Spring’s here, the sun’s finally got some bite in it, and every fibre of your being is screaming “get in the pool.” Or the ocean. Or that river the cousins swear is “totally fine this time of year.”
Before you do, here’s a bit of trivia that’ll change how you shop for togs forever: the colour of your swimmers decides how easily anyone can actually see you in the water. And the hardest colour to spot isn’t black, and it isn’t navy. It’s white — which is, let’s be honest, roughly a third of everything on the racks right now.
Here are six genuinely interesting things about swimwear colour.
1. White swimmers basically turn invisible
In 2019, American water-safety outfit Alive Solutions did something beautifully simple: they threw a pile of different-coloured swimsuits into three types of water and photographed them from above — floating on the surface, and again sitting about 45 cm down.
The results were stark:
- Light-bottomed pool (your classic pale-blue tiled backyard job): white and light blue vanished almost instantly. Gone. Like they’d never been there.
- Dark-bottomed pool (pebblecrete, dark tiles, that moody charcoal finish everyone’s renovating to): blues, blacks and greys melted straight into the bottom. Even bright reds and pinks went dull and murky.
- Open water (brownish-green — think a NZ west coast harbour, or a river after rain): only the neons survived. Everything else just blended in.
Overall winner across all three settings: neon orange, with neon yellow and neon green close behind.
2. Our beautiful clear water is exactly why blue togs disappear
Here’s the local twist. That postcard turquoise we brag about on the east coast is precisely why a blue rashie goes invisible — it’s the same colour as its background. Same story in NZ, where plenty of popular swimming spots run green-grey and silty, especially near a river mouth.
White has a second problem in the surf specifically: the ocean is already full of white. Foam, whitewater, chop. White swimmers don’t just fail to stand out — they blend into the busiest visual noise on the whole beach.
3. The red and yellow flags are that colour for the exact same reason
Ever wondered why surf lifesaving landed on red and yellow, of all combinations? It’s not branding. That pairing is about as visible as it gets against sand, sea and sky — high contrast, high saturation, impossible to confuse with the background.
So when you pick fluoro togs, you’re applying the identical logic lifesavers already applied to their flags, their caps and their rescue gear. Nippers don’t wear bright pink and yellow rashies because it’s cute.
4. Even neon gives up once there’s a bit of chop
Don’t get cocky. The same testing found that once you add ripples, waves or turbulence, almost any colour becomes hard to see below the surface. One aquatic safety expert compared it to looking through frosted bathroom glass — you can tell something’s there, you just can’t tell what.
Which is the honest framing: bright swimmers are a handy extra, not a safety plan.
5. “Yum-yum yellow” is a myth — and Aussie science busted it
You’ve heard this one. Bright yellow attracts sharks, so don’t wear it in the ocean. The legend traces back to World War II, when American sailors decided the orange-yellow life vests were putting their mates on the menu.
Here’s the thing: the research that knocked it over was largely done right here. In 2011, Dr Nathan Hart — then at the University of Western Australia, now at Macquarie — examined the retinas of 17 shark species and found they have only one type of cone cell. In plain English: sharks are almost certainly colourblind. They see the world in shades of grey.
So yellow isn’t a dinner bell. What sharks are very good at reading is contrast.
6. Which makes the “don’t wear stripes” advice surprisingly shaky
You’ll often read that you should avoid bold stripes in the ocean because sharks are drawn to high contrast. Except a WA company working from Hart’s research built wetsuits designed to do the opposite — including one in bold black-and-white banding, mimicking a sea snake, something several shark species appear to give a wide berth.
In testing (using tuna heads in wrapped barrels, since you can’t exactly volunteer for this), a tiger shark went straight for the plain black suit but hesitated for several minutes before approaching the banded one.
Honest verdict: the evidence is thin in both directions, and nobody should be choosing their togs based on it. Wear the stripes if you like the stripes.
Right — how to shop like a lifeguard
Go for: neon orange, neon yellow, neon green. Fluoro rashies and boardies for the kids. Bonus points for a bright swim cap, because heads are what people scan for.
Skip: white, light blue, pale grey, navy, black — and anything that happens to match the water you’re getting into.
On sharks: basically irrelevant to your colour choice. Maybe leave the flashy watch and chain on your towel, since shiny metal can flash like fish scales underwater — that one’s plausible, if not exactly proven.
Now go on. The water’s waiting. Just not in the white ones.
