The 6 Best Sun Protection Shirts for Women

Best Overall Hooded Sun Shirt for Women

Mountain Hardwear Crater Lake Long Sleeve Hoody - Women's

Sun Protection Level: UPF 50+ | Coverage: Long sleeve, hood, thumbholes

During testing, we fell in love with this superbly comfortable offering from Mountain Hardwear. The Crater Lake Hoody has practically everything you could ask for in a sun shirt. Features include 50+ UPF fabric, a lightweight hood that fits under a helmet, and thumbholes that work even for longer-armed folks. Made of a soft, silky polyester and elastane blend, the Crater Lake Hoody is ridiculously stretchy and insanely comfortable, earning top marks in our comfort and fit tests. It's thin enough that it's both absurdly lightweight and shockingly breathable without being see-through. Our lead tester mentioned, “It's one of the few options I happily wore under the blazing sun without rolling up my sleeves — and that's saying something.” We also love the zippered hip pocket and the option to cinch the bottom closed, which comes in handy for inverted activities like yoga and climbing.

We found the Crater Lake Hoody runs a little big. Our main tester is 5'4" and 125 pounds and rocked the small with ample room to spare — even considering her self-described “ape arms.” While we love the super stretchy design, it also means the hip pocket isn't great for stashing heavier items, like a cell phone. The material is pretty thin, and you can see bra lines right through it. Shortcomings aside, we love the Crater Lake Hoody, and it quickly became one of our go-to layers for everything from yoga to biking to gardening.

Read more: Mountain Hardwear Crater Lake Hoody review

Best Overall Button-up Sun Shirt for Women

REI Co-op Sahara Long-Sleeve - Women's

Sun Protection Level: UPF 50 | Coverage: Long sleeve, collar, scooped cuffs

In our tests, the REI Sahara proved to be astoundingly well-rounded for a button-up sun shirt. It's stylish, comfortable, and quite breathable. It features pockets large enough to hold a smaller iPhone and sleeves cut with a scoop to cover the backs of the hands. The stretchy underarm panels provide ventilation and comfort while preventing underarm rub during paddle sports. In our versatility tests, it took the lead over the Outdoor Research Echo Hoodie, earning the top spot. “I love that it's versatile enough to handle a full day on the trail, and then head straight to a dinner date with girlfriends,” our tester remarked.

One consideration is that the sleeve tabs are a bit too high to be overly functional. Still, this didn't bother us that much once we realized the sleeves stayed rolled quite well without using the sleeve tabs. Our only other gripe is how easily this shirt wrinkles after being crammed in a suitcase while traveling. Nevertheless, we like this option and think it's more versatile than any other button-up sun shirt we tested. The Sahara Long-Sleeve is a great option for outdoor activities and can also double as a work shirt for Mondays at the office. If you want a looser, more flowy button-up that you can stylishly layer over another shirt, the Columbia Silver Ridge Utility is another great option we tested.

Read more: REI Co-op Sahara Long-Sleeve review

Best Value for a Hooded Sun Shirt

REI Co-op Sahara Shade Hoodie - Women's

Sun Protection Level: UPF 50+ | Coverage: Long sleeve, hood, thumbholes

If you're searching for a relaxed UPF layer that won't break the bank, the REI Co-op Sahara Shade Hoodie is an excellent option. This buttery soft shirt is designed to be worn slightly baggy, which is both comfortable and allows cooling air to flow across your skin. Its high-cut sides and intentionally loose design help to fan air as you move, keeping you cooler than most tops. With wide cuffs and flat seams, these thumbholes are enjoyable to wear even while paddling. Like the NRS Silkweight Hoodie, it's one of the few models we tested with a drawstring to keep the hood up on windy days.

One potential drawback with the Sahara Shade Hoodie is the baggy fit. If you want a tighter fit you can size down, but the thick fabric might leave you wishing you hadn't. If the loose fit isn't for you, the Patagonia Capilene Cool Daily Hoody is a similarly-priced option with a slimmer fit and more breathable fabric — though it lacks thumbholes. The breathability of the Sahara Shade Hoodie is tied to its ability to move while you're wearing it, as the fabric is thicker than most options we tested. Also, it does not have pockets, which may not be a dealbreaker for you, especially at this very reasonable price. The affordable Columbia PFG Tidal Hoodie is another good option for about the same price.

