Welcome, once again, to Inconsistent Bra Terminology: where words have meaning… but only sort of. 🤷‍♀️ The issue is that while the terms we use to describe bras do have definitions, bra brands tend to be pretty fast-and-loose with vocabulary in their descriptions of their own products. As a result, if a client tells us that they’re interested in a certain type of bra, follow-up questions are often necessary to make sure that we’re correctly interpreting that person’s request. I want to talk about balconette bras, because customers who ask for a balconette are often looking for (1) an unlined bra, especially an unlined lace bra, or (2) a low-coverage “demi” bra. A balconette bra may very well be one or both of these things, but neither is necessarily specified by the term.

Here’s what a balconette bra definitely is: a bra with a fairly horizontal neckline and widely-spaced straps that connect to the cups near their outside edge. And… that’s kind of the extent of it. Everything else is fuzzy, unspecified, or depends on who’s describing the bra. “Balconette” and “balcony” bras are synonymous for all practical purposes. Some sources try to differentiate between the two terms, but there really is no difference with respect to how modern bra makers are using these words.

Every style shown above is a balconette, and each is specifically called a “balconette” by the brand that makes them. You’ll notice that there’s a lot of variety. Some are sheer, some are lightly lined, and some are outright padded. Their coverage level also varies, although none of them are extremely high coverage. I’ve seen a few websites that insist on a strict rule of “covers X% of the breast,” which the bra designers of the world definitely aren’t following as a consensus. (Other descriptions online emphasize that balconettes “lift breasts from the bottom,” which makes them… bras?)

A quick side note about coverage: how much of your chest a bra covers is only partly determined by the bra design. Your body is always the other half of the bra fit equation. A person with tall breast roots will have more skin showing than a person with the same bra size & breast volume except with short roots. Full-on-top boobs will fill out a bra differently than full-on-bottom boobs. Your fit will vary from another wearer in the same bra. Secondary note: “demi” as a descriptive term for a low-coverage bra is often used in conjunction with, or even interchangeably, with “balconette.” “Demi” is an even murkier term in my experience, as brands just use it to mean “less coverage than [something else],” which is extremely non-specific.

So, a balconette can be unlined or padded, lacey or smooth, seamed or seamless, low or moderate coverage, and with deep cups or shallow cups. When a client tells us, “I’ve heard that a balconette bra might be a good option for my size or breast shape,” there’s an excellent chance that one or more balconettes would work well for them, and that many other balconette bras would not, because they all fit differently, just like every other bra category.

Also note that not every balconette bra has the word “balconette” or “balcony” in its name even if it definitely is a balconette, including every bra in the picture above. Why? All bras have many different characteristics and a ton of different descriptors could be accurately applied to them. In the examples shown here, the brands decided to emphasize different aspects of each bra when naming them: coverage level (“full cup” or “half cup”), side support, push-up, etc. Naming a bra is like a mini marketing exercise, and a description has to be short and appealing. The “Clara unlined nonpadded side support underwired moderate coverage lace cup balconette bra” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. The absence of the word doesn’t change the fact that each fits the balconette criteria. Yes, even that foam-molded t-shirt bra up there.