What Makes a Switch Creamy
Creamy describes how a switch feels going down, not how it sounds. It comes from materials and lubricant, and it is the one property you can add yourself.
Creamy is the most misused word in the hobby, because it gets applied to sound when it describes feel.
A creamy switch is one where the downstroke is uninterrupted: no scratch, no grain, no catching, just a smooth slide from the top of the travel to the bottom. It is possible for a switch to be creamy and thocky, creamy and clacky, or creamy and almost silent, because creaminess is a different axis from pitch entirely.
This is also the only property on these three pages you can add to a switch you already own.
Where scratch comes from
Every press slides a plastic stem down two rails inside a plastic housing, against a steel spring that rubs where it sits.
Plastic against plastic is not naturally smooth. Injection moulding leaves microscopic texture on both surfaces, and dragging one across the other produces a faint grain you can feel through the keycap and, on cheaper switches, hear. That grain is scratch, and creaminess is its absence.
Three things remove it.
1. POM, which is slippery on its own
POM, polyoxymethylene, has a very low coefficient of friction against itself and against other plastics. A POM stem in a POM housing slides more smoothly than nylon against nylon, before any lubricant is involved.
This is why POM is the overwhelming favourite for stems: it is the part doing the sliding. Of the switches indexed here that publish a stem material, most are POM.
Newer switches sometimes use UHMWPE or a UPE blend, which are slipperier again. They are also softer, which changes the sound as well as the feel, generally deadening it.
2. Factory lubricant, applied well
Lubricant fills the microscopic texture so the two surfaces never quite touch. Applied evenly it makes almost any switch smooth.
The catch is in “evenly”. Factory lubing is inconsistent: applied well, the switch needs nothing doing to it, and applied as a blob in one spot, some keys feel slow while their neighbours feel gritty. That unevenness is more irritating than uniform scratch, because it is what you notice.
A listing that says the switch ships lubed is not a promise it ships smooth. It is a reason to expect less work.
3. Tolerances, which nothing on a listing tells you
How closely the stem fits the housing decides how much it can rock as it travels. A loose fit lets the stem wobble against the walls, which reads as looseness rather than scratch but spoils the same feeling.
This is the variable you cannot check before buying, and it is the main reason two switches with identical published specifications do not feel identical.
You can do this yourself, and it works
Unlike pitch, creaminess is fixable after purchase. Hand lubing is the single most effective modification available: it removes scratch almost entirely, on almost any switch, for a few pounds of grease.
It is also tedious. A full board is two to four hours, one switch at a time. Lubing your switches is the process, switch lubes is which grease to buy.
The important trade to know before starting: a thick grease that maximises smoothness also mutes the sound and softens a tactile bump. Krytox 205g0 will make a tactile switch creamy and take the bump with it. If you want smooth and tactile, that is what the thinner TriboSys grades are for.
What to look for
- Stem material: POM, UHMWPE or a UPE blend.
- Factory lubed, stated by the maker. Where a listing says nothing, this index leaves the field blank rather than assuming it ships dry.
- A housing with POM in it, if you want smoothness without lubricant.
- Otherwise: buy whatever you like the sound of and lube it yourself. That is the cheaper route to the same place.
The rest of the vocabulary
Thocky and clacky are about pitch, and both are compatible with creaminess. The parts named here are drawn in switch anatomy, and the materials for every switch are on the entries in the index.