Been thinking about acquiring armor and that got me to wondering: If I did, what would be the best/most useful/most effective color/pattern for the widest range of environments? After all: It's not like we can all afford to have a set in each.

A plate carrier is the immediate focus, but I mean in general terms.

So, if you had to choose one of what's commonly available, which are the most and least useful, in the hive mind's eye?

Question:
Which do you feel would be the most all-around useful or effective color/pattern?

Choices:
Black
Coyote
OD Green
Camo, Woods
Camo, Urban
MultiCam

Question:
Which do you feel would be the least all-around useful or effective color/pattern?

Choices:
Black
Coyote
OD Green
Camo, Woods
Camo, Urban
MultiCam

 

Assuming an external plate carrier, no camouflage is especially useful.

Buy what ever is cheapest.

quote:

Originally posted by tanksoldier:
Assuming an external plate carrier, no camouflage is especially useful.

A plate carrier is the immediate focus, but I'm talking more in general terms.

All around, I vote for something other than black - obviously it depends on your environment / area, but black stick out and it attracts heat.

I’ll defer to others with more direct experience but I would say that it depends on what your local environment is...living in the desert SW is not the same as the mountains of Montana or the wilds of New York City...

You didn’t offer it as a choice, but of current patterns I’m familiar with, I am a firm fan of MultiCam. In actual use I have found it to be extremely effective in a variety of environments. In one exercise it even disrupted the wearer’s pattern in a school classroom enough for me to have a noticeable delay in identifying him as he lay on the floor. In other exercises I’ve seen it to be effective in pine forests, open grass and sagebrush fields, and even against bare earth.

Army old-timers who were familiar with faded “woodland” camouflage found it effective in a variety of environments, including European forests. When the woodland colors are faded from wear and washing, they are somewhat similar to MultiCam.

The background obviously makes a significant difference. It’s easy to develop colors and patterns for specific situations, to include blending into a brick wall. The problem is developing camo that blends into a variety of backgrounds, and no camo will be perfect for all environments. The developers of MultiCam claim, however, that its light color sections pick up and reflect strong environmental colors, thereby increasing its effectiveness.

MultiCam is available in different versions, and the main ones are “arid” that has more browns than the standard, and “tropic” that leans more toward darker greens. I have hats in both arid and tropic, but mostly rely on the original version. MultiCam “black” is, IMO, just for teams that can’t bear to abandon the traditional SWAT solid black but don’t really expect it to have any camouflage effect. Pure black, BTW, is a horrible camouflage color because except in very small patches it does not appear in nature. Other solid colors are usually poor as well.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
You didn’t offer it as a choice, but of current patterns I’m familiar with, I am a firm fan of MultiCam.

Very well. Since there'd been only one voter I went ahead and added MultiCam to the list.

Maybe that voter will be so kind as to re-cast his/her vote

Reason I didn't originally list it is I had kind of lumped Woodlands Camo in with MultiCam in my mind.

I would choose grey for where I live.

OD ... Woodland would be a second solid option IMO.

Urban camo the least useful.

-----------------------------

tanksoldier is of course correct that if only one small part of one’s apparel is what is camouflaged, then the color and pattern make little, if any, difference. Unless it’s black, and then black is still the worst. In one test of camouflage clothing I read, the wearer’s black boots were always the first thing the observers spotted.

I never owned anything Multi-cam till recently, I was always a little dubious. I took this picture last week turkey hunting and when I saw it later I thought "Hey that's not too bad."

Some form of OD Green/Ranger Green would likely be the best for the widest range of environments. Less overt than camo. And less obtrusive than most other solid colors in a wider range of settings. Coyote would be second, although I've seen tan/coyote stand out pretty noticeably in some settings.

Multicam is effective as a camo in a wide variety of settings, and I sometimes use it when hunting, but any camo in an urban/suburban area will be more conspicuous than a neutral solid color. Especially if you're only wearing one piece of camo gear on top of solid colors.

Urban camo would probably be the worst option. I have yet to see a dedicated "urban" pattern then is especially effective even in urban areas, which is why few to no serious military/police units have actually adopted an urban camo pattern for anything other than fashion wear. I'd actually take black over urban camo, even though black is a very poor choice. At least black could be overlooked at a distance, or with a quick glance, whereas urban camo would simply serves to draw attention to you.

Multi Cam and coyote best all around colors in most environments. With OD green right on the heels.

The worst color in every environment except night is black, and even at night, it isn't any more effective than OD green, and if there is lighting, moonlight then black is a liability. It will silhouette you like no other color.

I hunted for years, and the black was the first color I noticed on game.

Also, expect for very dark nights, a lighter color that's brown dominant blends better in the environment better, even in urban and suburban areas. Unlike darker colors, which you can't make lighter, lighter colors can be "darker " by just stepping into the shade.

My gear is Muli Cam, coyote and OD green just for this reason.

Black is the most notable color choice, and doesn't blend well in most applications.


ARman

Don't forget the rest of your clothing has to blend in too. Pretty much anything that breaks up your outline will work. There are no straight lines in nature.

I voted multicam, but ranger green is a good solid color. Black is silly, nothing in nature is black, but it all turns dark at night anyways.

Of your options, OD green would be my choice.
And consider this:
What color is a rabbit?
What color is a deer?
Both animals blend in well in the earth tone brown they wear. I try to find clothing in that shade when I can it find it. I dont know anyone who makes tactical gear in that shade of brown, though.
And Nismos suggestion of gray bears looking into, too.
I have quite a bit of stuff in Flectarn, which works well in the Yoop. Its a German pattern based on a camo they developed in WWII.

Thanks for the votes and the comments, guys!

As it currently stands: OD Green is clearly winning the "most all-around useful/effective" vote and is tied with coyote as one of the two least unuseful/ineffective.

I would not have expected that.

I'm not particularly surprised by black being in second place as "best," first place as "worst," and the comments regarding it.

One color that was not on my list, because I don't often see it offered, is sage/leafy green. That's unfortunate because, of all the colors with the possible exception of coyote, it strikes me as the most innocuous and, I suspect, would probably be the most widely-utilitarian color of them all. (I have a compact modular assault pack in that color.)

I'm thinking I'll probably go with OD or Ranger green.

I have the AR500 Concealment Plate Carrier. Yes it's in black, but it will fit easily under any Camo or street clothing. And if it's a bump-in-the-night situation it won't matter as it'll go over whatever I'm wearing. Or not.

I was lucky enough years ago to attend a tactical tracking course put on by the company run by David Scott-Donlan, a well known Rhodesian SAS soldier and tracker. His instructors were of the thinking that sometimes no camo is the best camo; OD green was what they suggested as an all around, all environment uniform if you had to choose one.

They explained how the human eye fixates first on movement, then narrows to contrasting colors. They demonstrated this by an instructor in OD sitting about 25 yards off a trail in plain view
and having students try to find him while walking the trail. More than half missed him.

As far as pure camouflage, the best camo for outdoor environments is 3-d, especially when static.

quote:

Originally posted by cas:
I never owned anything Multi-cam till recently, I was always a little dubious. I took this picture last week turkey hunting and when I saw it later I thought "Hey that's not too bad."

Regular multicam is the next best thing to totally invisible in the part of central Texas where I usually hunt. I got done hunting one day when I was wearing a multicam BDU shirt over a t-shirt, and I was curious, so I took the BDU shirt off and threw it in the shade in the grass next to a bush. If I'd wandered off and come back later looking for the shirt, I don't think I'd ever have found it.