A Stylish And Lightweight Hat With Sun Protection

Did you know that you can get hats with a sun protection rating? In fact, there's lots of clothing that comes with a sun protection rating but I'll be focusing mainly on hats as they do the important job of protecting the face. The sun protection rating for material is known as UPF (Ultraviolet Protection Factor) and, like with SPF's, it will be followed by a number, usually from 15 to 50+. Below is a chart so you can see the progression of protection the numbers represent. All fabrics offer some protection from the sun. The light fabrics, often used for summer clothing, have approximately a UPF 6 and denser fabrics, logically, are a lot higher.

UPF Rating	Protection Category	% UV radiation Blocked
UPF 15 – 24	Good	93.3 – 95.9
UPF 25 – 39	Very Good	96.0 – 97.4
UPF 40 – 50+	Excellent	97.5 – 98+

Anyway, back to hats. Last year, I bought a hat online with UPF 50 but when it arrived I was disappointed to find that a) It was so heavy and fabric-dense that I knew I'd melt after 5 minutes of wearing it, probably even in quite cold weather and b) It looked stupid. The hat got sent back and I thought that proper sun hats were a nice idea but not something I could practically live with.

Then I watched the  recent Caroline Hirons with Dr Sam Bunting video about pigmentation issues and she recommend the UPF sun hats and mentioned the ones by Helen Kaminski. I didn't waste a second looking this up but wasn't happy to see that they cost about £145. Admittedly, they look great but far too expensive for just a sun hat.

I really wanted a UPF hat now so begun searching for something that fitted the bill and I eventually found one I really like. It's by Walleroo, an Australian company, where for obvious reasons a lot of UPF clothing comes from. The one I choose is Napples which is a fedora that's reasonably stylish and lightweight and has a 3 inch rim which is the size Dr Sam recommends. It comes in several colours but I got the camel. And it's £33 so a lot less than the Helen Kaminski ones! The other style I like is the Scrunchie but they also do lots of others along with some great ones for kids and men.

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