Float Value & Wear Explained

What is float value?

Every CS2 skin carries a hidden decimal between 0 and 1 called the float value (internally "paint wear"). It controls how worn the finish looks: a float near 0 renders crisp colors and sharp detail, a float near 1 renders heavy fading, scratches and grime. The number is rolled once, the moment the item is created (case opening, drop, or trade-up), and it never changes afterwards. No amount of trading, storing or time alters it.

Float matters because it is permanent and visible. Two copies of the same skin with the same wear label can look clearly different side by side, and the market prices that difference aggressively.

The five wear tiers and their exact ranges

The wear name you see on the market is nothing more than a label for the slice of the float range the skin landed in:

The boundaries are hard cutoffs. A 0.0699 float is Factory New and a 0.0701 is Minimal Wear, even though the two are visually identical. That is why traders look at the actual number, not just the label.

Float caps: skins that cannot roll every wear

Each finish defines its own minimum and maximum float, and the roll is squeezed into that window. This creates skins that simply cannot exist in some wears:

• AWP | Asiimov has a minimum float of 0.18 - it can never be Factory New or Minimal Wear. A "low float" Asiimov means a low FT float, and clean examples carry a premium.
• Glock-18 | Fade ranges 0.00 - 0.08, so it only exists in Factory New and (rarely) Minimal Wear.
• Doppler and Marble Fade knives cap at 0.08, which is why you only ever see them FN or MW.
• Skins with a full 0.00 - 1.00 range (like Case Hardened) can roll anything, including near-0 and near-1 extremes that collectors hunt.

How float changes the price

Within a single wear tier, lower float almost always means higher price - the skin objectively looks cleaner. The effect is strongest at the extremes:

• Inside Factory New, a 0.0009 commands far more than a 0.06 of the same skin. Sub-0.01 floats are their own collector bracket.
• "Zero float" examples (0.000x and lower) are extremely rare rolls and trade at multiples of the regular FN price.
• At the other end, max-float Battle-Scarred examples (0.99+) have their own niche collectors, especially on skins where heavy wear looks distinctive.
• The lowest known float of a popular skin is effectively a trophy item and can sell for many times the standard price.

Trade-up contracts also depend on float math: the output skin's float is derived from the average float of the ten inputs, scaled into the output skin's own min-max window. Serious trade-up crafters buy inputs by exact float for this reason.

How to check a float

• In game: inspect the item and use the in-game wear preview (rough, no exact number).
• On FloatSkins: every listing displays the exact float, paint seed and a wear bar - no extra steps.
• FloatDB: our float database tracks millions of items with exact floats, sortable by lowest float per skin, so you can see how rare your roll actually is.