When considering shirting options, it’s easy to categorize everything into two buckets: safe solids, and bold checks.

Your safe solids include things like beefy blue oxfords and fine white twills: just the sort of shirts you can count on wearing to work each morning with a pair of chinos or a dark-colored suit. Checks, on the other hand, bring boldly patterned dress shirts or casual weekend plaids to mind.

But this approach leaves out the versatile in-between category: stripes. Fine or wide, vertical stripes provide your 9-to-5 wear with extra visual interest without capturing too much attention. For a few pointers on how you can easily incorporate stripes into your professional wear, read on below.

How to wear striped shirts 

• Always wear striped shirts with solid suits.

• Sometimes wear striped shirts with patterned suits (so long as the pattern is not a stripe).

• Never wear striped shirts with striped suits.

As a general rule, smaller, finer stripes will appear more formal (and subtle), while bolder, wider stripes lean on the more casual end of the spectrum. You can also pair any type of tie to a striped shirt, event a striped tie, so long as the tie’s stripes are diagonal rather than vertical.