North Topsail Beach vs Emerald Isle, Wrightsville, and the Outer Banks

North Carolina has more than 300 miles of coast, and most families pick a beach by name recognition. We picked ours by standing on it. Here is how North Topsail Beach compares to the places you have probably heard of, with our bias stated up front: we live here.

Wrightsville Beach

Wrightsville is Wilmington's beach: beautiful, lively, and packed. Paid parking, metered lots that fill by nine, a crowded strand, and a bridge that backs up on summer weekends. It is a great beach for a day trip and a hard beach for a quiet week with kids. North Topsail is an hour north and a different world: your own walkway instead of a parking meter, and a beach you share with the houses on either side.

Emerald Isle and the Crystal Coast

Emerald Isle is a fine family beach and a fair comparison. It is bigger and busier than North Topsail, with more traffic, more public accesses, and a longer drive from Raleigh and points north. It also does not have our sandbar. If you want a quieter beach with calmer water for little swimmers and a shorter drive, the north end of Topsail wins.

The Outer Banks

The Outer Banks are wild and gorgeous, and they are also a long drive, a long ferry, or both, with a strong open ocean surf and steep drop offs that keep small children on the sand. The wind that makes the kites fly also blows the umbrellas over. North Topsail gives you dunes, dark skies, and nesting sea turtles, all at three hours less driving from most of the state, with a sandbar that makes the water gentle enough for a four year old.

Myrtle Beach and the busy south

If you want a boardwalk, a Ferris wheel, and a beach with 10,000 neighbors, Myrtle Beach is that. North Topsail is the quiet alternative. No high rises on the sand, no boardwalk, no lines. A beach house with a fire table and a walkway, and a phone that Amy answers.

Where North Topsail wins

• Quiet: almost no public beach access on our stretch, so the sand stays open even in July.
• Calm water for kids: the sandbar and afternoon tidal pools.
• Truly oceanfront homes: every one of ours has a walkway from the deck to the sand.
• The drive: about two hours from Raleigh, straight off the Highway 210 bridge, no ferry, no beach town gridlock.
• Dogs: welcome on the beach year round on a leash, and in all four of our beach houses.

Where it does not

If nightlife, a boardwalk, or walking to a dozen restaurants is the point of your trip, pick one of the others and enjoy it. If the point is the beach, come see ours.

Carolina Beach and Kure Beach

South of Wilmington, Carolina Beach has a boardwalk, a fishing pier, and a state park, and it is the beach many families think of first. It is also lined with hotels and condo towers on the sand, the traffic through the town is heavy in season, and the beach itself is a shared public strand from end to end. Kure Beach next door is calmer, with the aquarium as its big draw, but you will still be on a public access beach. North Topsail trades all of that for dunes, private walkways, and a beach shared only with the houses beside you. The aquarium makes a good rainy day trip from here, about an hour and a quarter.

Oak Island, Holden Beach, and the Brunswick Islands

The Brunswick beaches south of Wilmington are family beaches with a laid back feel, and Holden Beach in particular is a fair comparison to the north end of Topsail: residential, quiet, no boardwalk. The differences are the drive (an hour or more farther for anyone coming from Raleigh and points north), the south facing beaches that lose the sunrise over the water, and the surf, which comes in without a sandbar to break it. If you are coming from Charlotte, Holden is closer. If you are coming from the Triangle, Richmond, or anywhere up Interstate 95, North Topsail is a shorter drive to a quieter beach with gentler water.

What is the same everywhere

Every North Carolina beach has the same ocean, the same sunrise, the same sea turtles nesting in summer, and the same rip currents on a windy day. The state's coast is beautiful from the Virginia line to Sunset Beach, and we will not pretend otherwise. What differs is who is on the sand with you, how far you walk to reach it, what is between your door and the water, and what the surf does at the edge. On those four things, the north end of Topsail Island is as good as it gets, and it is why our family bought here instead of anywhere else.

How to decide

Write down the three things your family does most on a beach day. If two of them happen on the sand or in the water, and you have children under twelve or a dog, the quiet end of Topsail will be your favorite week of the year. If two of them involve walking to something, you will be happier in Wrightsville or Carolina Beach, and we would rather tell you that now than have you wish you were somewhere else. Not sure? Call or text Amy and describe your crew. We have been matching families to this beach for more than a decade, and we will tell you honestly.