relationship between color and heat absorption

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Soo like I’ve been told if I was to wear white during day time I’ll stay cooler compared to wearing black cuz it’s able to reflect sun’s heat radiation much better.

Now let’s say I’m in a sauna without the water thing to make the air moist …the heater will still heat up the room via heat radiation right…..will the color of fabric I wear inside affect how quickly I’m absorbing heat ….wearing white will slow heat absorption and wearing black will speed up heat absorption?

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2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

No, in the sauna you get heat mostly from the hot air, not from the light so it doesn’t matter much what color are you wearing.

Although if your clothes are mostly airtight it’ll slow you heating up. You can see that in firefighter’s gear – it’s made of several layers preventing hot air from the outside getting to the body.

Anonymous 0 Comments

What we perceive as colour is the light reflected and not absorbed by the material. White fabric is reflecting most of the light so not absorbing much whilst black fabric is reflecting very little light so absorbing a lot more of it.

Heat that you feel being radiated is really just another type of light, just a longer wavelength that we can’t see – you’ve for the same thing happening with the infrared waves as with visible waves so this also has a big impact.