  The standard vacuum bounce formalism suffers from inconsistencies when
applied to thermal bubble nucleation, for which ad hoc workarounds are commonly
adopted. Identifying the length scales on which nucleation takes place, we
demonstrate how the construction of an effective description for these scales
naturally resolves the problems of the standard vacuum bounce formalism.
Further, by utilising high-temperature dimensional reduction, we make a
connection to classical nucleation theory. This offers a clear physical picture
of thermal bubble nucleation, as well as a computational framework which can
then be pushed to higher accuracy. We demonstrate the method for three
qualitatively different quantum field theories.
