Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2022 1:12pm
I fou d this interesting, so I went on the web. This is an extract from an article i found ….
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 versus black (and note they did this by having some poor guy stand out in the heat while recording temperature), the differences were nil. 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 [source: Abrahams]. 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 also not tested on humans — it's only been studied in birds with white plumage, with mixed results [source: Walsberg et al.].
So, the answer is — it doesn't make a huge difference whether you're wearing black or white in hot weather. As long as you keep your clothes loose, you're probably going to feel the same as the poor sucker next to you.
Make you own minds up!