Do swim shorts
need a liner?
The mesh brief sewn inside is the part people most often ask about, occasionally cut out, and almost always misunderstand.
Updated 26 July 2026 · 4 min read
What the liner actually does
It is a lightweight mesh brief stitched into the waistband. It does four things, and they are all worth having:
- Stops the outer fabric clinging. Wet swimwear presses against the body. The liner puts a layer of open mesh between skin and shell so the outer fabric hangs rather than sticks.
- Prevents chafing. Wet fabric moving against wet skin over a long walk back from the beach is how people end up sore. Mesh moves less against skin than woven fabric does.
- Provides light support. Not much, but more than nothing, which matters if you are swimming rather than standing.
- Drains. Mesh holds almost no water, so it does not add to what has to dry.
Should you wear underwear underneath?
No — and this is the single most common mistake.
Cotton underwear absorbs water into the fibre rather than letting it run off. A cotton brief under swim shorts will still be soaked an hour after the shorts themselves have dried, it will chafe badly while wet, and it will show through. The liner is the underwear. That is what it is there for.
The one legitimate exception is trying a pair on before buying — you should absolutely do that over underwear, for obvious reasons.
Two different things called a liner. The mesh liner is the permanent brief inside. The hygiene liner is the disposable adhesive strip across the gusset, there so the garment can be tried on safely in a shop. Peel the hygiene strip off once you have decided to keep them — but not before, because on almost every swimwear retailer, including us, removing it ends your right to return.
Can you cut the mesh liner out?
Physically yes, and some people prefer it. Be aware of what you lose: the anti-cling layer and the anti-chafe layer, both of which matter more than they sound like they do once you are wet. It also voids any return, and on some cuts the liner is load-bearing for how the shorts hang, so removing it changes the fit.
If you genuinely dislike liners, the honest answer is that you want board shorts, which are built without one and expect you to wear something underneath.
What a bad liner tells you
A liner that bunches, rolls or digs in is almost never a liner problem. It is a sizing problem. The mesh is cut to a fixed proportion of the shell, so if the shell is too small for you the liner is too small by the same amount — and because mesh has less give than the outer fabric, it is where you feel it first.
A bunching liner is the clearest single signal that you should have sized up.
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