diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 84e6d9e..fd129ff 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -19,6 +19,7 @@ All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file.
   Credits to Dr. Cezary Śliwa for providing the patch.
 - Whenever possible, use compiler intrinsics to speed up complex bit
   manipulation operations (``popcount``, ``tzcount``, ``pdep``, ``pext``).
+- Change base type of ``spin_component`` to the 1-byte wide ``std::uint8_t``.
 - New CMake option ``CPPCHECK_EXTRA_FLAGS``. It can be used to pass additional
   command line flags to ``cppcheck``.
 
diff --git a/doc/expression/generator.rst b/doc/expression/generator.rst
index 1fa9006..f55928e 100644
--- a/doc/expression/generator.rst
+++ b/doc/expression/generator.rst
@@ -462,7 +462,7 @@ In other words,
 - Among operators with the same :math:`S` and index sequence, :math:`S_+` comes
   first followed by :math:`S_-` and eventually by :math:`S_z`.
 
-.. enum:: spin_component : int
+.. enum:: spin_component : std::uint8_t
 
   Component of spin operator.
 
diff --git a/include/libcommute/expression/generator_spin.hpp b/include/libcommute/expression/generator_spin.hpp
index 976d996..770c6a1 100644
--- a/include/libcommute/expression/generator_spin.hpp
+++ b/include/libcommute/expression/generator_spin.hpp
@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ namespace libcommute {
 //
 
 // S_+, S_- or S_z
-enum spin_component : int { plus = 0, minus = 1, z = 2 };
+enum spin_component : std::uint8_t { plus = 0, minus = 1, z = 2 };
 
 template <typename... IndexTypes>
 class generator_spin : public generator<IndexTypes...> {