Wear black to cool down!!

Pulling out all your white dresses to keep cool in the heat of summers? Now you don’t have to. Studies have proven, black clothing, worn during the scorching months of summer, can actually keep you cool. Though we're all encouraged to wear white in summer, since it is supposed to keep us cool but the fact is, it doesn't. In fact, black clothing is the best way to keep cool in the heat. Here’s how some believe it is basic physics to wear black and not opt for white.

When we see white, we're seeing the combination of all possible visible light. This means that white clothing reflects a great deal of wavelengths of energy coming in. This means it should reflect the sun's rays back, instead of letting them cook us. Except that this explanation is incomplete. Heat is not just coming in off of the sun. It's also coming off a person's own, sweating, warm-blooded, mammalian body, which is a lot closer than the sun is. When all that body heat hits the white clothing covering it, it gets reflected right back towards the body.

Black absorbs everything coming in from the sun, sure. But black also absorbs energy from the body instead of reflecting it back. Now, the helpfulness of black clothes depends on finding black clothes that are the same thickness and looseness as those summery white clothes. Black clothing also needs a little help from atmospheric conditions. Once it has absorbed heat, it has to have some way to radiate it away. If there's even a little wind, black clothing is the better choice for those who want to keep cool.

This also explains that wind is a very important factor here. A study examined different colors of bird plumage under different temperature conditions, with the added wrinkles of examining whether the plumage was fluffed or flattened, and varying the wind speed. Under hot conditions with no wind, white, fluffed plumage let heat escape the best. Both pretty logical findings. But once the wind picked up, the results changed dramatically. With even a modest wind fluffed white plumage exhibit the lowest net heat loss. This explains the large number of arctic animals that are fluffy and white. It's not just camouflage. This is why the desert dwelling tribes of north Africa, called the Tuaregs wear loose fitted black and other dark colored clothing in 45⁰C and above.

This means if your favorite black top is a little loose-fitted and there is wind, the wind will convect the heat away faster than it is absorbed. So you will feel less hot in your black top on a hot summer day than your white shirt which may reflect the internal heat of your body, back to you, therefore will be very less cooling than you thought it would be.

So, back in black it is!!