Every Navy uniform, who wears it, and what occasion it is prescribed for — organized so you can find things. The rules come from NAVPERS 15665J; the structure is ours.
It comes down to three things: the occasion, your paygrade, and what your command prescribes as the uniform of the day. The six families below run from most formal to least.
The regulation splits every uniform across six separate pages — male and female, officer, chief and enlisted — so seeing who wears what means clicking through all six. That is what the tables below collapse.
The coat-and-tie equivalent. Prescribed for official functions when Dinner Dress or Full Dress is not.
| Uniform | Worn by | Occasion for wear |
|---|---|---|
| Service Dress Blue | All hands | Year-round, to all official functions where civilian equivalent dress is coat and tie. |
| Service Dress White | All hands | Summer wear, same occasions as Service Dress Blue. |
The uniform of the day ashore — office work, watchstanding, liberty and business ashore.
| Uniform | Worn by | Occasion for wear |
|---|---|---|
| Service Khaki | E-7 and above | Summer and winter, when prescribed as uniform of the day. |
| Summer White | E-7 and above | Summer, when prescribed as uniform of the day. |
| Navy Service Uniform | E-6 and below | The E-6 and below service uniform ashore. |
What you actually work in. Not liberty uniforms.
| Uniform | Worn by | Occasion for wear |
|---|---|---|
| NWU Type III | All hands | Authorized for commuting and normal stops — child care, gas, shopping, banking, DMV, dining. Not a liberty uniform, and drinking alcohol in it off base is not permitted. |
| Coveralls | E-7 and below | Organizational clothing. Re-designated from a seabag item in November 2023. |
| 2POC | Ships and submarines | Two-Piece Flame Resistant Organizational Clothing — the primary at-sea uniform. Not covered in NAVPERS 15665J. |
Full Dress adds large medals to Service Dress.
| Uniform | Worn by | Occasion for wear |
|---|---|---|
| Full Dress Blue | All hands | Change of command, official visits with honors, visits of ceremony to foreign men-of-war and officials, occasions of state. |
| Full Dress White | All hands | The summer equivalent, same formal occasions. |
For functions where civilians wear black tie or white tie.
| Uniform | Worn by | Occasion for wear |
|---|---|---|
| Dinner Dress Blue and White | All hands | Official functions where civilians normally wear black tie. |
| Dinner Dress Jacket | All hands | The jacket variants of Dinner Dress Blue and White. |
| Formal Dress | Officers | The white-tie equivalent. |
Group PT and the semi-annual PFA.
| Uniform | Worn by | Occasion for wear |
|---|---|---|
| Physical Training Uniform (PTU) | All hands | Group and unit PT and the semi-annual PFA. May be worn on and off base for fitness or leisure unless a Regional Coordinator or CO says otherwise. |
Every uniform above now has a page with the full component list and article numbers for all six categories — male and female, officer, chief and enlisted. Still to come: rank and rate insignia (Chapter 4), and awards and insignia placement (Chapter 5).
Need something before we get to it? Search the forms and instructions library — it already covers NAVPERS, MILPERSMAN, BUPERSINST and SECNAV.