When playing extreme sports, the quality of your garments and protective gear is critical to your success. The right clothing not only boosts your confidence but also gives you the ease of movement and high safety.
When it comes to dressing for paintball, you can look for high-quality protective equipment at Paintball Advisors. Comfortable yet flexible clothes will do wonders for your all-day games.
So what exactly do you need? What to wear to paintball? We’ll provide you with helpful information as well as tips on choosing the right clothing.
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What Is Paintball?
Originated in America in the 80s, paintball is an extreme, which involves teams or individuals eliminating opponents by shooting them with balls of colored dye, or paintballs.
Players hit the paintballs through paintball guns. When these balls pop out, they give out the dye. A player with the dye is marked as eliminated.
People usually play paintball games on outdoor or indoor fields of various sizes. The most common obstacles are natural terrains, like trenches, trees, hills, and artificial obstacles, like barricades, wooden bunkers, or fortresses.
Different game objectives include capturing the flag, attacking and defending, complete destruction, and protecting the president. Depending on the objectives and paintball operator, a game can last from ten minutes to hours or even days.
What To Wear To Paintball Safely?
To make it quick and simple, your attires for playing paintball should make sure of a range of protections:
- Head & face protection
- Upper-body protection
- Lower body protection
- Protective footwear
- Gloves
Headgear (Head and Face Protection)
The most vulnerable part of your body is the head. To cover your head and hair, you’ll need to wear a baseball cap, hood, or beanie. The tip is to wear them backwards so that you can deter the cap bill from obscuring your vision.
To protect your face, players can wear a mask. While some masks just cover your face back to your ears, there are types of masks that cover your entire head. Depending on the weather and the difficulty level of the game, you can choose a suitable one.
Top (Upper Body Protection)
Many players wear thin, long-sleeved shirts when playing, particularly the younger or more pain-sensitive participants. A hit to bare skin hurts more than one to clothes, so it’s a good idea to have full-length coverage.
The material of your top should be dry-fit or cotton so that it won’t absorb much moisture. The ideal shirt to wear is a sports top as its material is built for heat and sweating.
On the other hand, a sweatshirt looks nice but may put you at a disadvantage if you play on outdoor fields in summertime. The heatstroke and heat exhaustion would immensely overheat your body.
Bottom (Lower Body Protection)
No matter what the season is or what field you play on, shorts are really a bad idea for paintball.
During the game, you might run through rough obstacles, like a brush. Wearing shorts would make your legs prone to scratches, insect bites, and tics.
Thus, long pants should be the best and only choice. Not only can a layer of clothing protect you from pain but also from the burning sun.
Our recommendations are lightweight cargo pants, jogging pants, and track pants. You’d better choose the loose size; therefore, they won’t stick to your legs when they sweat.
Some paintball companies don’t provide customers with knee pads, so you can bring your own if you want further protection.
Footwear
Many are mistaken about the kind of shoes they should wear to paintball. Your feet aren’t usually the target doesn’t mean that you can put on whatever type of shoes.
Of course, sandals are absolutely a ‘no-no,’ even hiking sandals. Most game fields do not allow you to run all day with this open-toe footgear.
Simple shoes for outdoor activities, such as tennis shoes and sneakers, are fine. However, it’s better to wear ankle-high shoes or hiking boots on uneven surfaces for additional ankle support.
Plus, ankle injuries are easy to occur in rugged conditions. If you don’t want pain for the next several days, you’d better protect your foot well.
We don’t recommend thick boots, though. It’ll be best to stick to lightweight boots and wear thin, moisture-wicking socks.
Gloves
Your hands are quite sensitive areas since they’re constantly exposed. That’s the reason you should wear gloves to cover your hands. Typically, players choose fingerless gloves for paintball. Unlike winter gloves, you can still touch and squeeze the gun’s trigger.
What Essential Clothing Tips To Keep In Mind?
Weather-Reliant clothing
The most important thing to bear in mind is that the weather also has a say in what to wear to paintball. Thus, you need to watch out for the weather before taking part in a game.
Wearing thick garments may reduce the shot impact, but it’ll be a wearing game in the scorching summer. As well, thin layers of clothing can’t help you withstand the chilly weather in the winter.
So we suggest wearing two layers of light, loose-fitted clothing for easy strip-away in hot weather. Meanwhile, gloves, a thick pair of socks, a sweatshirt, and a beanie are essentials if it’s freezing outside.
Old Clothing
Since you will kneel, crawl, and dive around to hide and attack, wearing old clothes is highly recommended. You can focus on your game without caring about torn shirts or dirty pants.
Plus, although paintballs contain water-soluble colored dye compounds, there are still some cheap brands offering low-quality paintballs. For this reason, it’s a smart idea to take advantage of your old clothes.
Dark Colors
Light-colored clothing acquires more stains than dark garments, especially when you play in a woodsball or muddy environment. Plus, too bright shirts may help your opponents easily identify your position and make a shot.
So the ideal choice is to wear dark-colored clothing or camouflage so that you can lower your risk of getting your rivals’ attention.
Wrapping-Up
Knowing should to wear to paintball is one of the keys to staying at peak performance. Not only would the wrong outfit limit your movement but also put you at risk of injuries or shots.
More importantly, you always have to keep safety in mind before and during the game. Protective clothing should be the top priority when it comes to paintball ‘fashion’. Dressing for protection is dressing for fun!