Polyester is a common swimwear fabric, but what percentage is suitable? How long will it last? What are its advantages and disadvantages?
All these questions and more will be answered below, so keep reading to ensure your wardrobe is ready for swim season.
Polyester Fabric
Like all materials, polyester swimsuit fabric has pros and cons, but the general consensus is that it is an ideal fabric for swimming pools.
Why You Can’t Swim In Any Material
Wearing materials that aren’t fitting for swimwear fabrics could have many consequences. So much so that many public swimming pools explicitly ban the wearing of street wear in their pool rules.
Swimming Safety
Besides being extremely uncomfortable, garments that contain a higher percentage of natural fibers like cotton or wool add a lot of strain to the swimming experience, creating dangerous circumstances.
Weighted or loose clothing may cause difficulty swimming at your optimal ability and may contribute to drowning.
Less severe safety risks of swimming in unfit materials include skin irritations brought on by the friction caused by certain clothing items while swimming.
Swimming Pool Safety
Certain materials like cotton are weakened by chlorinated water and thus start to fray. These fabric particles along with your clothing dye are released into your pool water, affecting the pool chemicals.
Materials like cotton also retain more bacteria and micro-organisms than traditional swim materials, meaning you may imbalance the micro eco-system of your pool water by swimming in regular clothes.
The broken down fabric may also cause more than just micro-harm when getting stuck in your swimming pool filter and causing equipment malfunctions.
Clothing Durability
If your clothing material is not made for chlorinated water, it is unlikely to last you very long. Not only does chlorine strip certain materials of color, but it may also lower the structural integrity of many garments.
How Much Polyester Do You Need?
Polyester swimsuits can be combined with fabrics like Lycra or spandex blend to improve the swimwear material characteristics.
In order to retain the durability polyester swimwear offers, it is recommended that your swimwear items of choice contain around 50%-100% polyester.
If less than 100% polyester is present in a garment, it may not be fitting for swimming, depending on the other included material’s characteristics.
Conclusion
In answer to the title – yes, polyester is an incredible swimsuit fabric. So much so that it’s the most common swimsuit fabric on the market!