You Might Love the Flat-Back Maison Miru Nap Earrings. Or You Might Lose ’Em. | Reviews by Wirecutter

Oct 28, 2024

By Zoe Vanderweide

Zoe Vanderweide is a writer focused on style and accessories. She has personally tested nearly 300 bags, jeans, bras, shoes, and more.

If set-’em-and-forget-’em studs that don’t poke or cause irritation sound like music to your ears, you might be curious about flat-back earrings.

In particular, I’m referring to the popular Maison Miru Nap Earrings that are advertised all over Instagram.

Unlike traditional, butterfly-back styles, which are notoriously uncomfortable to sleep in, nap earrings have flat, disc-shaped backings that sit flush against the skin. They’re billed as game changers: hypo-allergenic, tarnish-resistant, and totally siesta-approved.

To find out whether they’d stack up—or fall flat—three Wirecutter style experts put Maison Miru’s flat-back earrings to the test.

I wore the subtly sparkly Gaia Nap Earrings (about $95 a pair) day and night for six weeks. My editors, Ingela Ratledge Amundson and Jennifer Hunter, both tried the minimalist Little Bar Nap Earrings (about $75 a pair).

I also spoke with two professional piercers, canvassed Wirecutter journalists, and scoured the internet for rants and raves.

What did we learn?

For one thing, flat-back earrings are hardly a pioneering invention. The design has been a piercing-parlor favorite for decades. And with good reason—in the right hands (and the right ears), these earrings can alleviate some major pain points.

But … there are a lot of buts.

They can be frustrating to put in, hard to take out, and tricky to fit. And they’re perilously easy to lose (I speak from experience).

You may love these earrings. There’s also a decent chance that you’ll hate them. Here’s a breakdown of their pros and cons.

Nap earrings are especially nice if you have piercings that you don’t want to change very often.

A lazy girl with six man-made holes in my ears (and only enough energy to regularly switch up two of them), I am the target audience. Once I got the Maison Miru Nap Earrings in—not an easy task, mind you—I wore them 24/7 without a second thought.

These earrings come in a variety of dainty gold, silver, crystal, and gemstone designs, which are versatile enough to play nicely with just about any sartorial selection. And, sure enough, I didn’t have to worry about my small, twinkly Gaia earrings matching my outfit every day.

Our test panel tried the Maison Miru earrings made from implant-grade titanium, which is PVD (physical vapor deposition)–coated with 18-karat gold. This process results in a more-durable finish than from traditional electroplating, and it may have a lower environmental impact, too. Through six weeks of near-constant wear, which included plenty of sweating, sleeping, and showering, the earrings didn’t tarnish, flake, or turn any of our ears green.

But the real selling point is their comfortable, barely there feel. Nap earrings are dainty and ultra-light, so they didn’t weigh down my earlobes.

And best of all, they felt smooth against my skin when I was lying on my side. “They’re so, so comfortable to wear,” another tester confirmed. “That is their superpower.”

I have sensitive, nickel-allergic ears. Many earrings rub me the wrong way. But not these. I can vouch for their skin-friendliness.

I wore the Maison Miru Nap Earrings in my ultra-finicky secondary lobe piercings, which I’ve struggled with for years. (Just keep in mind that when it comes to fresh piercings, plated jewelry is not recommended; Maison Miru also sells unplated, silver-colored versions of the styles we tried.) Magically, my ears greeted the new arrivals without even a peep of protest.

Another Wirecutter journalist echoed my experience. She said that after she began wearing Maison Miru Nap Earrings, some piercings that had remained tender over a couple of years of infrequent use had finally turned the corner.

This may be due, in part, to the earrings’ material. Implant-grade titanium is the, ahem, gold standard when it comes to hypo-allergenic body jewelry. Maison Miru’s is the real deal. But be warned: Cassi Lopez—who owns So Gold Studios in Brooklyn, New York, and sits on the board of the Association of Professional Piercers—said not everything on the market that’s advertised as “implant grade” is actually legit.

The flat-back design itself also has other potential benefits. The smooth, simple shape—free of superfluous nooks and crannies—doesn’t collect buildup and bacteria like a traditional butterfly back. And this design is much less likely to snag on hair, towels, and clothing.

For the same reason, flat-back earrings may be a safer choice if you wear them while playing sports.

“My daughter is allowed to keep them in for tae kwon do because the risk of being injured by them is minimal,” deputy editor Annemarie Conte said. (Note that rules about body jewelry can vary; my daughter’s soccer league, for example, allows only silicone posts.)

Nap earrings consist of a hollow backing post and a front piece with a thin, bendable pin. To put them on, you poke the tube-like post through the back of your piercing; then you insert the pin from the front, making sure that it’s slightly bent as you push it in.

It doesn’t sound like brain surgery, but, in practice, it gave us real trouble.

