The English Saddle Pad Buying Guide

Choosing an English saddle pad comes down to four decisions in order: shape (to match your saddle), size (to match your saddle's seat), material (to match how much your horse sweats), and thickness (to match how well your saddle already fits). Get the order right and the rest follows thickness is the last decision, not the first.

By the riders at Farris · Updated August 2026

Key takeaways

• Match the pad shape to your saddle first a dressage-cut pad under a jump saddle will never sit right, whatever else you get correct.
• Size from your saddle, not your horse. Measure pommel to cantle and add roughly two inches.
• Material is a sweat-and-care decision. Sheepskin and wool absorb up to three times their weight in water; cotton absorbs about its own weight.
• Thickness is a fit decision, and more is not better. A thick pad under a saddle that already fits makes it too narrow.
• No pad fixes a badly fitting saddle. Pressure-mat research consistently finds that padding redistributes pressure rather than removing it.

What a saddle pad is actually for

A saddle pad does three jobs, and only three. It keeps sweat and grease off your saddle, it gives the horse a soft interface instead of bare leather, and it takes up a small, deliberate amount of space between saddle and back.

That third job is where most buying mistakes happen. Riders reach for a thicker pad the way you might add a cushion to a hard chair more padding, more comfort. Horses do not work that way. The saddle tree is rigid, so anything you add underneath changes the fit, and a saddle that fit correctly before will fit worse afterwards.

Everything below follows from that. A saddle pad is a fit component, not an accessory.

Decision 1 Shape

Pad shape exists to follow the saddle's flap. A dressage saddle has a long, straight flap, so a dressage pad is cut long and straight down the side. A jumping or close contact saddle has a shorter, forward-cut flap, so its pad is cut shorter and swept forward to sit under it.

Dover Saddlery describes dressage pads as rectangular, to fit longer flaps, typically 22 to 46 inches, while shaped pads are curved to mimic the outline of the saddle itself and come in jumping, all-purpose and dressage cuts.

Put a dressage-cut pad under a jump saddle and the flap sits well inside the pad's edge, so the pad flaps loose at the front and the line looks wrong from the ground. It also drags on the horse's shoulder where nothing should be touching. This is the one decision that no amount of quality elsewhere can rescue.

If you ride in a general-purpose saddle, an all-purpose cut is the right default it splits the difference and works for flatwork and low fences alike.

Full comparison of dressage, jump and all-purpose pad shapes.

Decision 2 Size

Size comes from the saddle, not the horse. The standard method is to run a tape from the pommel button to the middle of the cantle, then choose a pad that extends roughly two inches beyond the saddle on each edge.

Kavallerie's sizing guide puts it as two inches longer than the saddle and two inches wider than the bottom of the skirts, with pad sizes running roughly extra small at 14 to 14.5 inches, small at 15 to 15.5, medium at 16 to 16.5, and large at 17.5 and above.

The tolerance is not symmetrical. A pad slightly too large looks untidy and can bunch. A pad slightly too small leaves saddle edge sitting directly on horse, which is a pressure problem rather than a cosmetic one. When you are between sizes, size up.

How to measure your saddle and pick the right pad size.

Decision 3 Material

Material is mostly a question of how much your horse sweats and how much washing you are willing to do.

Natural fibres absorb far more. Stable Management notes that sheepskin and wool absorb up to three times their weight in water, while cotton absorbs about its own weight. That difference matters most on long rides and in humid weather, and matters least if you ride forty minutes on a cool evening.

Against that, natural fibres cost more, need gentler washing, and compress over time. Synthetic fleece is, in Dover's description, economical and machine washable a reasonable default for a working pad that gets used five days a week.

Grip materials are a separate axis. Silicone and rubberised undersides do not change absorbency at all; they change whether the pad stays where you put it. If your pad migrates backwards every ride, that is what you are shopping for, not more padding.

Cotton, fleece, wool, gel and silicone compared.

Decision 4 Thickness

Thickness comes last because it depends entirely on the first three and on how well your saddle already fits.

Pressure-mat studies flag risk of back pain above a mean pressure of 11 kPa, a threshold proposed by Nyikos et al. in 2005 and still the most widely used in the field. (The ~4.7 kPa capillary-occlusion figure often quoted alongside it describes when blood flow is interrupted, not when a saddle is doing harm.) The practical finding is that "a saddle pad cannot fix a poor saddle fit, but it can easily ruin a good one" a thick pad under a too-wide saddle may feel more stable while simply moving the pressure elsewhere.

The practical rule: if your saddle fits, use the thinnest pad that does the sweat job. Add thickness only to solve a diagnosed problem, and get the saddle checked rather than padding around it.

How much thickness is too much.

Do you also need a half pad?

A half pad is a shorter, thicker pad that sits on top of the full saddle pad, under the saddle. It is a fit-adjustment tool, not a second saddle pad.

Riding Warehouse's guide is blunt about the limits: "a half pad is not a substitute for a well-fitting saddle. It can help with minor points but should only aid in the fit, not make up for it." They use a shoe analogy that lands well a shoe that fits with thin socks becomes uncomfortable with thick ones.

Most riders do not need one. Add a half pad when a saddle fitter tells you to, or when your horse's topline is genuinely changing through a season.

Half pad vs saddle pad, and when you need both.

The two problems every rider eventually has

The pad slides backwards

This is the most common complaint and it usually has a cause other than the pad girth tension, saddle balance, or the pad simply being too smooth against a slick summer coat. Grip on the underside solves the last of those, and only that one.

