A Guide to the Best Beaches in America

A Guide to the Best Beaches in America

Visual guides like this one from Florida Rentals can be handy for planning a vacation. The team has released a scoring system that points us toward America’s best beaches. Grab your flip-flops and dive in. There’s a wealth of information to find here. The team created its own scoring system to help us understand why these 20 beaches are considered the best. At a glance, you’ll be able to see which beaches are best, but if you want the details, the team outlined the criteria they used to judge the beaches and the score they gave each beach in each category.

Click below to zoom.

How the Beaches are Ranked

Everyone has different qualities they look for in a beach, but we think the Florida Rentals crew did an excellent job pinpointing what’s most important to a variety of beachgoers. These are the factors that were used to create the scoring system:

• Air temperature
• Water temperature
• Humidity
• Annual sunny days
• Annual precipitation
• Wind speed
• Annual comfortable days
• Miles of beach
• Beach crowdedness
• Suitability for water sports
• Boardwalk presence

The Beaches with the Best Scores

The final high-score list represents beaches all across America, although it’s clear that California and Florida have the lion’s share of top beaches. After crunching the numbers and weighing the factors, Florida Rentals determined that these beaches are best:

• Laguna Beach – California
• Monterey Bay – California
• Panama City Beach – Florida
• Destin Beach – Florida
• Santa Monica – California
• Augustine Beach – Florida
• Coronado Beach – California
• Cape Cod National Seashore – Massachusetts
• Pete Beach – Florida
• Ka’anapali Beach – Hawaii
• Clearwater Beach – Florida
• Siesta Key Beach – Florida
• Hilton Head Beach – South Carolina
• Miami Beach – Florida
• Fort Lauderdale Beach – Florida
• Gulf Shores – Alabama
• Ocean City Beach – Maryland
• Waikiki Beach – Hawaii
• Cape May – New Jersey
• Coney Island – New York

Finding a Beach Based on Specific Qualities

The great thing about this chart is that we can ignore the official ranking system and focus on what matters to each of us personally. For example, if you think the bigger the beach, the better, then you might believe St. Augustine Beach in Florida is the true winner. It has a stunning 42 miles of coastline, the most of any beach on the list.

Many beach lovers prize good weather the most, allowing them to spend a long day on the sand and in the surf with comfort. For these beach fans, the overall winner, Laguna Beach, truly is the top beach, with near-perfect weather in all seasons, along with warm sun and low humidity.  Others may want to avoid the country’s most famous beaches because let’s face it, sharing a beach with a crowd of people kicking sand all over your blankets and picnic baskets can ruin a beach day fast. For low crowds, Cape Cod National Seashore in Massachusetts offers the best proportion of miles of beach to the number of visitors.