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Old September 14, 2013, 03:49 AM   #1
johnelmore
Senior Member
 
Join Date: April 6, 2013
Posts: 456
Thoughts on low visibility colors

I authored a post on high visibility colors so I thought one on low visibility colors would go well with it. Low visibility colors can be used in a number of situations where you do not want to draw attention to yourself. For example walking through an inner city area or traveling outside of the USA where muggings are most common.

In the daytime light desert like colors are most desirable for the modern urban area. Khaki or light brown are excellent solid colors for this type of area. Dark colored clothing like blue jeans are actually highly visible in the urban area as it contrasts against the lightly colored background. Most urban areas are painted and colored with light-bright colors. Rarely will you see a black or blue building.

At night, black is the best color for true low visibility for obvious reasons. Those dark blue jeans were horrible for the day, but are perfect for the night.

The police generally like to use black because its highly visible in the daytime contrasting against the light colored urban background but invisible at night. In the day time police need to standout in the crowd and also be effective in their role of traffic control but at night its better to be low viz. Black also tends to be an intimidating color which projects authority. Its also easier to match a car paint with black then any other color. Thus police enjoy black. Black, however, is a horrible low visibility color for daytime.

Olive drab, ranger green and other greens are only good for forest or jungle like atmospheres. In an urban area it contrasts and makes the user more visible contrasting against the buildings. What buildings are colored green nowadays?

Coyote Brown would be my choice if I could only choose one color to wear. The USMC has decided to color most of their individual equipment this color. Brown is present in almost every environment. It goes well with urban and forest. It blends nicely against most buildings and goes well against the forest.

If I were to travel abroad or into a high crime area or other area where my safety might be in question, I would focus on dark blue and black at night...blue jeans for example. By day I would go for a light brown and other lightish colors like khaki pants and a light grey shirt.
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