- While sunscreen helps keep sunburn and cancerous skin cells from forming, the best prevention is to wear clothes. But even lightweight cotton and linen shirts still allow a good deal of the sun's harmful rays to pass through to your precious epidermis.
- Do yourself a favor and reach for sun protection clothing, even if you're already wearing sunscreen. Our favorite sun shirt is the Hanes Cool Dri because it's lightweight, protective, and fast to dry.
Sun shirts have never really been an interest where the style-savvy are concerned. They're sporty, synthetic, and generally emblazoned with hideous logos, and I too am guilty of having pooh-poohed them. But we've had decades now to process the grim reality that even our beloved sun can give us cancer, and I for one am tired of getting sunburned through the old, tattered shirts I have always tried to wring a second life out of by wearing while outdoors.
I, like many of you, do not enjoy slathering sunscreen all over my torso and making myself into a greasy mess for the day just to ward off UV rays. Moreover, sunscreen is expensive, especially if you tend to use a good, chemical-free mineral-based sunscreen, and find yourself in the sun often.
But the market for sun shirts is becoming a little more innovative to accommodate more diverse, even mainstream aesthetics, and we couldn't be happier about it. Should you find yourself in that market, here are a few things to consider:
- UPF vs. SPF: Ultraviolet Protection Factor (UPF) measures the amount of UV light that passes through fabrics, while Sun Protection Factor (SPF) measures the amount of time it takes sun-screened skin to redden, or, in other words, the effectiveness of sunscreen.
- Temperature: If you're going to be somewhere really, really hot, like Death Valley, or the Atacama Desert, forego your choosy inklings and buy something with the newfangled cooling technology, most notably by Columbia or Under Armour. They're a bit loud, though, so if you want to strike a pose for your Instagram post, consider throwing in another shirt for photo ops that you're willing to be caught dead in.
- Style: Your style is your style, and we're not telling you what to wear, not ever, and not now. Sun shirts come in all cuts, and it really comes down to personal preference, for most. If you're going to be doing a lot of swimming, surfing, or spending time in direct sunlight, a hood is beneficial, if not paramount to outwitting the sun and its rays. You also might want thumb holders and a loop to tie it to your shorts. If you're fishing, pockets are also kind of a must, and a button-up with plenty of pockets is arguably the best way to go.
- Weight: If you're traveling — or living — lightly, some of our picks are a bit on the heavy or bulky side. Consider passing on those for our other picks.
Here are our picks for the best sun shirts with UPF protection:Updated 7/6/2020. A lot of our previous picks are no longer available, including our overall pick, the Hurley QuickDry. But after testing Hanes' Cool Dri shirts for a couple of years, we've decided that the quality of the fabric and the UPF treatment is every bit as good. We also added the Filson Ultralight shirt as a pick for anglers, adventurers, and people who want something that's feather-light and (arguably) stylish.