to remove — and certified options do exist at similar prices.

Why we published this

Almost every “best slip-resistant shoes” article repeats the phrase straight from the listing, because the listing is the only source. We do not test footwear in person, so we cannot tell you how these shoes feel underfoot.

What we can do is read what the manufacturer actually claims, check whether a standard sits behind it, and report the gap. On this occasion the gap was total: four claims, zero tests.