I got her to wear Dwarven (Legendary), but as soon as I zoned after dismissing her she put her stuff back on.

any armor that you want her to wear must provide greater protection than her default armor.

otherwise she will not wear it. light or heavy armor.

all she will do is carry it around.

Lydia won't wear improved steel armor of the same type she has by default (steel armor without pauldrons, nordic steel bracers and boots), but will wear other models of steel or better. I gave her improved steel armor with pauldrons and improved steel boots / bracers with the imperial dragon insignia.

There's a little mod that not only makes Lydia essential (meaning she can't die), but also makes it possible to exchange her armor to any armor you like:

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=6321

...so you can remove her default set of armor - which is quite heavy, alltogether.

She wore my old plate as soon as I made some ebony. She will also take it off when just at the house. She should switch as you ask her to follow you.

They are all rather attached to what they are wearing at the start and are quick to change back once they leave your service as a follower. I reckon Beth should fix this as I can't see any good reasons why their costumes should reset unless it's a bug.

There is a lot of misinformation in this thread.

Followers have skill levels just like players do. You can make a piece of light armor with 100 armor rating and a piece of heavy armor with 50, but if your light armor skill is (for example) 10 and your heavy armor skill is 100, the 50 armor rating heavy armor is going to be better for you to wear. This is the same case with followers. Most of the housecarls cap out at around 20 light armor skill but go all the way to 100 heavy armor skill, depending on your level and if you wabbajack them.

In order to get a heavy-preferred follower to switch to light, you really have to upgrade the armor to a massive difference in armor rating. You can get them in Forsworn or Hide or whatever you want, just increase the armor rating enough to compensate for their low skill. Also keep in mind, they ignore all enchantments. Armor rating given their skill and the value of the item are the two things they factor in. When it comes to jewelry, whatever is worth the most is what gets worn.


As for clothes, by default they will not wear these because clothes have no armor rating. There are two ways to get around this. If you have the pickpocket perk "Perfect Touch", you are able to see their invisible/starting set of armor when pickpocketing them. Unfortunately, when you remove every piece of starting armor, the set respawns any time you enter a new area.

The way around this is to remove all starting armor pieces except one. I typically leave the boots, since the goal is to get them to wear a dress (or run around naked, if that's what you're going for). As long as one piece of their starting set remains, it will never respawn until you dismiss them.

The other way of doing this only works on your spouse shopkeeper/follower. Have your spouse follower join you while you are at the home you both live in, then give them better armor pieces than what they have on All of their starting gear set will be moved to their shop inventory available for purchase. The same rule applies - do not buy the entire set or it respawns. Buy everything except one piece, like the boots. Then, trade with them again and remove the better armor. Now you can give them clothes or whatever you want and they will wear them until they are dismissed.

UESP says this:

Followers will only gain benefits from the following enchantment effects on their worn equipment:

• Fortify Carry Weight
  
• Fortify Health
  
• Fortify Heavy Armor
  
• Fortify Light Armor
  
• Fortify Magicka
  
• Fortify Stamina
  
• Fortify Unarmed
  
• Muffle
  
• Resist Fire
  
• Resist Frost
  
• Resist Magic
  
• Resist Shock
  
• Soultrap/Fiery Soultrap

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Followers

Lydia will wear *some* improved Steel armor, but not all. Not sure which slots, or if it's random or what. Anything better than unimproved Steel she'll wear even if she has better improved Steel in her inventory.

Right. To clarify what I was saying, followers ignore all enchantments when factoring in what to wear. They use them, but won't consider them. Only Armor Rating and value.

My Lydia wears a full orcish outfit, which I think looks quite smart on her. The glitch that's so annoying is that she (and any other follower) appears to be wearing her default kit when in fact she's wearing the better stuff. Usually a cell change will force the display of the active gear, though. Otherwise trading a weapon or a piece of armor will do it. I'd like that default gear to go away once it's removed. The sword does, at any rate.

You can do it with the http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4554 already, just set clothing to none or what ever you would like her standard gear to be.

Even Mage types?

Mjoll put on the Dwarven armor I gave her, and later the Dragonscale, but, of course she reverts (visually, anyway) to her rusted iron stuff after I leave the zone. Strangely enough though she still has the Dwarven great axe on her back every time I go to Riften.

Just gave her an Elven Helmet and she wore it, but not elven armour.

My followers used to revert back to their original armor too. But would switch back as soon as we left the zone or entered a dungeon.

Aw, jeez. I guess I can sell the Necklace and Ring of Fortify Two-Handed from Stenvar then.


I gave him steel plate and he wears that no problem... what I can't seem to do is get him to use another bow. Arrows, yes. Bow never.