Curious about what to wear in the spring or summer months for your outdoor adventures? Wondering what the best fabric is for hot weather? Or how to layer clothing for the spring or summer? We’ve got you covered here.
Wool Clothes for Summer?
Merino wool helps regulate your body temperature, it can help keep you warm and help keep you cooler. All wool has a natural crimp to it that helps it trap more dead air than any other fiber. Dead air is a fantastic insulator and provides a great buffer against the cold.
Plus, wool fibers do such a good job of moving moisture away from the skin that even if the fabric is soaking wet the surface area of your skin will remain dry. Merino fibers and fabrics can absorb up to 30% of their dry weight before feeling wet. Most synthetics feel wet after they absorb less than 7%.
Wool also has the ability to store moisture within the structure of the fiber. As your body warms up, the moisture stored within the fiber will begin to evaporate, cooling the air between your skin and the fabric. The warmer you get the more evaporation takes place and the larger the cooling effect.
Lightweight wool clothing
We took this natural technology and utilized in lighter weight base layers. Our Merino 150 line is designed to be the first or only layer in hot weather. Layering for the hot weather is tricky. It depends a lot on how your body handles the heat and the sun. Often people will use our long sleeve Merino 150 instead of the short sleeve for sun protection and not wear an additional layer.
If you do find yourself running colder in warm weather layering a long sleeve Merino 150, lightweight shell jacket, or (depending on you) our heavier weight Merino 250 will help keep you comfortable.
How to layer in hot weather
Keep in mind when you are building your layers for warm weather, that the activity will impact the layering choices. For more aerobic adventures like trail running or mountain biking, your body temperature will go up higher faster than something slower paced, like hiking. In these instances, less is more sometimes because your body is generating so much heat, you don’t need layers to retain it.
The best clothing solutions for your needs are based in understanding how your body behaves in these conditions. By mixing base layer weights, short sleeves and long sleeves, or introducing something with true insulation enables you to customize you layer kit to you.