"If people stop to think about it and about reflection, they intuitively know it will keep them warmer. "At first it was just the early adopters and gear junkies using it, but thanks to word of mouth, it has become well-known and a lot of people have heard of it and even tried it," says Mergy.Īnother reason it took off? "Most fabric just looks like fabric, but with Omni-Heat thermal reflective, you can actually see the technology," explains Mergy. "It's all part of the secret sauce," says Mergy.Īnd guess what? The reflective lining works! In five years, over a billion dollars of Omni-Heat products have been sold, making it the number-one insulated technology in the industry by far. The dots also have protective polymers to prevent the metal from corroding or coming off in the washing machine or dryer.
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Unlike a space blanket, though, the dots only cover about 33 percent of the fabric, which makes the technology breathable and keeps you from overheating. The patented lining is comprised of a pattern of tiny silver dots with aluminum that reflects a percentage of your radiant, infrared body heat (the heat that you can't see unless using a infrared camera) back onto you to keep you warm. "Knowing that the largest amount of heat that the human body gives off - 80 percent - is through radiation, we decided to focus on that and a way to use that to warm us up," says Mergy. "They hold heat inside of them and eventually max out because there's only so much heat they can hold." And therefore, heat ends up escaping. "The reason we tackled heat reflection is because a lot of other heat technologies, like insulation and down, only work by conduction," explains Mergy.
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So they created a way to apply the reflective dots in a discontinuous pattern, in a manufacturing-friendly way for use in cold-weather products, and Omni-Heat thermal reflective material was born. "So we thought, 'How can we create something that provides the benefits that this blanket does, but make it comfortable, breathable, and so that it can dissipate sweat if you're being active?'"
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"You would never want to wear one of those, though - especially next to your skin, because it's crinkly and uncomfortable and you'd sweat a lot," says Jeff Mergy, director of global innovation at Columbia.