We will say that no IWB holster feels perfect from day one, they take a bit of time to get used to. They should not hurt or dig into your body. When looking at IWB holsters, you want to have smooth corners. Sharp corners will almost always create a hotspot that will force you to put that holster up. You want to find a holster with what we call a sweat shield on the back side closest to your body. The sweat shield covers the back of the gun against your body. This serves two purposes, one to keep your sweat and oils off the gun and two to help prevent some of the sharp edges on the controls from digging into your body.
You want to find a secure method of attaching the holster inside the pants that you are wearing. There are many clips on the market. Some are simple metal or plastic clips that go over the belt. Those are great if you always wear a belt. They also work best if sized properly to the belt you are wearing. If you wear a 1.5” belt, you want a 1.5” clip. If they are the same and set at the correct angles it should hold nice and secure. From there, some use loops made out of either leather or a synthetic material. Here’s what the standard 1.5” or 1.75” belt clip looks like:
Recently we have seen a rise in people asking for either a Fabriclip, or UltiClip. Both of these allow you to wear an inside the waistband holster without the belt. The Fabriclip is made of plastic and when used properly pinches the fabric of your pants. This works well on lightweight materials, not so much on jeans, etc. The UltiClip has a clip that uses spring tension to clamp onto fabric. We have found these work quite well across the board on all materials. Here is a fabriclip with a claw included:
I personally prefer to use loops on my IWB holsters, the loops wrap around the belt and snap in place. I feel like these really never catch on anything. They are super secure, even sometimes very difficult to get snapped off your own belt. They do not have any “hard” material that is exposed that could catch or make extra noise. The loops typically are very adjustable and can be sized to your belt. These also hold super strong in place, but again you need a belt.
We get a lot of requests for all sorts of different colors for IWB holsters. Since most of the time, no one will ever see them, some people look at it as a time to go wild, while other folks stick to the more basic colors. Neither logic is wrong here. Our opinion, pick what you like and have fun.
The other big question is based around our fabric or fake suede covered holsters. Again, this is what I personally choose. I find that the fabric helps cling to my clothing and keeps everything “in place” a bit better than plain kydex. I find less movement and wiggling with my rig when I use fabric covered. Now, I wear an undershirt all the time, so that may make a difference for some people.
The other thing we are starting to see is various build outs on IWB holsters. We use, sell and like the claw that we use. The claw helps to push the but of the gun into your body and reduce printing. This is really super useful when you carry a larger firearm. We have also seen various build outs of foam, and other things placed on the backside of the holster, we do not do this, but have seen some that look like they may be comfortable.
Here is the claw installed:
There are lots of other specialty items on the market in the IWB realm including “sidecar” holsters that have a built-in magazine pouch. We do not make these, we may someday, but right now we have not really looked hard at doing it. This is sort of a specialized item that includes a spare magazine carrier built into the holster. This in some cases may allow you to carry as many as 40 rounds of ammo, depending on the gun.
An IWB holster is a very personal thing. If you are near our store in Hagerstown, stop and try some on. If you are not near us, go to a big firearms store and see what they have to look at.