NOT black! Study indicates which color of clothing absorbs more heat from the sun's rays; check out

Toshiaki Ichinose, a senior researcher at the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan, led a team that investigated the relationship between heat and clothing colors.

This group of researchers exposed polo shirts of nine different colors to the sun. As incredible as it may seem, the black piece was not the one that retained the most heat, despite always being called “warm clothing”.

Using a thermal imaging camera, they watched how the shirts heated up after about five minutes of sun exposure.

Surprisingly, the results demonstrated that while the surfaces of white and yellow ones remained at around 30°C, many parts of the black and dark green ones exceeded the 45°C.

(Image: disclosure)

Even on hot days, dark green pieces, unlike black ones, tended to absorb more heat. The research found that the Earth receives energy from the Sun, and this unreflected energy is absorbed, converting into heat.

This implies that colors with low ability to reflect Sun light, like black, tend to heat up more easily, while clothes with highly reflective tones stay cooler.

Experiment result

The black shirt was expected to absorb more infrared light than the dark green clothing, but the experiment showed otherwise — to the surprise of many.

The dark green shirt absorbed 87% of the infrared in the test, while the black one, slightly less, reaching 86%. The white shirt retained the least heat, with 63%.

Therefore, researcher Toshiaki Ichinose recommends wearing light colored clothing, such as white, yellow, gray and red, on extremely hot days.

He warns to avoid dark colored clothing, such as black, dark green, green, blue and purple, as they absorb more infrared light, heating the body.

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