How to stop a saddle pad slipping.

The pad gets filthy and stays that way

Sweat and hair build up in the fibres, and a dirty pad is both less absorbent and more slippery. Washing is straightforward but easy to get wrong heat is what destroys pads, and it destroys grip surfaces fastest of all.

How to wash a saddle pad without wrecking the grip.

Wither clearance and the spine channel

Two details that decide comfort more than any material choice, and that most product listings never mention.

Wither clearance is whether the pad presses down on the withers once the girth is done up. It should not. A contoured or wither-cut pad has a raised front profile that follows the shape of the wither instead of running straight across it, which matters enormously on a high-withered horse and matters very little on a round-backed cob.

The spine channel is the gap the pad leaves along the spine itself. Nothing should press on the spinous processes. When you tack up, lift the pad into the saddle's gullet before girthing and check you can get a hand into the channel. If the pad is pulled drum-tight across the spine before the horse has taken a step, it will be tighter under a rider.

These two checks take five seconds and catch most of what goes wrong.

What changes at each price point

Roughly, and with plenty of exceptions.

Entry. Quilted cotton, square cut, no grip, no contouring. Perfectly serviceable for light work on a horse with a well-fitting saddle. This is a consumable expect to replace it when the padding flattens.

Mid. Better fabric, a shaped or contoured profile, often a grip underside or a wither cut-out. This is where most working riders should be, because it is where fit features start appearing rather than just materials.

Upper. Sheepskin, technical moisture-management fabrics, engineered spine channels, shimmable systems. Real performance gains, but only if the underlying saddle fit is already sound otherwise you are buying an expensive pad to sit under a problem.

The honest guidance: money spent on a saddle fitter beats money spent on a pad, every time, until the fit is right.

How many pads do you actually need

Two, if you ride most days.

Not because you need variety, but because a pad needs to dry completely between uses and a sweat-soaked pad put back on a horse the next morning is both less absorbent and more likely to rub. One on the horse, one drying, is the whole argument.

If you ride two or three times a week, one pad and a diligent washing habit is fine. If you compete, a third pad kept clean for the ring saves a lot of frantic laundry.

When to replace a pad

Four signs, none of them about how it looks.

• The padding has gone flat and hard. Compressed loft does not recover. Once a pad has gone thin and stiff, it has stopped doing its job whatever its condition otherwise.
• It no longer absorbs. If the pad is wet through to the top after a normal ride and washing has not helped, the fibres are done.
• The grip surface has hardened or gone glassy. Usually from heat a tumble dryer or a radiator. This is permanent.
• The edges have hardened. Stiff, curled binding rubs, and it rubs in exactly the place where the pad meets the horse's side.

Staining, on its own, is not a reason to replace anything.

A short buying checklist

1. Identify your saddle type dressage, jump or all-purpose. Buy that cut.
2. Measure pommel button to mid-cantle. Add two inches. Size up if between.
3. Decide how much your horse sweats and how often you will wash. Choose material accordingly.
4. Start thin. Add thickness only for a diagnosed reason.
5. If your current pad slips, buy grip not padding.
6. Check whether you actually need anything carried on the saddle. If you ride with a phone, a pad with a secure zip pocket removes the pocket-versus-armband problem entirely.

What to look for in a saddle pad with a phone pocket.

How to read a product listing

Saddle pad listings use a small vocabulary that is rarely explained. Translating it saves a lot of guessing.

"Contoured" the pad has a shaped topline that follows the curve of the horse's back rather than lying flat. Better for high withers and for horses with a pronounced dip behind them.

"Shaped" the outline follows the saddle's outline rather than being a plain square. Not the same as contoured, though the two words get used interchangeably.

"Square" a rectangular pad. Standard for dressage, common for schooling generally.

"Half pad" a smaller, thicker pad that goes on top of a saddle pad. Not a saddle pad in its own right.

"Numnah" a pad cut to the shape of the saddle, close-fitting. Chiefly British usage.

"Wither relief" or "wither cut" the front is cut or raised so the pad does not press down on the withers.

"Girth protection" reinforcement where the girth straps cross the pad, to stop them wearing through and to reduce rubbing.

Anything a listing does not state, assume it does not have. Pads that are contoured advertise it.

What a saddle pad cannot do

It cannot make a too-narrow saddle fit. It cannot make a too-wide saddle fit. It cannot fix a bridging tree, and it cannot resolve a horse that is sore for reasons that have nothing to do with tack.

If your horse is showing back soreness, resistance to being girthed, or uneven sweat patterns after work, the pad is not where the answer is. Book a saddle fitter. A pad is the last two millimetres of a fit problem, never the first.

Buying in Canada

We ship across Canada and price in Canadian dollars, so what you see is what you pay no exchange-rate surprise at checkout and no customs handling on a domestic order. If you are replacing a pad mid-season, that predictability is worth more than it sounds.

Shop saddle pads.

Sources

• Review of pressure mat studies of saddle fitting to the horse's back  Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering (2020)
• Saddle Pad Pressure: Is It Harming Your Horse's Back?  Iberosattel
• Choosing a Saddle Pad  Dover Saddlery
• The Complete Guide to Proper Saddle Pad Sizing  Kavallerie
• How to Pick the Best Saddle Pad  Stable Management
• How to Choose an English Half Pad  Riding Warehouse