Enhanced-Visibility vs. High-Visibility Workwear

If you hear the terms enhanced-visibility and high-visibility workwear, it’s understandable that you might think they’re the same thing. However, very important differences between these kinds of clothes that you need to be aware of exist. If you work in a field that requires high-visibility work clothes, then enhanced-visibility workwear won’t make the cut. Look at enhanced-visibility vs. high-visibility workwear so that you always know the differences.

What Is Enhanced-Visibility Clothing?

The key to understanding this kind of workwear is to know what “enhanced” really means. Enhanced-visibility workwear is a category of clothing that includes normal garments improved through the addition of more visible elements, such as retroreflective tape. There are no official standards for enhanced-visibility clothing. Therefore, they can be almost any color or style. People who wear enhanced-visibility clothing usually place reflective tape around the sleeves and through the center of the clothes.

Who Wears Enhanced-Visibility Clothing?

Because there’s no standardized look for enhanced-visibility workwear, anyone who might want to be easy to make out while on the job can wear it as long as they don’t already need to wear high-visibility clothing. Workers in the oil and gas industry often wear enhanced-visibility clothing because it provides a clearer view of them even though their jobs don’t require high-visibility clothing. You can usually find enhanced-visibility clothing in places where the risk of bodily harm is minimal but not necessarily nonexistent.

How Does High-Visibility Clothing Differ?

If we look at enhanced-visibility vs. high-visibility workwear, we see an immediate difference. There are very clear standards that ANSI sets for what constitutes high-visibility workwear. Additionally, this workwear comes in specific classes of high visibility that workers in certain industries must wear for safety purposes. High-visibility workwear must come in specific fluorescent colors (yellow-green, orange-red, or red). It must also have a certain amount of retroreflective striping based on the class and cover a certain amount of your body based on the class. The goal of high-visibility clothing is to make you stand out as much as possible in dangerous situations.

Although standards for hi-vis clothing are rigorous, you don’t have to settle for something you can’t stand wearing if you need to be in it all day for work. SafetyShirtz specializes in providing stylish high-visibility clothing to all the workers out there who face the toughest conditions.