We are often told to wear light-coloured clothes and avoid black in summer to beat the heat. But does the idea have any scientific basis to it? In 1980, scientists wanted to find out something that has baffled them for years – why do people residing in hot deserts wear black? Shouldn’t they be wearing something light-coloured or white, they wondered. They did a study titled “Why do Bedouins wear black robes in hot deserts?”, which was later published in the journal Nature. (Bedouins are nomadic Arabs of the desert). They studied the condition at Egypt’s Sinai desert where residents wore black robes. They made their subjects wear black and then white and recorded their body temperatures. They found the difference in temperature to be nil. The report pointed out that the amount of heat experienced by a Bedouin in the desert is the same whether he wore a black or a white robe.
There are other studies that argue that black clothes are better than white ones, provided they are loose fitting and airy. White clothes reflect the sun’s rays back into the atmosphere. But heat is not just coming from the sun. It’s also coming off a person’s body. When the body heat hits the white clothing covering it, it gets reflected back towards the body.
On the other hand, black clothing absorbs heat from the sun as well as the body. This heat is lost before it reaches the skin due to convection as the loose clothing allows free flow of air. (Heat energy is transferred from hot places by convection.)
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