Fall Riding Gloves: The Awkward 45 to 60 Degree Range
Updated: Sep 28
It is 47 degrees when I leave the house in October and 64 by the time I ride home. That spread is the entire problem with fall gloves. Winter gloves turn my hands into oven mitts by two in the afternoon and I cannot feel the front brake lever. Summer deerskin leaves my fingertips aching at the first stoplight of the morning. Neither one is wrong. They are just built for the ends of the year, and October lives in the middle.
Disclosure: MotoGearRater and Legendary USA have the same owner. Links to legendaryusa.com in this article go to our owner’s store, and are marked as sponsored. How we make money
Most riders solve this by buying a third pair of gloves, and about half of them buy the wrong third pair. The shoulder season does not need a warmer glove so much as it needs an adjustable one, and the adjustment is usually cheaper than a new pair. This is how I have sorted it out over roughly a dozen autumns in the upper Midwest, where 45 to 60 degrees describes about ten weeks of riding a year.
Why This Band Is Harder Than Winter
Winter is easy because it is honestly cold. You put on the warmest thing you own and accept the loss of feel. Fall is deceptive because the air temperature lies to you. At 55 degrees standing still, bare hands are fine. At 55 degrees doing 65 miles an hour, the moving air pulls heat off your knuckles fast enough that the effective feel lands in the mid 30s within about fifteen minutes. Your hands are the only part of you sticking straight out into that airstream with no bodywork in front of them.
Two more things stack on top. Wind exposure at the wrist gap matters more than glove thickness: a half inch of bare skin between cuff and sleeve will make a warm glove feel cold, every time. And your hands are working. Clutch, brake, and throttle inputs restrict blood flow through the fingers, which is why the pinky and ring finger go numb first even in a glove that feels warm enough on the back of the hand.
Unlined Deerskin, and Exactly Where It Quits
Unlined deerskin is the best three-season glove leather I have used. It is thin enough to feel the levers, it molds to your hand inside a week, and it blocks wind well above its weight. What it does not do is insulate, because there is nothing in there to trap air.
My working numbers: comfortable down to about 58 degrees at highway speed with no complaints, usable from 50 to 58 for rides under 45 minutes, and genuinely unpleasant below 50. Below 45 I would not ride in them at all past a half hour. Legendary publishes a deerskin glove temperature guide that lines up closely with what I have measured, which is more than I can say for most gear charts. Be clear on what this is: unlined, unarmored deerskin, it carries no CE rating, and it is not armor. It is abrasion and wind protection.
One free improvement before you spend anything: switch from a short wrist cuff to a longer cuff or a gauntlet. Closing the wrist gap is worth roughly 6 to 8 degrees of perceived warmth in my experience, and it costs nothing extra if you are buying gloves anyway.
Fleece-Lined Gloves and What They Cost You
A fleece-lined deerskin glove picks up roughly 10 to 12 degrees of downward range. Mine are comfortable to about 40 and survivable into the mid 30s. That solves the cold morning cleanly. Here is the honest trade.
Lever feel drops noticeably. Not dangerously, but you will notice the throttle is less precise for the first few rides until you recalibrate.
They get sweaty above about 62 degrees, and damp hands get cold faster than dry ones on the ride home. This is the exact failure mode of wearing winter gloves in fall.
Break-in takes longer, because the lining stops the leather from molding directly to your hand.
Bulk at the cuff makes them harder to get over a jacket sleeve, which sounds trivial until you are doing it in a gas station parking lot with cold fingers.
Liners Are the Cheap Fix Nobody Mentions
A separate thin liner worn under gloves you already own is the answer for most riders, and it runs $19 to $25 rather than $120. A thin liner adds about 8 to 10 degrees of range without permanently thickening the glove, and you can pull them out at lunch when it hits 65.
Two practical notes. Buy your gloves with liners in mind or size up half a step, because a liner inside a snug glove compresses the insulation and makes your hands colder, not warmer. And skip cotton. Cotton liners hold sweat and turn into a cold wet layer by the second hour. Thin synthetic or wool blend liners are what you want, and they wash in a sink. The USA made glove range has both liners and gloves cut with enough room to take them.
What I Actually Carry From September to November
One pair of longer cuff unlined deerskin gloves, one pair of liners in the tank bag, and a fleece-lined pair that stays home unless the forecast low is under 42. That covers 38 to 70 degrees with two purchases instead of four. The liners go on for the ride out and come off at whatever stop happens after the sun has been up two hours.
The rider who ends up frustrated is the one who buys a single glove for the average temperature. There is no glove that is right at both 47 and 64 degrees. There is only a system that adjusts, and the adjustable part should be the cheap part.
Editor's Picks
Four items that between them cover the whole shoulder season. Gloves are sized by hand measurement across the knuckles, so check the glove size chart before ordering, and size with a liner in mind if you plan to use one. All the leather here is unlined or fleece-lined deerskin with no CE rating and no armor.
Classic Longer Cuff Deerskin Gloves, $120. The core fall glove. The longer cuff closes the wrist gap, which is the single biggest fix in this temperature band, and the touchscreen index finger saves you taking them off at every stop.
Fleece-Lined Deerskin Gloves, $120. The 3M fleece lining buys you the 38 to 50 degree mornings. Same price as the unlined pair, which makes the decision about range rather than budget.
Gators Skin Glove Liners, $25. Thin enough to fit inside gloves you already own and the fastest way to extend a summer glove into October.
G.I. Military Glove Liners, from $18.99. The budget option. Buy two pairs so one is always dry, and keep the spare in the saddlebag.
Where Held Is the Better Buy
If your priority in this temperature range is protection rather than feel, buy Held instead. The German-made gloves are genuinely CE-rated, they use kangaroo palms and hard knuckle protection, and their three-season models are built with real impact and abrasion performance that no unarmored deerskin glove can claim. You will pay considerably more and the break-in is stiffer. What deerskin gives you back is dexterity, a glove that fits like it was made for your hand after a week, and a price that lets you own two pairs. Both answers are defensible. Prices verified August 2026.
The Bottom Line
If you own one pair of gloves and it is unlined, buy liners first. Twenty-five dollars extends your existing gloves down to roughly 45 degrees, and you may find you never need a second pair at all. If your commute regularly starts below 42, add the fleece-lined pair and keep the unlined ones for the ride home.
If you are starting from nothing, buy the longer cuff unlined deerskin at $120 and a set of liners in the same order. That combination handles the 45 to 60 band better than any single glove I have tried, and it leaves you a summer glove for July rather than a winter glove gathering dust for nine months. More options are on the glove buying guide if you want to compare cuffs first.
