We often get asked which colour is the coolest. While a lot of people think black looks the coolest they worry it will attract the heat. So we thought we should do some proper testing and take the guessing out of it.
The set up was to take the 2 colours we currently make the kingfisher in and we got our hands on a small sample of the same type of material in a silver colour (the closest to white we could find) and set them up on a frame with pockets in the fabric to hold temperature probes.
We chose a nice warm sunny day and put the rig out in the sun
You can see 1 probe hanging off the side of the rig in the sun. We will call it Control. Don’t worry about the flood warning on the BOM app this time we didn’t get the flood, sometimes you get a win!
Here we see black is the hottest but there is not much in it. Next we moved the probes onto a piece of timber and spaced it down from the fabric 90mm to give a small air gap between the fabric and the probe. Each probe is directly below the fabric with the control now on the timber in the direct sunlight. The ambient temperature had increased slightly.
The control is getting baked now but interestingly all three colours are the same temperature. The temperature readings from BOM are a bit low when compared to our control in the direct sunlight from the first setup and if we use the 35° as a baseline from that reading, any colour is cooler than nothing and if you are sitting on a wooden seat you might cook like an egg.
So wrapping up, we can say with an air gap they are all COOL colours.
Please be aware that the silver used in this experiment is not available as a colour option. We managed to secure a small piece for this project and do not have access to this fabric.