OBJECTIVES: The Quality of Life in Hand Eczema Questionnaire (QOLHEQ) is a disease-specific instrument to assess health-related Quality of Life (HRQOL) in hand eczema (HE) patients. The QOLHEQ assesses four domains of HRQOL: (a) symptoms, (b) emotions, (c) functioning and (d) treatment/prevention. The QOLHEQ total-score ranges from 0-127 points. The aim of this study was to assign bands of the QOLHQ-score to an anchor question (AQ) on HE severity to aid the interpretation of the QOLHEQ-score. METHODS: Data was drawn from the German validation study of the QOLHEQ. We calculated median, mean and mode of the AQ for 30 categories of the QOLHEQ-score to devise separate sets of bands. Weighted kappa was calculated in order to identify the set of bands with the best agreement between QOLHEQ and AQ. RESULTS: Overall n=316 HE patients were included in the study. Their mean age was 46.7 years (SD=12.9) and 54.1% of the sample were female. With a weighted kappa of 0.54 the best agreement was found for the following band: QOLHEQ<9 = minimal impairment; QOLHEQ 9-25 = slight impairment; QOLHEQ 25-58 = moderate impairment; QOLHEQ 59-79 = severe impairment; QOLHEQ>79 = very severe impairment. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first study which uses an anchor-based approach in order to devise a banding for the QOLHEQ-score. This banding represents a standardized means of interpreting the QOLHEQ total score. Further studies are needed to explore which banding may be adequate for different language version of the QOLHEQ.