Do You Remove Factory Insoles in Pickleball Shoes?

You slide the new insoles in, lace up, and something is off before the first serve. Your heel sits high, the laces feel tight over the instep, and by game three your toes are pressed into the end of the shoe. Nothing is wrong with the insoles. There are just two of them in there.

Yes. In almost every case you should take the factory insole out before fitting a full-length replacement. Court shoes have little spare internal volume, so leaving the original underneath raises your foot, lifts your heel out of its cup, and stops the new support meeting your arch where it was designed to. The exceptions are three-quarter length inserts and glued-in liners.

What makes this confusing is that the big insole brands do not agree with each other, and their instructions are written for every shoe you own rather than for the one you play in. This guide works through what each maker actually says, why they differ, and what changes on a court.

Key Takeaways

• Remove the factory liner before fitting any full-length replacement insole in court shoes.
• Three-quarter length inserts are the exception. They are designed to sit on top of the existing liner.
• Superfeet says its insoles replace the removable liner; Dr. Scholl's permits stacking if the shoe still fits.
• Both are right for their own products, because the two brands build to different thicknesses and lengths.
• Court shoes have less internal volume than trainers, so stacking costs more here than in everyday shoes.
• Stacking raises your heel out of the heel cup, which trades arch support for less lateral stability.
• If the liner is glued in, the shoe is not designed for a replacement insole, and forcing it usually damages the shoe.

What the Factory Liner Actually Is

The thin layer you pull out of a new court shoe is a liner, sometimes called a sockliner or a factory footbed. It is not an insole in the supportive sense, and it is not meant to be.

Its job is to finish the inside of the shoe, cover the seams and stitching under your foot, and take up the small amount of space between your foot and the midsole. Most are a single sheet of low-density foam, a few millimeters thick, with a fabric top cover and no structure underneath.

That is why replacing it is so common. The support in a court shoe comes from the midsole and the upper, not from the liner, and a foam sheet flattens within weeks of regular play. If you have been through several pairs of shoes looking for relief, understanding what new shoes cannot fix is worth reading alongside this, because the liner is usually the cheapest variable in the whole setup.

None of that means you need a replacement. If you are not yet sure whether you do, the signs you need insoles are a better starting point than a purchase.

Why the Brands Disagree

Here is the part that trips people up. Two of the biggest names in the category give opposite default instructions, and both are correct about their own products.

Superfeet states plainly that its All-Purpose Support insoles are "designed to replace the removable liner in a wide range of footwear," and to be trimmed to your shoe size. Replacement is the assumption built into the product.

Dr. Scholl's takes the other position. Its guidance is that its insoles and orthotics "can be placed over a shoe's existing insole as long as the shoe is still comfortable and does not feel too tight," and that "any insole or orthotic that is not full-length should be placed on top of your shoe's existing insole."

CURREX does not give an explicit instruction either way, but designs around replacement: it describes its insole as having the same 4mm height as existing standard insoles, which only matters as a specification if you are swapping one for the other.

So the disagreement is not really a disagreement about feet. It is a consequence of what each brand builds.

Length decides more than brand

A full-length insole occupies the entire footbed, heel to toe. It is a direct substitute for the liner, and putting one on top of the other doubles the layer under your whole foot.

A three-quarter length insert stops behind the ball of the foot. It cannot replace the liner, because it would leave your forefoot sitting on bare midsole. It is designed to sit on top, and that is why Dr. Scholl's guidance reads the way it does. A meaningful part of its range is three-quarter length.

Thickness follows the same logic. An insole built to roughly the height of a standard liner is a swap. One built thinner than that may tolerate sitting on top in a roomy shoe. If you want to see how much this varies between two structural brands, our comparison of CURREX versus Superfeet sets out the published thickness figures.

The sizing method is the other half of it, and the difference between trim-to-fit and true sizing explains why a brand that ships size bands writes different instructions from one that ships exact sizes.

Why This Matters More in Court Shoes

General fitting advice is written for every shoe you own. Pickleball shoes are the hardest case in your wardrobe, for three reasons.

Court shoes are built low and close. Lateral support depends on your foot sitting down inside the shoe rather than perched on top of a stack. Manufacturers reduce internal volume deliberately to achieve that, which leaves less room for an extra layer than a running shoe or a trainer has.

The heel cup is doing real work. A replacement insole's heel cup is shaped to seat your heel and hold it centered through direction changes. Raise the whole assembly on a liner underneath and your heel sits higher in the shoe's own counter, with less of the counter wrapping it. You paid for stability and gave some of it back.

The load runs sideways. Split-steps, hard stops at the kitchen line, and lateral push-offs all ask the shoe to hold your foot against sideways force. A foot sitting higher has more leverage to move, and any play in that system shows up as your foot sliding inside the shoe rather than the shoe moving with you.

There is a fourth consequence that shows up later. Reduced vertical clearance means your toes have less room at the top of the toe box, and on hard stops they meet the end of the shoe sooner.

It helps to put numbers on it. A factory liner in a court shoe is typically three to five millimeters thick through the heel, and a structural replacement runs roughly four to eight millimeters at the same point.

More than that if you have chosen a high arch profile, since arch height and overall thickness tend to move together. Stack the two and you are asking the shoe to absorb seven to thirteen millimeters where it was designed for four.

