My Size Keys: How Hailun Is Making the Piano Fit the Pianist

For the first time, a leading piano manufacturer is offering alternatively sized keyboards as a standard option — and it opens a long-overdue conversation about who the piano was actually built for.

Introduction

The piano keyboard has not changed much in over a hundred years. The octave span — the distance from one note to the same note in the next register — has sat at roughly 6.5 inches for generations. That measurement became the standard, and for most of piano history, it stayed that way without question.

But here is the thing: that standard was not designed around the average human hand. It was not designed around most women's hands, or the hands of younger students, or anyone whose reach simply does not match what the keyboard expects of them. For a large portion of people who play piano, the keyboard they are sitting at is, in a very real sense, not their size.

Hailun has decided to do something about that. Through their My Size Keys initiative, Hailun now offers alternatively sized keyboards on select acoustic upright pianos — giving pianists the option to choose a keyboard that actually fits their hands. It is a quiet but meaningful shift in how piano manufacturers think about who they are building instruments for.

What My Size Keys Is

My Size Keys is Hailun's name for their offering of alternatively sized piano keyboards. Rather than offering only the conventional 6.5-inch octave span, Hailun now makes it possible to order certain models with smaller key widths — specifically the DS6.0® and DS5.5® keyboard sizes developed by the DS Standard Foundation.

The name itself is simple and direct. It is not complicated marketing language. It is just the idea that the keyboard should be your size — not a universal size that was settled on long ago around male pianists and never revisited.

Hailun partnered with the Donison-Steinbuehler Standard Foundation, an organization focused on promoting ergonomically scaled piano keyboards, to bring this option to market. Together, they produced what is considered one of the first new acoustic upright pianos to be offered with alternatively sized keys directly from the manufacturer.

Understanding the Keyboard Sizes

To understand what My Size Keys actually offers, it helps to understand what the DS keyboard sizes mean.

The "DS" stands for Diapason Standard, and the number that follows indicates the octave span in inches. A conventional piano keyboard has an octave span of approximately 6.5 inches — a measurement that has been in place for well over a century. The DS keyboards offer two narrower options:

DS6.0® — An octave span of 6.0 inches, which is 15/16 the width of a conventional keyboard. It is the more modest reduction of the two, making it a natural starting point for players who are not far off from standard but find certain passages consistently difficult to reach.

DS5.5® — An octave span of 5.5 inches, which is 7/8 the width of a conventional keyboard, or roughly 15% smaller. This is the more significant reduction and is intended for pianists with noticeably smaller hands who find the standard keyboard a consistent challenge.

The difference between these sizes and a conventional keyboard may sound small on paper, but for a pianist whose hand span sits below the threshold that the standard keyboard assumes, even a modest reduction in key width can change the experience of playing considerably.

Why Hailun Is Doing This

The context behind My Size Keys is straightforward. It is estimated that around 85% of women and approximately 25% of men have hand spans too small to comfortably play a full piano repertoire on a conventional keyboard. That is a large portion of pianists — students, teachers, hobbyists, professionals — many of whom have spent years working around a keyboard that was never really sized for them.

My Size Keys does not try to be more than it is. It is not a dramatic reinvention of the piano. It is simply Hailun acknowledging that one keyboard size does not fit everyone, and that offering an alternative is a reasonable thing for a piano manufacturer to do.

My Size Keys at PIPPA 2025 and 2026

Hailun brought the HU1P with the DS6.0® keyboard to the PIPPA trade show in Las Vegas in January 2025. At the event, Dr. Tina Chong, a professor at San Diego State University, gave a dedicated presentation titled "My Size Keys." The combination of a live instrument and an academic presentation at a professional trade event reflects how seriously Hailun is positioning this initiative — not as a novelty, but as a genuine part of their product direction.

My Size Keys is a simple idea: the keyboard should fit the player. Hailun has made that idea into an actual ordering option on a real acoustic piano. For teachers working with students who struggle with reach, for players whose hands have never quite matched the standard, and for anyone in the piano world paying attention to where instrument design is heading — that is worth knowing about.