It’s a thorny issue that can cause heated debate but, like so many things in Britain, social standing made it even more complicated

To be fair, the debate was sparked by my uncle. “I am perplexed,” he emailed me a couple of months ago, “by tradesmen who are determined to take their perfectly clean boots off before entering a lived-in, dog-strewn house like ours. And yesterday, a friend who lives in an even scruffier and doggier house apologised for having his clean, dry gumboots on when he called, having been making a bonfire at home. Keep them on I say, and have a run around with the Dyson afterwards.”

I decided to mention this “shoes on or shoes off” question in my Sunday Telegraph column. Have we become more of a shoes-off nation since the pandemic, I wondered, because we’re now so wimpy about germs?

A lively, six-week correspondence kicked off on the letters page. Some pointed out that removing shoes was a matter of respect, not just hygiene. One lady said that the shoes-off-at-the-door rule meant she knew which of her children were in the house when she returned from work. 

Another insisted that, since socks and stockings are sold in the hosiery department, asking guests to remove their shoes and reveal them was “on a par with expecting them to remove their shirts and blouses and sit around in their underwear”. (Hard to fault the logic.) Jennie from Cheltenham wrote that she’d once lived in Borneo where removing shoes is the custom, but this caused havoc at a dinner party after her puppy scattered 30 pairs of shoes in the garden. 

In plenty of Asian countries, shoes come off and slippers go on to protect the floor from nasty street germs. The Japanese may even have different pairs of slippers for different rooms. Mustn’t wear your sitting room slippers to go to the loo, for example. Muslim countries tend to remove their shoes since they pray on the floor, and often eat while sitting on it. The Swedes go in for it, as do the Swiss, according to one source, apparently except for elderly Swiss because the stooping is a bit much.

But the Brits? Not so much. Why are we such muddy barbarians? It could be to do with climate, according to fashion historians. “It may have started from a desire for warmth,” says Elizabeth Semmelhack, senior curator at Toronto’s Bata Shoe Museum. “Indoor footwear made with cork soles for winter wear dates back to antiquity.” 

And, as so often in Britain, the thorny issue of whether to slide your loafers off or keep them on has traditionally been further complicated by class. Toffs would never bother to remove their shoes – or ask anyone else to. Why would they, when they largely lived in untidy dog-hair-ridden houses? It’s one of those funny contradictions about posh people: they may look immaculate in public but they could easily be mistaken for a hairy owl pellet at home. Large houses are often cold, too, because the posh are very stingy about heating, which tallies with the idea that certain Brits kept their feet covered for practical reasons.

Fussing about carrying germs into the house is also deemed precious and towny and the sort of thing the lower classes go in for, which was why they might wear slippers. The properly grand couldn’t give a fig about hygiene (look how close they get to their dogs), so shoes remain firmly on. In 2019, in fact, asking guests to remove their shoes was listed on Nicky Haslam’s infamous tea towels as a habit he found desperately common.

But two things have occurred since then to cause a shift in attitude: Covid, and the growth of a more house-proud nation. The pandemic is an obvious one; whether you’re a duke or a dustbin man, your anxiety about traipsing grubby pavement bacteria into your carpets might have grown in recent years. Fair enough, given an utterly revolting study in 2019 which revealed that 96 per cent of shoes will have faecal matter on them within two weeks of wear. 

“I think this trend has also come from increased multiculturalism, which has taught us filthy Brits some very good lessons,” adds a friend who’s become a staunch shoes-off sort since the pandemic began.

And, as pretty pictures on social media and the rise of Instagram interior designers and influencers made us think harder about what our homes look like, everyone started to become more neurotic about flooring – even the Sloanes. In the old days, they didn’t care much what their sitting room looked like; inherited paintings, chintzy curtains, something dead on the wall, job done. Now, thanks to interior designers such as Rita Konig and Matilda Goad, they can be just as pedantic about their wooden floor as everyone else, so you might be asked to slip your heels off before stepping on their new kitchen parquet.

“Most annoying when you’re asked this at a dinner party and your shoes are part of the outfit,” grumbles one. Personally, I’d still rather look at people’s shoes than their toes, but each to their own.

If you’re a shoes-off sort, interior designer Emma Sims-Hilditch recommends tumbled limestone. “The smooth finish is comfortable underfoot and can also be used with underfloor heating. Or another great, more practical option is engineered oak, as it has a textured finish, so a better grip and less cool to the touch than natural stone.” And if you’re determined to keep your shoes on? Your flooring choice doesn’t matter so much, so long as it’s not cream carpet. Perhaps just have a whip round with a Dyson afterwards, like my uncle suggests.

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