Does color matter (when buying gear)?

[Danielle]

Thanks Hot n' Sweaty! I appreciate the compliment, but I swear I didn't mean to look well dressed

 

[jrichard]

dark vs light - color matters

Dark colors dry faster, but light colors collect less heat in the sun and radiate less heat in cool temps. Given this:

- I made my sleeping quilts dark on the underside and light on the topside. Flip it around out to dry.
- I try to find light-ish clothing.

And I make some stuff so it stays found:
- my umbrella is red (bright for gloomy weather)
- my stuff sacks are hunter orange (don't want to lose them)
- pack cover is hunter orange (in case I fall and can't get up?)
- my baseball cap is hunter orange (to be seen during hunting seasons)

(but otherwise, I like earthtones!)

 

[Rick]

So you're saying that I should be embarrassed by what Rick said about me in this thread:

http://www.vftt.org/forums/showpost.php?p=138706&postcount=12
OUCHhhhhh........
I hope I didn't offend you.......

 

[Ridgewalker]

My colors are usually earthy colors green, brown, black. I do admit that I try to look cordinated in the woods, and also to blend in. Yes even my pack matches my green pants I recall Guy Waterman was an advocate of earth colors in his Wilderness Ethics . Anyone chime on this?

 

[jrichard]

I recall Guy Waterman was an advocate of earth colors in his Wilderness Ethics . Anyone chime on this?

I don't have that book (-1 points for me) but Ray Jardine originally also advocated earth colors in Beyond Backpacking. He's backed away somewhat.

See the section of his
blog where he talks about the tripping over a camo tent (in jest).

 

[Peakbagr]

Once I've decided on the item, color doesn't matter to me so long as it doesn't show the dirt. I tend to bushwack, and light clothing or light gear tends to look like I shop in a landfill after too short a time.
Light colors attract stinging insects, and I've read that the blue light spectrum attracts biting ones. That said, I tend to dark blue packs and clothing or black, mostly for dirt.
Over a lot of years, you see interesting colors come and go on hiking packs and apparel. You can almost date the purchase when its a color or color combination that was popular and then disappeared off the shelves.

 

[jrichard]

Light colors attract stinging insects, and I've read that the blue light spectrum attracts biting ones. That said, I tend to dark blue packs and clothing or black, mostly for dirt.

From The Complete Wilderness Paddler (awesome book!):


To their credit, the scientists have made some useful contributions. One is a study on the effects colors have on insects. They discovered orange repels mosquitos more than anything else. Then comes yellow and green, followed by white, blue-purple, and finally red-purple at the other end of the scale. Research also indicates that the more intense the color, the more bugs disliked it. So when you choose your clothes, prefer bright yellow to a dull tan, bright green to an olive drab, and so forth.


(There's also a great diagram of how to shag off bugs onto a stationary member of your team.)

 

[Peakbagr]

Funny how things work, some of what you cited is the exact opposite of a study by the US Quartermaster Corps I once read.
Ever seen a person in bright colors run thru a field of wildflowers or sunflowers with the bees after them?

 

[jrichard]

Funny how things work, some of what you cited is the exact opposite of a study by the US Quartermaster Corps I once read.
Ever seen a person in bright colors run thru a field of wildflowers or sunflowers with the bees after them?

Perhaps just for bees, not mosquitos and blackflies?

We do have quite a number of (mostly agricultural pollenating) bees near our house. And there's quite a bit of solitary bees around us (hundreds on some days). It's unnerving at first, but eventually you learn that they rarely sting. But I can't say that I've been stung more times wearing orange or red vs green or brown. Anyway, this is just anecdotal evidence and there could be a statistically significant correlation, but I haven't noticed it.

Then again, I haven't noticed the difference between light and dark clothing for mosquitos and blackflies either. I suspect the correlation is dwarfed by the amount of subject movement, breeze, etc...

It's been a long time, and I don't know the exact study, but some are referenced here:

http://www.ent.iastate.edu/dept/research/vandyk/hostseekbiblio.html (search for color)

IIRC, mosquitos "see" the infrared/heat output radiating from the darker colors and smell sweat/CO2.

 

[Raymond]

I usually try to wear a red or orange shirt when I hike, because having a person in red in photographs is a time-honored technique to draw the viewer's eye into the picture. "A little spot of red," as my old friend Betty Tolman from the late, lamented Colonial Camera Club used to say. I bought Susan a bright red poncho from L.L. Bean years ago for the same reason. (Unfortunately, my Kodak digital camera always makes it look magenta rather than red. But my shirts come out fine.) I've also bought two partially red (one red and black, the other red and gray) Gore-tex jackets for myself the last few years.

My hiking pants are almost always zip-offs, with the legs zipped off, but they just came in whatever color they came in (khaki from REI, green from EMS). I didn't choose them by color.

Gaiters, when I wear them, black.

Susan bought us all Outdoor Research Seattle Sombreros back in the day: blue and light green for herself, blue and black for me, and solid dark green for Cam. Mine may be the only one still around, I'm not sure. I also wear a straw hat sometimes, natural color. She had a blue straw-like cowboy hat for a year or two, bought at Building 19. It was actually made of paper and dyed, and ran in the rain. She recently tossed it.

My pack came in only the one color, as far as I remember, so there was no choice there other than dark blue.

I bought a couple of those fleece jackets offered by the Forty-Sixers a couple years ago for Susan and myself, one of each color. The dark green one arrived first, with a note saying the second one, red, would soon follow. I gave Susan the green one, the red one never arrived. Lost. So she bought me a red one at EMS and sewed her own 46er patch on it and gave it to me last Christmas. She's the best. Now I just need to get my other patches on it...

 

[spaddock]

The funniest thing, IMO, is couples with matching jackets and gear.

That's why I was so annoyed when my wife bought the same blue rain shell I had!


-Shayne