Selecting the ideal fabric for outdoor gear is critical to balancing durability, weight, and environmental impact. Whether you’re a backpacker, pilot, or outdoor retailer, understanding these key criteria will ensure your gear performs flawlessly in extreme conditions.
During the DIY process, you may not be familiar with fabrics and have no idea how to select products that suit your equipment. Let me tell you how to choose fabrics.
First of all, after you have determined your equipment, such as tents, canopies, sleeping bags, etc., further determine your fabric based on the specific product and usage environment.
For outdoor tents, you need to determine whether the environment you are camping in is rainy or mountainous with much ice and snow. In addition, are there any requirements for the overall weight of the tent? In countries with abundant rainfall, you should choose fabrics with polyurethane coating as much as possible, as this will result in a high water resistance coefficient. If there is a lot of wind and snow and you want a tent as light as possible, you need to choose a fabric with a silicone coating. Silicone has excellent tear resistance and can block wind and snow. The weight of silicone applied to the fabric is very light, generally 10 grams per square meter. In addition, choosing fabric with a smooth surface would be better than embossed ones.
Outdoor sleeping bags are now more popular with environmentally friendly fabrics that do not contain fluorocarbon treatment. Most of our customers will choose fabrics treated with PFC-FREE water repellent from brands such as Rudolf or Clariant and coated with varnish wax on the surface as their first choice for sleeping bags. Choose fabrics with fine yarns but high density as much as possible. This will make your fabric have better anti-pile properties and be very light in weight.
Customers of paragliders and parachutes usually choose high-strength and high-toughness nylon 66 fabric. This raw material is made from raw materials of Invista Corporation. It has better heat resistance and wear resistance than ordinary nylon products. Double-sided multi-layer silicone coating can make the fabric very strong and airtight.Paragliding will be safer and more durable. In addition, there is a double-sided oil wax polishing treatment. The fabric retains a small amount of breathability so that a small amount of air can pass through the fabric to stabilize the umbrella during gliding.
If you still want to learn more, just send me email. I would be happy to help.
