UPF Rating Explained

What is UPF and what are the benefits?

You may notice throughout the Royal Robbins website that many of our products are UPF rated This UPF rating varies from 20+ to 50+ and is applied to pants, shirts, sweaters and even tank tops. So what is all the hype? Why would you want to check out a UPF product versus a non-UPF rated product?

Let’s stick with the basics.

The sun warms us up, but it also emits ultraviolet (UV) radiation. This radiation can cause early signs of aging, sunburn, and sometimes even cancer. The best way to protect yourself from these harmful rays is to ensure you have covered your skin with clothing and sunscreen lotion.

Unrated fabric can protect you from UV rays, however, the better the Ultraviolet Protection Factor (UPF) the more protection your skin has against UV rays.

So how does a fabric protect against UV rays?

There are three ways to achieve UPF ratings. The first way (our way) is by utilizing tightly woven fabrics. The tighter the weave on the fabric the stronger the protection from UV rays. You may think that a tighter woven fabric may be heavy but that is not the case. In fact, cotton can carry an excellent UPF rating and still be light and comfortable to wear. For example our Women’s Kick Back 1x1 Rib Cotton shirt carries a rating of UPF 50+.

The second way is by a chemical wash over the fabric. This chemical can protect you from the sun, but often washes out of the fabric, leaving you exposed to harmful UV rays.

A third way to protect from UV rays is through treated yarn. Yarn can be treated with UPF protection and therefore the fabric created by the yarn will be permanently protected from UV rays. This will not wash off like a topical chemical. We use this process with our Discovery Lite Stretch Nylon fabric. You will see this form of UPF protection being used this fall in our Discovery stretch and Discovery plaid fabrics.

Decoding the Rating:

While we always recommend pairing UPF rated clothing with a sunscreen for added protection against rays, we would still like to let you in on how to decipher what piece of clothing is best for you.

Wikipedia provided this fantastic chart to understand what percentage of UV rays are blocked by UPF clothing.

Here are the UPF Ratings and Protection Categories

Wikipedia, Sun protective clothing, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_protective_clothing as of Mar. 16, 2011.

With so many different skin types in the world, it is important to know how to protect yourself best. The American Association of Dermatology (AAD) recommends that a "broad spectrum" sun block with an SPF of at least 15 is applied daily to all sun exposed areas, then reapplied every two hours. *

*UCSF, School of medicine; Dermatology, http://www.dermatology.ucsf.edu/skincancer/General/prevention/Sunscreen.aspx, as of March 16, 2011