What "wear" and "exterior" actually mean
In Counter-Strike 2, every skin carries a hidden float value (officially the "paint wear") — a decimal between 0.00 and 1.00 that is rolled when the skin is generated and is then permanent. The wear level, also called the exterior, is simply the human-readable label the game prints for whichever slice of that 0–1 scale your float falls into.
So "wear" and "float" are two views of the same thing: float is the precise number, wear is the bucket. When a listing says Field-Tested, it is telling you the float sits somewhere between 0.15 and 0.38 — but not exactly where. That distinction matters once you start comparing prices. For the full mechanics of the underlying number, see our CS2 float value explained guide.
The five wear tiers and their exact float ranges
Valve divides the continuous 0–1 float into five named exteriors. These are the labels you see on every marketplace and in your inventory:
- Factory New (FN) — float 0.00 to 0.07. Pristine, no visible wear. The most expensive tier.
- Minimal Wear (MW) — float 0.07 to 0.15. Tiny imperfections, still very clean in-game. A frequent value sweet spot.
- Field-Tested (FT) — float 0.15 to 0.38. Visible wear, but the most-traded and most affordable widely-stocked tier.
- Well-Worn (WW) — float 0.38 to 0.45. Heavily faded and a narrow band — often surprisingly cheap.
- Battle-Scarred (BS) — float 0.45 to 1.00. The most weathered tier and usually the cheapest, though some art styles still look excellent here.
Each boundary is inclusive at the bottom and exclusive at the top, so a float of exactly 0.07 is Minimal Wear, not Factory New. The label you get is a direct, mechanical lookup from the float — there is no rounding or judgement involved.
How float maps to the wear label
Mapping float to a tier is purely a matter of which range the number lands in. A 0.034 float is Factory New; nudge it to 0.071 and the same skin would read Minimal Wear; push it to 0.40 and it becomes Well-Worn. Nothing else about the skin changes — only the bracket its float occupies.
Because the tiers are fixed bands, the wear label is a useful shorthand but a blunt one. Two skins sharing a tier can sit at opposite ends of its float range and look meaningfully different in-game, which is why seasoned buyers always glance at the exact float before committing.
Why the band widths differ so much
The five bands are not equal in size, and that shapes how each tier behaves. Factory New and Minimal Wear are tight (0.07-wide and 0.08-wide), so copies inside them look fairly consistent. Field-Tested is enormous at 0.23 wide, and Battle-Scarred is the widest of all, covering more than half the entire scale from 0.45 all the way to 1.00.
The practical upshot: a 0.16 Field-Tested is nearly Minimal Wear, while a 0.37 Field-Tested borders Well-Worn — same label, very different finish. In the huge Battle-Scarred band, a 0.46 copy can look far cleaner than a 0.90 copy. This is exactly why the wear label alone never tells the whole story and why low-float copies within the wide tiers carry a premium.
Best-value wear tier for each use-case
There is no single "best" exterior — it depends on what you want from the skin:
- Everyday players on a budget — Field-Tested is the default. It is the cheapest widely-stocked tier and looks clean on art that hides wear well. Browse value picks in our budget AWPs list.
- Clean look without FN prices — Minimal Wear. You get a near-pristine surface at a fraction of the Factory New cost.
- Collectors and gradient finishes — Factory New, and ideally a low float within it. On solid colours and gradients any wear is obvious, so the premium is justified.
- Maximum savings on grunge art — Battle-Scarred. Heavily-stylised skins like Asiimov or Hyper Beast are designed to look worn, so the cheapest tier can still look great.
A reliable rule: pick the tier first based on how the artwork holds up to wear, then buy the lowest float you can comfortably afford inside that tier.
Float caps — why some tiers don't exist for some skins
Every skin has a minimum and maximum float cap set by its creator, and those caps clip the 0–1 range. If a skin's minimum cap is above 0.07 it can never be Factory New — the famous case is the AK-47 | Redline, capped around 0.10, so the cleanest copy you can buy is Minimal Wear. Conversely, some skins cap their maximum below 1.00 and so never appear in Battle-Scarred.
This is why you'll find finishes that simply don't exist in certain wear tiers. Before hunting for a Factory New copy of any skin, confirm the finish can even roll one — the wear range and caps are listed on every skin page in our skins catalog.
How wear shows on a listing
On a marketplace, the exterior appears as part of the item name — for example "AK-47 | Redline (Minimal Wear)". Reputable listings also show the exact float in the spec panel and expose an in-game inspect link so you can view the real model before buying. Treat a listing that hides the precise float with caution, especially near a tier boundary where a fractional difference changes the price bracket.
On our pages every finish lists its wear range and float caps next to a live multi-market price grid across 41 marketplaces, scored by our own in-house algorithm, so you can judge whether a listing's float and tier justify the asking price. Start with the AK-47 hub or the AWP hub.
Browse skins by exterior
Because wear is one of the biggest price levers, it's worth shopping by tier. Our exteriors index lets you filter the whole catalog by Factory New through Battle-Scarred, so you can compare how a finish looks and what it costs at each wear level before you decide. From there you can drill into any weapon hub or back out to all guides and the wider CS2 skins glossary.
Wear levels, in one sentence
Wear level is the five-tier label — Factory New to Battle-Scarred — that a skin's permanent float drops it into: it sets the look and a big share of the price, varies wildly in band width, is clipped by per-skin float caps, and never once touches how the weapon plays.