Question: What do astronauts, brides and Tom Wolfe have in common? They all wear white to keep the heat at bay. Anyway, the sartorial¹ thinking is this: floaty, breezy, delicate fabrics² of the lightest colors allow all that solar heat fighting its way to our skin to just reflect away instead.

 

提问：宇航员、新娘和汤姆·沃尔夫（以穿白色西装而闻名的作家）的共同点是什么？答案就是，他们都穿白色衣服来保持凉爽。总之，这样穿着是考虑到：面料轻薄精致的浅色衣服能反射阳光，从而让光的热量难以接触我们的皮肤。

 

Wear dark fabrics, the idea goes, and you're stuck with that heat as it greedily absorbs into the fabric³ and causes you to swelter in your own clothes. But white clothing will cheerfully bounce that solar heat right off, and you'll be (more) comfortable on a hot day.

 

While all that certainly sounds great in theory, there are a few other factors at play that might be working against the light clothing adage⁴. At the very least, there's some compelling evidence that says it doesn't matter. Let's start with some 1980 academic research from the journal "Nature," titled "Why do Bedouins wear black robes in hot deserts?"

 

As you can guess, the researchers were as flummoxed as you and I by the fact that in oppressive heat, the residents of the Sinai desert wear billowing black robes instead of, say, white (or a maybe pretty pale lavender). What they found was when they tested white robes versus⁵ black (and note they did this by having some poor guy stand out in the heat while recording⁶ temperature), the differences were nil⁷.

 

They found that the black clothing did absorb more heat, but that's where it stayed: In other words, the black soaks up additional heat, but that extra is lost by the time it actually gets to your skin. Way more useful for keeping cool, however? The fact that the robes are loose and billowing, to allow airflow.

 

There's also an argument that the whole "light clothing" argument is missing a key element: the person who's wearing the clothes. This means that the heat your body radiates will actually reflect off white clothing, bouncing back to your body to keep you toastier. Not a bad theory, but it's not tested on humans.

 

So, the answer is -- it doesn't make a huge difference whether you're wearing black or white in hot weather.

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