Study reveals the best and worst colours to wear in the summer heat—ranked from 1 to 9

Here’s the corrected version with spelling and grammar errors fixed:

The golf season has entered its dog-days-of-summer portion of the schedule, which means heat management becomes an essential part of playing good golf.

No, that’s not an exaggeration: If you’re overheated and dehydrated, you sweat more, which means your muscles are more prone to cramping, stiffness, and injury. Your body gets weaker; your brain does, too. You can’t focus as well, and you can start feeling anxious for no reason.

“Your body doesn’t understand what’s happening, so it goes into survival mode,” explains Hans Larsson, Ludvig Aberg’s longtime swing coach.

Outside of snacking and drinking lots of fluids, the clothes you wear play a big role. And, specifically, the colour of that clothing.

I was reminded of this last week, when I came across this 2019 study for the first time on social media.

Toshiaki Ichinose is executive senior research scientist at the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Tsukuba, Japan. He and his team of researchers set about studying the link between clothing colour and heat with an experiment: The team placed nine different-coloured polo shirts in the sun and measured the surface temperature with a special camera, which revealed how much radiant energy was absorbed by each colour.

The coolest shirts finished around 60 degrees Fahrenheit; the hottest, a whopping 113 degrees. The results can vary by material type and design (as in, one company’s blue shirt may stay cooler than another’s), but either way, interesting.

Here’s how they all finished, from coolest to hottest.

1. White

If you remember from high school science class, white is the colour that absorbs the least light of all colours, and therefore a lot less heat.

Andrew Redington

2. Yellow

Solid showing for yellow, which finished alone in second.

Mike Lawrie/Getty Images

3. Gray

Specifically light gray rounded up the top three. Bit of an upset that this finished so high.

 4. Red

Tiger’s signature colour with a slightly better-than-expected showing.

Gerry Melendez

5. Purple

Feels like an upset for purple to have finished this high up. Still, sadly, the first colour to miss the cut.

Ezra Shaw

6. Blue

Perhaps a different shade would’ve pushed it navy blue higher up the ranks.

David Cannon

7. Green

One of the most interesting findings this analysis turned up is that green absorbed even more infrared light than black, making it one of the hottest materials to wear.

Icon Sportswire

8. Dark Green

Maybe save the Masters polo for Spring or Fall, rather than Summer.

Charlotte Observer

9. Black

Black absorbed 86 per cent of infrared, and the most heat. In five minutes it finished 60 degrees hotter than white—but damn if it doesn’t look cool.

Dylan Buell