Half a centimeter sounds trivial written down. It is not trivial inside a shoe built to hold your foot within a few millimeters of the midsole, and it decides whether your heel sits in its counter or perches above it.

It also explains why the same stack feels acceptable in a running shoe and wrong on court. A trainer has the volume to absorb it. A court shoe does not.

What Stacking Actually Feels Like

If you have already doubled up without realizing, the symptoms are specific enough to recognize.

• Laces that feel tight over the instep at normal tension, or a tongue that sits proud of the eyelets.
• A heel that feels like it is sitting on a ledge rather than down in a cup, often with slight lift as you push off.
• Arch pressure that feels too high, because the new shell has been raised toward your foot.
• Toes contacting the end of the shoe on hard stops in a shoe that fit fine last season.
• A shoe that feels fine standing still and wrong within a game.

That third one is the important one for anyone chasing arch pain. Support is a shape that has to meet your foot in a specific place, and raising the shell on a liner moves it. Our guide to choosing arch support covers why contact matters more than height, and a stacked insole quietly breaks the contact you were trying to buy.

How to Tell If Your Liner Comes Out

Before any of this matters, check whether the liner in your shoe is removable at all. It takes about twenty seconds.

Reach into the shoe and lift at the heel rather than the toe. A removable liner lifts cleanly from the back, sometimes with a little resistance from friction or a spot of adhesive at the heel, and peels forward from there. A glued-in footbed will not lift at all, or will start to tear rather than release.

Three signs it is bonded and should stay: the edge of the footbed disappears smoothly into the side of the shoe with no visible seam, lifting at the heel flexes the whole midsole rather than separating a layer, or you can see fabric fibers pulling away as you lift. Any of those, stop.

Court shoes vary more than you would expect here. Some of the most cushioned models bond the footbed to the midsole deliberately, because the two are engineered as a single unit. That is a legitimate design choice rather than a defect, and it simply means the shoe is not a candidate for a full-length replacement.

If you are unsure, check the product page before you buy the shoe. Makers who expect you to swap the liner usually say the footbed is removable, and the ones who do not mention it are often the ones that bond it.

The Decision, by Insole Type

Two rows deserve a note. If you were prescribed orthotics, the instructions that came with them override anything a retail brand publishes, because the device was made to a measured height. The difference between insoles versus custom orthotics is worth understanding if you are not sure which you are holding.

And if the liner is glued down, that shoe was not designed to take a replacement. Some court shoes are built this way. Prying at a bonded footbed usually lifts material off the midsole and leaves a ridge that is worse than the liner ever was.

Exact-Size Insoles Change the Question

Most insoles ship in size bands, which is why the instructions so often involve scissors. A smaller number are made in exact sizes, and their fitting instruction is correspondingly simpler.

HeelBase Drive is an example of the second kind. It is made in nine exact sizes and is not designed to be trimmed, so the guidance is to take the insole your court shoes came with out and drop Drive in. There is no cutting step and no question about stacking, because the outline already matches the shoe.

That is not a claim that exact sizing is better. It is a different set of trade-offs: you get the fit decision right at the point of ordering rather than at your kitchen table. But it does mean the answer to this article's question is built into the product rather than left to you.

How to Check You Got It Right

Five minutes before your first session will tell you more than a season of adjusting.

1. Pull the factory liner out and keep it. If the new insole turns out to be wrong for that shoe, you will want the original back.
2. Drop the new insole in flat and press it down at the heel. It should sit level with no bunching at the edges and no gap under the arch.
3. Lace the shoe as you normally would, not tighter, not looser.
4. Stand up and check your heel. It should feel seated down in the shoe, not perched.
5. Do a few lateral shuffles and a hard stop. Your foot should move with the shoe rather than inside it.

If the shoe only feels right when you loosen the laces, the total stack is too tall for that pair. If the insole needs to be shortened to lie flat, our step-by-step method for trimming insoles for court shoes covers the sequence and what must never be cut.

When Removing the Liner Is Not the Answer

Sometimes the liner is not the problem.

If your court shoes are past their support life, a new insole in a collapsed shoe is a partial fix at best. The midsole is the structure; the insole tunes it. Check the shoe from behind on a flat surface, and if the heel leans rather than sitting upright, the shoe is the variable to change first.

If pain has lasted more than a few weeks, is sharp and localized, wakes you at night, or has not moved despite sensible footwear changes, fitting is no longer the question. That is the point where a professional assessment is more useful than another purchase.

And if the insole you are fitting has been in service for a while already, it may be worth checking its condition rather than its position. A shell that has lost its shape does not start working again in a different shoe, and moving a tired insole between pairs is a common way to conclude that insoles do not help you.

One last case worth naming: if you removed the liner, fitted a replacement, and the shoe now feels loose rather than tight, the new insole is thinner than what came out. That is a real outcome with low-profile models in a roomy shoe, and the fix is a thicker insole or a snugger lacing pattern rather than putting the old liner back underneath.

Getting It Right the First Time

The rule is short enough to remember at the shoe rack. Full-length insole, liner comes out. Three-quarter insert, liner stays. Glued-in liner, the shoe is not a candidate.

Everything else follows from the space you have. Court shoes give you less of it than any other shoe you own, which is why the general advice on the packaging is worth reading twice before you apply it to the pair you actually play in.

Fit it, keep the old liner, and judge it over two or three sessions rather than in the first ten minutes.