Want to stay safe day and night when running? Then you’ll probably want to grab yourself a high-vis vest – perfect for running, jogging, cycling and walking. You pop it over your top, and bingo, you’re good to go. Well, only if you find one with all the right features, though. To be both useful and usable, you need High-Vis Vests with pockets, in the right fluorescent colour, with reflective strips that are comfortable to wear and adjustable.
High-Vis vests are made with fluorescent material and added reflective accents or tape. Please note, to be genuinely High-Vis, vests must be both;
- Fluorescent During The Day: Fluorescent colours catch the sun's ultraviolet rays and make them glow, increasing daytime visibility
- Reflective At night: Fluorescent colours don't show up in the dark; they need reflective properties that catch the light from street lights, car lights or bike lamps
High Visability Running Vestsl Table of Contents
Best High-Vis Vests With Pockets
Our Top Pick & Why
The OUTERDO is our top pick and ticks all the boxes. It is one of a few High-Vis Vests with pockets, LED lights and plenty of reflective strips. You’ll be easily seen both day and night with visibility from up to 200meters—also pretty lightweight at 145g and highly adjustable. If you don’t want to use the LED lights, disconnect the battery pack and run without it.
Why You Need A High-Vis Vest?
High-Vis running tops or jackets are great for day time use. However, if they lack sufficient reflective strips at night time, they will be pretty ineffective. A High-Vis running vest is a very cost-effective way to be seen and stay safe day or night.
Bear this in mind before buying a high-vis jacket. Many glow bright in daylight hours, yet because they only have tiny reflective strips on the cuffs, hems or shoulders, they might not be as effective as you might think.
How Do High-Vis Vests Work?
The fluorescent colours on the vests react to the sun’s ultraviolet rays, making them appear to glow and increasing daytime visibility. The effect is more potent in lower light conditions such as when raining, if foggy or when approaching dusk.
At night time, they work differently; light from headlights or street lights bounce off from reflective strips or tape on the vest; to make them glow, increasing nighttime visibility.
You will be visible in both day and nighttime conditions by wearing a high-vis vest for running, which has both fluorescent and reflective materials. Remember, Fluorescent for the day, Reflective for the night. We’ll explain this a little more in the next few sections of our guide.
Fluorescent Colours For Day Time Visibility
Fluorescent colours on the vest help you to be seen in the daytime and near dusk. They work well in dull or rainy weather and when daylight is fading. It’s hard for drivers to see runners, pedestrians and cyclists on a rainy day, so it’s a good idea to wear something fluorescent.
Fluorescent colours look bright to us because of the way they absorb and release different kinds of light. Remember that fluorescent colours don’t show up in the dark. To be seen at night, the vest will need to have reflective properties.
What Is The Best Colour For High-Vis Vests?
Many colours can be fluorescent and used for high-vis clothing and bags, not just yellow/green but red, pink, green, and orange.
Yellow/green is the most popular colour used for high-vis gear and is the colour most people will instantly notice. You’ve probably seen police officers, post workers, delivery drivers and builders all wearing yellow high-vis gear.
Lifeboat crews use orange lifejackets because the colour shows up best against the dark blue and muddy waters. On the other hand, horse-riders will often wear pink vests because the colour pink is rarely seen in nature and shows up better against the green of trees or the browns of winter leaves and bushes.
High-Vis Vests With Reflective Strips For Night-Time
For high-vis vests to work effectively at night, they must also have plenty of reflective strips or sections. The reflective materials on the vest will work at night by bouncing back the light from a source. It needs to be dark to work correctly, and there must be a light source such as car headlights.
A bright white running jacket might be able to catch and reflect some light from headlights and streetlights. However, unique reflective materials work much better. We call the materials on these running vest – retro-reflective and designed to bounce the light back to its source rather than disseminating it in all directs. The light from a vehicle or cyclists headlights will shine right back to them and see the reflective materials instantly.
Reflective materials on your running gear can help drivers to see you three seconds sooner at night – which could save your life.
High-Vis Vests: Key Features
Fluorescent and reflective is the key to being seen during the day, afternoon and evening. However, some other feature features will also make your running vest more practical and effective.
High-Vis Vests With Pockets
Before deciding on which safety gear to buy, make sure you select a high-vis vest with pockets. You’ll be much more likely to use the vest if you have a handy location to keep your mobile phone, wallet, keys, snacks or other running essentials. Of course, you could use the pockets in your top underneath the vest. However, it will involve a lot of fidgeting around and might mean having to remove the vest first.
Adjustable And Comfortable To Wear
You’ll want to find a high-vis running vest that is comfortable to wear regardless of what you are wearing underneath. So in the summer, when the weather is warmer, that might be a T-shirt, and in the cold winter months, that might be multiple layers. Adjustability is key, depending on what you’re wearing – so pick a vest that allows you to either make it tighter or looser fitting.
You might also want to consider this when deciding on size. A medium might be fine when only wearing a T-shirt, yet too small if you are wearing a few extra layers. As long as the vest is adjustable, you shouldn’t have too many problems because the degree of adjustability should be pretty high.
High-Vis Vests With Lights
This is a really cool added feature that is available on a few of the running vests we have included in our guide. The lights, which are normally LED – so they last a long time and are powered by a small battery. You can set the lights to either on or to flash. LED lights are an added extra and not a necessity in a high-vis vest – well worth considering, though.
Well, you got to the end of our guide then. We hope you found your High-Vis Vests with pockets and all the other good stuff needed. If you are interested in some other safety gear, look at our Personal Safety Alarms For Runners guide. They are inexpensive and great if you go running alone at night.
Disclaimer: This guide contains affiliate links, and I earn a small commission from any sale that occurs via my links. This, however, does not change my opinion; I always do my best to provide the facts and suggest products that will benefit my users. You pay no more and no less for using these links. It does, however, help to sustain my blog.
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