Thread: Defender - is black (hot?) in summer?

Originally Posted by AndyG

Ah , getting silver pack & the red leather, and sunroof. The twin tube steps were on order but been dropped for my15 builds.So will live without. July 9 build so our cars will prob be boat buddies. Oh did have sawtooth on order, but dropped to pay for the leather.

Sounds good. I don't like the twin tube side steps, they look a bit "busy". Have a look at the single tube.
Pickles.

There must be a simple way to answer this question.

The problem is that all the test we have been able to find have been conducted using cars, so the results are not applicable to Defenders.

Surely there must be two Defender owners , one with a black Defender and one white, who live near enough to each other to conduct a little experiment.

The vehicles would need to be similar in other respects as there is evidence that upholstery colour and sun roofs affect the results.

If the two vehicles were parked side by side and temperature readings taken every 15 minutes, we would have some useful data to answer the question originally posed in this thread.

Early afternoon would be a sensible time to conduct the experiment.

Any volunteers?

All else equal, black will absorb more. The question is how much?

And how much beer in the beer garden will be absorbed at the same time

Originally Posted by AndyG

All else equal, black will absorb more. The question is how much?

And how much beer in the beer garden will be absorbed at the same time

That is correct, doesn't matter what the item is, whether it be a house roof, any sort of flat surface in the sun, black or any similar dark colour, will always absorb more heat, & become hotter.
Pickles.

The idea about parking two next to each other and measuring temp is a great one.

I think it would really influence people's decisions.

Originally Posted by Pickles2

That is correct, doesn't matter what the item is, whether it be a house roof, any sort of flat surface in the sun, black or any similar dark colour, will always absorb more heat, & become hotter.
Pickles.

I believe you are wrong there Pickles (and others). Black may absorb heat quicker therefore heat up quicker, but any colour will heat up to ambient eventually, as tested by the "mythbusters", 5 degrees celcius difference is nothing.
And black is the best looking colour for a car, no doubt.

Which colors absorb the most heat? Why is this? Does a bright color like yellow absorb a lot of heat?
Answer 1:
When an object appears a certain color when illuminated by white light it means that it is reflecting light of that color and absorbing all other colors. For example, a red apple is reflecting red light and absorbing all other colors of light. The more light the object absorbs, the more heat absorbed since light is energy. If you consider it a color, black absorbs the most heat. A black object absorbs all wavelengths of light and reflects none. Objects that are white, on the other hand, reflect all wavelengths of light and therefore absorb the least heat.

Now, what about a color like yellow? It is difficult to compare the amount of heat absorbed by a yellow object verses another colored object like green or red because a lot of other factors come into play. For example, the intensity of the color, the incident illumination (the wavelengths of light hitting the object) and the angles of the light coming in and being reflected all play a part in the amount of heat absorbed. Now if you have a light yellow T-shirt and a dark yellow T-shirt, you can confidently say that the darker (more intense) yellow will absorb more heat because there is more pigment (less white). But comparing to another colored T-shirt like blue-green or red you would have to experimentally test!

Originally Posted by Gerokent

I believe you are wrong there Pickles (and others). Black may absorb heat quicker therefore heat up quicker, but any colour will heat up to ambient eventually, as tested by the "mythbusters", 5 degrees celcius difference is nothing.
And black is the best looking colour for a car, no doubt.

They may eventually get to a similar temperature. The question is how quickly each one reaches that temperature. There is some evidence that a white Defender will be significantly cooler after shorter periods of time, such as the time it is parked in the sun while you do some shopping.

The Mythbusters tested a car. We are talking about Defenders. For reasons that have been explained several times, the data from cars does not apply to Defenders.

Black is the best looking colour for a car for those few minutes between when you polish it and when it begins to attract dust and dirt.