Sandals are an open type of footwear. Espadrilles are a kind of sandal. Related are mules and flip-flops. The latter can only be worn with bare feet or special socks. They can be made of rope, rubber, leather, wood (as in clogs or geta) or tatami (as in zori).

It is said that the New Zealand expression "jandals" for rubber sandals often used at the beach and called "thongs" comes from the expression "Japanese sandals." This is derived from the shape of jandals being similar to the Japanese "zouri," basically a rubber sole piece held on to the foot by two cloth thongs extending from the inner and outer side of the foot to the gap between the big toe and the second toe. This construction for footwear used to be the norm in Japan before westernization of clothing, with "geta" (wooden sole raised with one or two horizontal wooden pieces and attached to the foot with cloth thongs), and "waraji" (sole woven from straw with straw or cloth thongs, and sometimes extra ties over the foot and around the leg, often used for travelling).

"Saltwater sandals" are a popular children's footwear, originally developed (by the Hoy Shoe Company of St. Louis, MO) in the 1940s as a way of coping with wartime leather shortages, as they were designed to be made largely from the scrap leather left over from making men's shoes. They are still made by the original manufacturer.