FAQ

Wearing reflective material is important because it alerts others around you to your presence at night, as well as in other low-light conditions, and helps maintain your safety.

From the diagram below you can clearly see that if you are wearing dark clothing at night you are only visible up to 25m. Even if you are wearing white clothes at night you are still only visible up to 40m. That means that a vehicle travelling at an average speed will be unable to stop (even with an emergency break) in time to prevent a collision. Wearing reflective clothing allows you to be seen up to 140m, which helps to ensure that the vehicle is able to break in good time to prevent a collision.
 

Fluorescent materials work where there is a source of natural sunlight. They appear brighter than the same coloured non-fluorescent material and give increased visibility to the wearer during the day and at dusk. They are typically used in conjunction with retroreflective materials to provide the wearer with both day and nighttime visibility.

Retroreflective materials return light in the direction of the light's source. In the case of a moving vehicle, this allows the driver to see the light being reflected from the retroreflective material on a person's garment. They are most effective at nighttime and under low-light level conditions.

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  Daylight conditions

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  Dusk conditions

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  Nighttime conditions

Great retroreflective design not only helps wearers be detected, but also recognized as humans. Studies have shown that motorists react faster when they recognise a human shape, as opposed to an object, in front of them. To take advantage of this increased recognition in low light conditions, retroreflective material can be incorporated into garments in ways that help motorists recognize you as a person. Two common ways to help increase recognition are:


Biomotion: highlighting motion points and joints to show humanistic movement.
Human Form Outline: creating a 'wireframe' of the body to show the human shape via retroreflected light.

Try out the biomotion configurator to see the difference

3M Brownwood is the global manufacturing plant for all 3M™ Scotchlite™ Reflective Materials. Key to the success of the products manufactured at Brownwood is that all stages of the production chain are undertaken on site – from the use of 3M’s own glassbeads, to vapour coating, coating and curing through to product testing.

3M also has a converting facility at Wroclaw (Poland) where many products are slit specifically for the European market.

To ensure your garment has the original and authentic retroreflective material, look for the 3M™ Scotchlite™ Reflective Material hangtag or label. We provide all our partners, at no cost, with paper hangtags and labels that can be sewn into apparel, accessories, footwear and bags to ensure peace-of-mind for wearers.