Why gray? A completely superfluous question about silnylon shelters.

Brighter colors such as yellow will attract a lot more bugs. This was apparent on a trip in which I had a combo colored tent.

Speaking of bright combos, I was just looking and found some of the colors Warmlite offers for their tents. Wild.

Brown is actually very pleasant inside as is forest green. Brown actually feels a lot lighter inside than it looks from the outside

I have a stock tarp from Henessey in their usual brown and I agree. It's not a bad quality light and is pretty stealthy from the outside.

i don't konw what people are doing that they are complaining of dreariness inside. i wake up, make coffee, sit in my hammock and have my coffee, then pack up and hike.

It's not the quantity of time spent under a tarp, but the quality. ;)

My vote is for Dirty Girl Gaiters to transition into the tarp business so I can buy a Lime Gaiter-Ade Hurl tarp from them.

Light color will likely experience fewer condensation problems than a dark color.

Condensation occurs when the temperature of the tarp drops lower than the dew point.
This happens very often when the tarp is pitched in an open area without any tree/leaf cover, as we know. One of the reasons for this is that the leaf cover blocks the direct route for IR radiation emission to dissipate into the blackness of space.
Most know that pitching in the open is to be avoided if we want to help avoid condensation.

Lighter colors generally have lower IR emissivity than dark colors, and the same could be said for IR absorption, and most know that a black color absorbs heat quickly and cools off quickly. The same is true for other dark colors, in general.
A light colored tarp with lower IR emissivity will have less problems with condensation at night than a dark colored tarp, for these reasons.
But it will not be a cure for condensation. It may give a reduction, or may prevent it in some instances where it was borderline, and the reduced IR emissivity made enough difference to keep it over the dew point.

"Or just pick one from these two colour charts :"

I like Band of Gold. Mostly so I can sing the old tune of the same name while ensconced under my Band of Gold-colored shelter. And I'd sing it loud, too. Late at night.

All that's left is this band of gold, all that's left of the dreams I hold, is a band of gold, and the memories of what love could be,
if you are still here with me…… Ah, they don't write 'em like that anymore…..

Personally, I like to be hidden. Camo in the meadow.

Grey is defined as a neutral or achromatic "colour".
Achromatic means "without colour" so many will refer to it as a shade not a colour.
In photography the neutrality of grey is emphasised by a series of filters called Neutral Density.
Their use is to cut the intensity of light without changing the colour.
So for example an ND2 will cut one stop or half of the light entering the lens.
This means that the closer a shelter is to a standard grey ,the lesser the change in the hue transmitted from outside to inside.
In other words all shelters that have a colour (not black,white or grey) do in fact alter the type of light passing through it.
This is an ND2 filter:

This is an 18% grey card designed to measure the intensity of light as well as for colour calibration :

Just for fun, here is a better version of that stolen from the net image :

not the best but the black/white and grey cards helped me getting there"

BTW, in the English speaking world , not just England, the word is grey, only in the US the usage of gray is the more accepted one.

Yeah, the ho-hum grey silnylon in my Copper Spur isn't "bad", but it's the one part of the tent I had to get most used-to when I had to hunker down in a daylight storm. From the inside, I'm used to the pleasing texture of the ToddTex yellow lining of my former tent, and I admit to much preferring the green outer color of the Bibler to the gray demeanor of the Big Agnes. The silnylon transmits more light, but it does cast a dreary tone, even though BA puts some warmth into the color tone of the fly.

If I were to buck-up for one of them there fancy tarp-tents or a backpack made with uber-fibers, I'd certainly also opt for better colours than grae (hey, look a third spelling!).

"Remember for proper usage:

gray (A if you are in america)
grey (E if you are in England)"

I'll remember that next time I see a Greyhound bus. ;-)

I think the gray is fine for 3-season use but what I wish for is a Stratospire 2 with yellow/gold fly so I could use the fly for spring snow camping. Grey is not visible enough for me in a blizzard if I want to leave the tent for an excursion and find my way back to it readily.

It's about money.

Because the quality of silnylon is all over the walk, and due to US environmental restrictions on silcoating, the most waterproof stuff comes from Asia (although the nylon is usually DuPont – where are their factories?-no idea). Check this out in Richard Nisley's water resistance tests on this and the MYOG forums.

A large minimum order of silnylon in '28 different flavors' from Asia would put any cottage manufacturer quickly out of business. And the larger mfgrs. who outsource to Asia don't choose to offer much choice to customers, either. They're about money also.

And as you can see from this thread, people are all over the walk also about color preferences, for a mutitude of both aesthetic and (supposed) practical reasons.

So a medium gray(grey) runs into the least resistance from customers, and therefore has to be the color choice, or at least one of a few choices, for smaller mfgrs. to stay in business.

Personally, I like light emerald greens; but choosing between building a much better quality shelter or getting my color choice as a MYOGer is a no-brainer. So I'll take anything that doesn't make the shelter into a dark and dreary cave or a bright and garish eyesore. A medium grey/gray seems to be what sells the most for the mfgrs. They ought to know.

