ECE 22.06 Explained: What Helmet Certification Actually Means

The result takes longer to arrive than an off the shelf helmet, and that is by design. A made to order piece is fitted, finished and checked individually before it ships.

Once the shell is formed and cured, it moves through finishing: sanding, painting or leather trimming, and fitting the internal padding and retention system. Every stage is checked before the next begins, since a fault caught early is far cheaper to fix than one found at the end.

Full face and open face helmets suit different kinds of riding, and the right choice usually comes down to where and how you ride rather than looks alone. A full face helmet covers the chin and jaw, giving more protection in a wider range of impacts, and tends to suit faster roads and longer distances.

Most manufacturers recommend replacing a luxury motorcycle helmets helmet every five to seven years even without a crash, since the internal materials that absorb impact degrade slowly with heat, sweat and UV exposure. The shell can look fine while the protective layer underneath has already lost some of its effectiveness.

ECE 22.06 is the current European standard that motorcycle helmets are tested against, and it replaced the older ECE 22.05 standard with a wider and more demanding set of tests. Helmets are checked for impact absorption at multiple points on the shell, not just the crown, and the standard also tests rotational forces, which earlier standards largely ignored.

The trade off is scale. A workshop like this will never produce helmets as fast as a large factory, and that is treated as acceptable, since the aim is a considered, well finished helmet rather than the fastest one to market.