Perceived Fabric Temperature

Likely a few main things – contact area with the skin, material thermal conductivity, and temperature delta between the skin and the garment material. I don’t know what values of each would cause someone to feel, as perception is a relative thing. For instance, the initial temperature of the garment vs. the surface temperature of one’s skin will vary for different people and different situations. You can see a direct analog when comparing the feeling of wood flooring vs tile flooring on your bare feet in the morning. It will be the same for clothing.

I think this is a real thing.

About 70 years ago my grandmother from North Dakota visited us in Seattle. She commented that the combed cotton sheets we used on her guest bed in Seattle would never be used in her much much colder North Dakota bed.  She only used flannel sheets because they immediately felt warmer.

Experimented this morning.

Put fuzzy polar tec hoody onto bare upper torso then did the same with a nylon lined fiber fill jacket.

Fuzzy hoody felt immediately warmer on the skin than the nylon lined jacket.  Effect was temporary but, at first, quite noticeable.

Similar experiences.  At home, I have a home made bed quilt made of mostly cotton fabrics and a fleece throw/blanket.  If I sleep with the fleece as the first layer with the quilt as the 2nd, it feels warmer than if the quilt is the first layer with the fleece as the second.   At least initially.  Same materials, just ordered differently.  I can’t quit explain that.

regular nylon fabric, ripstop or whatever, feels cold.

but I think it’s just when you first put it on.  It quickly warms up.  Doesn’t affect the minimum temperature an outfit is comfortable down to.

supplex nylon fabric doesn’t feel cold.

maybe it has to do with the micro structure of the fabric.  Fuzzy feels warmer.

related – on my quilt, next to my face, when it’s cold – regular nylon fabric gets condensation from my breath.  Just a minor annoyance, not enough to get the insulation wet

supplex fabric doesn’t get this condensation

according to my experiments

when I cowboy camp, in some conditions like cold and clear, the outside of my quilt gets condensation or frost on it.  I wonder if supplex would do that as much.  Supplex is way too heavy for the outside of a quilt though, and probably not down proof.  Maybe they could make lightweight, down proof fabric that has the same micro structure to reduce condensation.

Insulation is serial, that is why once you’ve warmed it up to a steady state of heat transfer, it performs as you’d expect it to regardless of the order of the layering – obviously if we were talking about outside in a windy environment, or in a situation where convective heat loss becomes an issue, the order of the layering becomes more impactful, but that was not part of this discussion. It is the thermal heat transfer coefficient property  and the total contact surface area I described earlier that explains why you feel warmer initially with one material vs another. With the fleece, it is more likely the surface area component, as the lofted fibers result in less actual fiber touching your body than if it was just a flat woven sheet. Different materials will have different heat transfer coefficients, but I suspect most synthetic fabrics materials are going to have similar heat transfer coefficients, so that is likely less impactful.

“With the fleece, it is more likely the surface area component, as the lofted fibers result in less actual fiber touching your body than if it was just a flat woven sheet.”

yeah, exactly

“Another key word: supplex. Supplex is a type of nylon specifically engineered to feel soft and, well, supple. If you see supplex on the tag, it will definitely have a cottony feel.”

Source unknown.

When you reach your hand into a kitchen drawer looking for a ladle, why does the metal ladle feel colder than the wooden one even though they are both in the same drawer and at the same temperature??    Due to thermal conductivity…   Nylon’s thermal conductivity is ~0.25 W/m K, Polypro is ~0.20 W/m K and Cotton is ~0.04 W/m K. Temperature moves from hot to cold until steady state. Lower thermal conductivity won’t pull the heat from you as quickly and won’t give the the sense of “coldness”.  For comparison, stainless steel is ~14.4 W/m K. Add water or fuel to your hands, plus frigid cold temperatures, and that is how instant frostbite happens. Hence, “contact” or “anti-contact” gloves.

Ex-Officio had (has?) a fabric that I think they called dry fly light or something like that. I really liked the way that fabric felt because it felt dry to the touch, it felt dry when I wore it, and it seemed to dry quickly. So there’s also the wet-dry axis.