Read more: REI Co-op Sahara Shade Hoodie review

Best Value on a Tight Budget

Baleaf UPF 50 Crew - Women's

Sun Protection Level: UPF 50+ | Coverage: Long sleeve, crew neck

Our testing showed the Baleaf UPF 50 Crew is a simple sun shirt that works as advertised and doesn't break the bank. It's an athletic cut shirt made of a silky smooth fabric that's comfortable to wear and fits easily — though many others, like the Crater Lake Hoody, performed better in our comfort and fit tests. The crew-cut neck provides great coverage without being so tight it chokes you. This shirt is available in a wide variety of bright colors, and, for its price, you could pick up three or four of them for the cost of some of the other sun shirts we tested.

The Baleaf UPF 50 Crew runs a bit small, particularly in the sleeve length. Therefore, we suggest sizing up if you're typically between sizes or prefer a looser fit. If you want maximum coverage, you might also like the Baleaf Hoodie with Face Cover we tested. It's less breathable but has a built-in gaiter to protect your mouth and nose. Or, you could consider the Jessie Kidden Safari Shirt, a lightweight button-up that can be layered over other clothing for a more polished look at an affordable price. The Baleaf is a great option for everyday casual wear, but it's not quite breathable enough for running in the heat. You'll also quickly discover this shirt easily holds onto body odors. While it isn't the most “bombproof” shirt we tested, it's an incredible value for everyday sun protection.

Read more: Baleaf UPF 50 Crew review

Best for High Output Activity

Outdoor Research Echo Hoodie - Women's

Sun Protection Level: UPF 15 | Coverage: Long sleeve, hood, thumbholes

The Outdoor Research Echo Hoodie includes some unique features making it an excellent addition for any activewear junkie. First, this lightweight sun shirt has horizontally aligned thumbholes that are comfortable to wear, even when moving. Second, the top has a hole in its hood for your ponytail. “I know it might not sport the most stylish look, but it's undeniably functional,” our tester commented. Beyond these two unique features, this hoody is absurdly lightweight and impressively breathable — scoring just slightly better than the Crater Lake Hoody and the Columbia Silver Ridge Utility in our breathability testing. It is one of only a couple of shirts we tested that we could comfortably wear in the hot sun without pushing up the sleeves — precisely why it's great for days when you're pushing hard or in hotter climates.

For all the utilities it offers, the Echo Hoodie doesn't have everything. This sun shirt lacks pockets and has the lowest UPF rating of any model we tested. If your skin is really sensitive and you need all the protection you can get, the Mountain Hardwear Crater Lake is nearly as breathable and is made of fabric that blocks more than 98% of UV rays. With a 15 UPF rating, the Echo Hoodie still blocks around 93-94% of UV rays, though (as compared to 98% blockage from 50 UPF fabric). We love the breathability of the thin, quick-drying fabric, but it's not especially smooth, and we've had repeated issues with snagging in past iterations we tested. The more recent versions have proved less snaggable, but they're made of the same thin fabric, which isn't one we'd recommend wearing while trimming the rose bushes. Nevertheless, the supreme breathability is unbeatable, and we love that the Echo Hoodie comes in more colors now than ever before.

Read more: Outdoor Research Echo Hoodie review

Best Rash Guard

O'Neill Basic Skins L/S Crew - Women's

Sun Protection Level: UPF 50+ | Coverage: Long sleeve

If you're looking for sun protection for spending a whole day in the water, the O'Neill Basic Skins is the shirt for you. Our tests showed it's tight enough to stay put when you're swimming laps, surfing, kayaking, or jet skiing. The seams are sewn conveniently to ensure this top won't rub even during the most active adventures. And with a high UPF rating, like the Crater Lake Hoody and the NRS Silkweight Hoodie, you can be sure you won't burn! The material is thick enough to provide some protection against cold water without being too warm to wear in warmer climates.

As a skintight layer, the Basic Skins isn't the most versatile all-around sun shirt we tested. For most land-based activities, you'll find better options available, as our test showed the tight fit is less breathable and simply tends to pool sweat. So, if a versatile, looser-fitting sun shirt for on-water rather than in-water activities is what you're after, we think you'll like what the REI Sahara Shade Hoodie has to offer. Conversely, if you're in the market for a shirt you can rock all day in the water and look stylish without ever feeling uncomfortable, this incredible option is the one.

