We study {\it permeable} sets. These are sets \(Θ\subset \mathbb{R}^d\) which have the property that each two points \(x,y\in \mathbb{R}^d\) can be connected by a short path \(γ\) which has small (or even empty, apart from the end points of \(γ\)) intersection with \(Θ\). We investigate relations between permeability and Lebesgue measure and establish theorems on the relation of permeability with several notions of dimension. It turns out that for most notions of dimension each subset of \(\mathbb{R}^d\) of dimension less than \(d-1\) is permeable. We use our permeability result on the Nagata dimension to characterize permeability properties of self-similar sets with certain finiteness properties.