Are white clothes cooler than black clothes when hiking? – Wel.nl

Many people tend to take a white or light-colored shirt from the closet when the weather is hot. But if you look at the wardrobe of the peoples of the desert, the colors are often dark or black. Exercise physiologist Maria Hopman decided to investigate.

She and her science team rolled up their sleeves on the final four-day Nijmegen walks and alternately walked a group of randomly selected male and female participants in white and black t-shirts. The subjects had swallowed a temperature pill early in the morning, with which their body temperature was monitored throughout the day. Skin temperature was also continuously measured via sensors on the upper arm and back.

After all the measurements, the conclusion turned out to be simple: it doesn’t matter for your body temperature whether you wear a white or black t-shirt. “Partly because it is getting hotter and hotter, we think it is important that it is now scientifically established that the color of clothes does not matter at such a time. This way we can advise people even better,” Hopman tells Libelle.

During the Marches des Quatre Jours last year, she had the idea to test the influence of the color of the clothes; it was extremely hot during this edition. One day was even canceled due to the sweltering heat. “At the time, we received a lot of questions about what clothes are best to wear. Everyone thought white. But the peoples of the desert, for example, almost always wear black.

This year, it was much cooler during the Four Days Marches. That’s why Hopman plans to repeat the research over the boiling years. She hopes to collect data at temperatures above thirty degrees.