But I'll never understand the appeal of the darker shades, be they in grey/gray, green or brown, for shelters. And probably there are many out there who will never understand the appeal of the light emerald to me. For more discussion on this perplexing issue, you can look at a MYOG thread begun by yours truly at: http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/forums/thread_display.html?forum_thread_id=73002

Since I touched on this at another forum ,I might as well mention it here too.
Most UL manufacturers produce tarps or single wall tents.
The light coming through will reflect that colour (or not if achromatic ,white to black)
When a particular colour becomes prominent , our brain counteracts that by introducing the complimentary colour so that we think we see neutral colours (neutral as in how they look to us on a sunny day (around 5500 kelvin if you like)
So what happens is that if the light coming through is red (red fly) the brain introduces green (its complimentary colour) so when you go outside for a while you will see everything with a green cast.
The same applies to any colour except for the achromatic ones (white ,grey and black)

A couple of recent posts made me feel like resurrecting this thread.
One is about this comment :
Grey shelters are terrible and I will never purchase one. I would become depressed by the end of a thru-hike. A yellow or green place to "live" will literally make my day.
the person that made this comment (in this thread…) later purchased this tent :

The other one is about "green" and stealth.
Always ignored as a comment but the wrong green stands out just like any other colour against green but of course as this photo well illustrate not everything is "green" anyway :

if you can't see it , the shelter is on the bottom right side of that photo…
(there are plenty of non blanding green tents photos but I like that shot from M
artin a lot, so that is why I use it)

Grey Autos are the most often struck in collisions. My own silver grey honda has been rear ended 3 times.

Blaze orange in hunting season or when returning to camp from a climb in the fog or snowstorm can be a lifesaver or at least a gear saver.

NOLS used navy as their blend in color for their Thelma Flys.

Dark colors absorb more sunlight, so as long as you pitch them far over head (3 ft min) they will produce cooler shade.

I would just chalk it up to the "safe buy" for manufacturers.

Gray is neutral, doesn't clash with the surroundings or other gear and doesn't create the complimentary color persistence issues that strong colors can. Climb out of an orange tent and the whole world will look cyan~blue for a bit, etc.

I've always thought that a clever manufacturer could build product identification with a distinctive color. If you see X color tent, you would know it was X brand. Apple has pretty much done it with white and stainless. There could be dangerous choices in the wrong cultures.

Did you know that pink was once considered a boy's color in Western European culture? It was considered to be a variant of red and red was a dominant men's color.

I love my brown MLD duomid, the light inside is bronze when looking up. I bought that color cause in the desert in winter everything except cactus is brown. And it's shadier than the bright colors when pitched high, and will dry faster in sunlight. I also have a grey MLD tarp, last week the moon light kept me awake since the light was diffused through it. But it's fine.
We need a silnylon that reflects the colors of what surrounds it, that would be cool.

"since the light was amplified through it"
I am pretty sure that the light would have been diffused not amplified.
If you had a light meter I bet that the measured light inside would have been at least half of the light outside.
But of course a darker and or thicker fabric would have decreased the light level further.

here is photographic evidence that grey silnylon does not amplify light :

(sorry, I couldn't help myself)
BTW, 111f in the sun, 108f in that shade (105F RIGHT AGAINST THE DEEP SHADE OF THE FENCE.
That is 44c in the sun,and 42c inside the shelter.

From Steven McAllister:

"A few people have told me that gray is not very stealth.
I live in the North East US. The rocks hear are basically different shades of grey.

I also have other colors of shelters.

I can pitch a gray shelter any time of year and it will blend in with the gray rocks.
My green shelter stands out in the winter, my white shelter stands out in the summer.

Yellow and red stands out in all seasons except certain parts of the fall or during a sunset.

A black shelter is pretty stealth when the sun is low on the horizon, it looks like a shadow, but gets very hot when the sun shines on it.

Blue is always visible. It looks like a hobo tarp which always attracts attention.

Stealth is the game where I live. Too many places where either camping is illegal or you just don't know if it's legal, or maybe you don't want to attract the attention of the locals.

Camping is legal in the Catskills as long as a ranger can't see your camp. This is becoming more true in other places as well."

I was hiking on Tongue Mtn back in November. The leaves were off the trees and a lot of green removed from the forest. Even so, it was nearly impossible for me to see 4 Eureka Timberline tents camped together about 100 yards off trail. There was no brush between us, and only a few trees, but they nearly disappeared into the mountainside. Below is a Timberline in a green environment.

I can imagine that a green cuben tent would be completely invisible here in the Adirondacks.

I stand corrected. Diffused.
If you are allergic to bees don't ever use a yellow tarp/tent/mid. It attracts them like crazy. I have a yellow car and it's a bee magnet. Or maybe it's cause I'm so sweet! ;-)

Just to be picky, that Timbeline looks more "stealth" there than it should because the photo has a strong green balance , just Google "Timberline tent" in google images and you will see what I mean.

Franco,
Not sure if you still care, but my green and yellow preference from the swatches you posted are…

Green: Saturation – 70; Value – 70
Yellow: Glistening Gold (A22-5)

I'd druther have a light brown to tan tent but it ain't available from Tarptent.

So gray it is.

HISTORICAL TRIVIA-> "grey cloth" is the old colonial period name for unbleached linen, which was actually a light btown color.

Then there was "linsey-woolsey", which is what it sounds like, a mix of linen and wool.