SummaryWe present a new reference smoothness indicator for third‐order weighted essentially non‐oscillatory scheme to recover its design‐order convergence at critical points. This reference smoothness indicator, which involves both the candidate and global smoothness indicators in the weighted essentially non‐oscillatory framework, is devised according to a sufficient condition on the weights for third‐order convergence. The recovery of design‐order is verified by standard tests. Meanwhile, numerical results demonstrate that the present reference smoothness indicator produces sharper representation of the discontinuity owing to the combined effects of larger weight assignment to the discontinuous stencils and convergence rate recovery. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.