To fit the pieces together, you’ll need good lighting, keen eyesight, and plenty of manual dexterity. It took me several minutes of finagling (and more than a few profane outbursts) before I finally succeeded.

Others had still more trouble. “Even with a good mirror, an instructional video, and a can-do attitude, attempting to get them in myself was a non-starter,” complained one frustrated tester, who ultimately enlisted outside help.

Taking them off can be equally challenging.

In fact, one panelist reported that she had to resort to drastic measures: “After trying for three days, I couldn’t get one of the nap earrings off—the mechanism must have bent [too much] as I was pushing to get them tight enough. I had to cut the earring in half to remove it.”

There are some tricks to help. For instance, newbies can use a taper (a tool for changing out body piercings) to guide the post in, said Monica Rosas, a body piercer at the Loops and Pierces studio in Santa Rosa, California. With practice, she said, you’ll manage to take them out using just your hands. (Understandably, not everyone will be game for tackling this learning curve.)

Time for a confession: I have owned a pair of Maison Miru Nap Earrings before (specifically, the Colette style). Do I own them still? No, I do not. I lost one of them almost immediately, within the first day—a tragedy that can almost certainly be attributed to user error.

To properly secure flat-back earrings, you must bend the pin slightly as you insert it into the backing, creating tension; otherwise, it will fall out. Mine fell out.

“[This process is] not something the average person is familiar with,” Lopez said. “Without understanding how the mechanism works, [people] will be left confused and disappointed when they lose their jewelry.”

But even when Maison Miru Nap Earrings have been inserted correctly, we’ve had issues. I lost my second Colette earring after four months of un-problematic wear—one day, without my noticing, it flat out disappeared. And while testing a new pair for Wirecutter—when I can say, with confidence, that I had learned to put them in correctly—it took only six weeks for one of my Gaia studs to abandon its post.

Such tales of lobe and loss aren’t unique to Maison Miru’s flat-back earrings. “I’ve been burned by flat-back earrings before,” a tester reported. “I had another pair [from popular brand Rowan] that I got professionally inserted when I had my second holes re-pierced, and I lost one of those out of the blue. It was a heartbreaker.”

Part of the trouble is that it’s hard to tell whether these types of earrings are secure. You can periodically tug on the front and back pieces to test their mettle, but it’s not as easy or intuitive as checking traditional posts. As one tester aptly pointed out, “With flat-back earrings, you usually don’t realize that something is wrong until it’s too late.”

You can’t tighten or loosen a flat-back earring to fit just right around your earlobe, as you can with a butterfly-back style—the post length is what it is. And, as one of our testers discovered, you may not realize just how nice it is to have highly adjustable backs until you don’t have the option.

Maison Miru’s standard Nap Earrings have a 6-mm post length; the company sells single earrings with longer, 8-mm posts as well. The other measurement to keep in mind is gauge, which refers to the thickness of the post; standard Nap Earrings for lobe piercings are 20-gauge, but singles are also available in larger, 18- and 16-gauge sizes for cartilage piercings.

One of our testers found the 6-mm posts to be much too long for her thin earlobes—the earrings drooped and didn’t sit properly in her ears. She was able to get a pair of 4-mm replacement backings that fit her better, but the earrings still sagged.

Replacement posts retail for $20, and they come in 4-mm, 6-mm, and 8-mm lengths. A rep told us that if you know your post size in advance and write to customer service, the company can create a custom order at no extra charge.

“Body jewelry is anatomy specific, and there’s no one-size-fits-all,” Lopez said. “As a professional body piercer, I carry flat-backs as small as 5/32 inch in length, and as long as ½ inch. You never know what size someone may need.”

Ear’s the deal: For some people, Maison Miru’s Nap Earrings could be just the thing.

They’re ultra-comfy, and they come in a variety of cute (if a little basic) designs. Most styles without semi-precious stones cost between $75 and $100, which Rosas confirmed is a reasonable price for a quality pair of implant-grade titanium earrings.

You can wear them day and night—whether you’re sleeping, bathing, or hitting the gym—and they’re gentle enough for sensitive skin and healing holes.

But the caveats are significant.

If you’re not familiar with how to use push-pin-style flat-back earrings, you’ll probably need to peruse some how-tos to get the hang of putting them on and taking them off. (The earring brand Studs, which also sells flat-back styles, offers some good guidance.)

If your earlobes (or other piercing locations) don’t conform to the range of “standard” sizes offered, you might not be happy with their fit.

And you have to be willing to live with the constant risk of potentially losing them.

For many people, these drawbacks might be dealbreakers—they were for our testing panel.After all, if your earrings sneak away in the middle of your nap, what’s the point?

This article was edited by Ben Frumin, Ingela Ratledge Amundson, and Jennifer Hunter.

Cassi Lopez, owner, So Gold Studios, email interview, April 13 and 16, 2024

Monica Rosas, body piercer, Loops and Pierces, email interview, April 16, 2024

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