While most clothes provide a degree of protection from the sun, there’s always a degree of UV radiation that’s still getting through and reaching your skin. This is the same reality for most children and babies’ clothing.

Sun-protective clothing, as you likely gathered, is clothing that has been manufactured or treated in some way to improve the effectiveness with which they prevent UV rays from reaching your kids’ skin.

Sun-protective clothing can be manufactured in a number of ways, with each approach focused on the same outcome: providing effective protection from UV radiation.

Some common approaches to sun-protective clothing include the use of:

Tightly-Woven Fabrics 

Clothing that uses fabrics with a tight weave can often provide great UV protection. Examples of tightly woven fabrics include materials like denim and canvas. Due to how tightly woven the fabric of the clothing is, it leaves little to no gaps through which sunlight can reach the skin.

Specific Materials

Certain materials are capable of naturally absorbing UV rays, which reduces how much of it reaches the skin. Two common examples are polyester and nylon - both absorb UV rays. These materials can also be tightly woven for additional protection. They make for a great material option for sun hats.

Treated Fabrics and Dyes

UV-absorbing chemicals can be added to fabrics to improve their Ultraviolet Protection Factor (UPF). Certain colours and dyes may be added to materials to improve UV protection, too. Dark dyes absorb more UV, and there are also UV-blocking dyes that can be added to fabrics during the manufacturing process.

Fabric Weight and Thickness

Finally, the weight and thickness of fabrics will influence their level of UV protection. Thicker, heavier fabrics will block more UV radiation than thinner, lighter fabrics.

UPF is a rating used to measure how effectively a fabric blocks the sun’s UV radiation. The highest current UPF rating possible is UPF50+. The number denotes how effective its UV protection is.

UPF50 means that only 1/50th (2%) of the sun’s UV radiation can penetrate through the fabric. On the other end of the scale, a UPF of 15 would mean that 1/15th (approximately 6.7%) of UV radiation would penetrate beyond the fabric. So, the higher the UPF rating, the better its overall protection.

Ultimately, for your little ones, you’ll want to provide them with the best sun protection possible in the spring and summer - so opting for clothes or materials with a UPF50 or 50+ rating is ideal. But if you can’t find a specific item of clothing with UPF50, you can find garments with UPF40, which is also excellent protection. Worst-case, clothing with a UPF30 rating is still considered to offer good sun protection.

You can combine highly-rated UPF clothing with a high-SPF sunscreen for combined sun safety for kids.

Whether or not a piece of sun-protective clothing will work for babies with sensitive skin depends on the method that’s been used to produce the clothing. If a piece of clothing is sun-protective through the use of chemicals or dyes, it’s best to avoid these clothes if your baby or young one has sensitive skin.

It’s better to use sun-protective clothing that uses tightly woven fabrics or special UV-absorbing materials like polyester or nylon. That or opt for thicker clothes that block a lot of UV radiation.

Of course, if your child’s skin is sensitive to synthetic materials such as polyester or nylon, then it’s best to focus on more natural materials that are tightly woven.

There are no special rules around how often you need to replace sun-protective clothing. In general, they last much like standard clothing. The main time to replace any sun-protective clothing is when your young ones outgrow them.