Read more: O'Neill Basic Skins L/S Crew review

Compare Products

Compare select up to 5 products to compare

	Score	Product	Price
	85	Mountain Hardwear Crater Lake Long Sleeve Hoody - Women's Best Overall Hooded Sun Shirt for Women	$72
	81	Outdoor Research Echo Hoodie - Women's Best for High Output Activity	$75
	74	REI Co-op Sahara Long-Sleeve - Women's Best Overall Button-up Sun Shirt for Women	$70
	73	Black Diamond Alpenglow Hoody - Women's	$95
	72	NRS Silkweight Hoodie - Women's	$75
	71	Columbia Silver Ridge Utility Long Sleeve - Women's	$60
	70	REI Co-op Sahara Shade Hoodie - Women's Best Value for a Hooded Sun Shirt	$50
	69	Patagonia Tropic Comfort Natural Hoody	$99
	68	Voormi River Run Hoodie - Women's	$139
	67	Patagonia Capilene Cool Daily Hoody - Women's	$65
	63	O'Neill Basic Skins L/S Crew - Women's Best Rash Guard	$36
	58	Columbia PFG Tidal Tee Hoodie - Women's	$40
	55	Jessie Kidden Safari Shirt - Women's	$37
	52	Baleaf UPF 50 Crew - Women's Best Value on a Tight Budget	$25
	51	Baleaf Hoodie with Face Cover - Women's	$32
	51	Roxy Whole Hearted Long-Sleeve	$40
	50	Carve Designs Cruz Rashguard	$60

How We Tested

The market for women's sun shirts continues to grow every year. We spend a significant amount of time researching the latest and most promising UV-blocking tops before purchasing them to wear and adventure in side by side through several months of testing and laundering. We wore our chosen shirts for casual, everyday activities like gardening, walking the dog, and grabbing coffee with a friend. We tested the limits of these shirts by wearing them on all kinds of adventures, including mountaintop snowshoe races, snorkeling at the equator, kayaking over a mile above sea level, and running trails through the desert. We sweated in them, crammed them in backpacks and suitcases, did yoga on the beach, and laundered them all repeatedly. Some of them we've been wearing regularly for years now, and some we love to sleep in. Along with sun protection, we assess factors like fit, comfort, and breathability. Whether you're seeking a button-up with a collar, a hoody with thumbholes, or a protective rashguard, we've tested and identified the ideal options to fill that hole in your wardrobe.

Our testing of women's sun shirts is divided across five rating metrics:

• Comfort and Fit tests (30% of overall score weight)

• Sun Protection tests (25% weight)

• Breathability tests (20% weight)

• Versatility tests (15% weight)

• Durability tests (10% weight)

For more info on our testing, see our full How We Test article.

Why Trust GearLab

For the last several years, Senior Review Editor Maggie Nichols has been leading the sun shirt charge, recruiting friends and family to help her test during all kinds of outdoor adventures. Maggie has been an outdoor junkie since the early '90s, spending every possible moment outside. While she started by chasing frogs and watching cicadas hatch, Maggie has worked in the outdoor industry for over 15 years, taking on everything from being a camp counselor in the Midwest to leading kayakers in the Caribbean and guiding backcountry trips across the US. She lives and works in some seriously high-UV environments, from the high deserts of northern Nevada to baking mountaintops in the Sierra Nevadas. With a family history of skin cancer, Maggie doesn't take chances when it comes to staying protected from the sun.

Analysis and Test Results

To find the best sun shirt for every application, our team of female testers wore these shirts extensively, assessing them across a wide range of climates and conditions. By weighting each of our testing metrics according to their relative importance to wearing a sun shirt, we arrived at an easily comparable master score from 1-100 for every model. In what follows, we dive into the details, breaking down which shirts stand out from the rest in their specifics.

What's the Best Value?

Only after scoring each shirt's performance do we consider their price. High-scoring garments with low prices are easy to recognize as high-value items. And in this widely variable realm of sun-protective garments, price and performance are clearly not correlated.

The Baleaf Crew is a high-value shirt. It's not quite as high-scoring but offers solid, basic protection at an unbeatable price point. The REI Sahara Shade Hoodie is another highly valuable option. It's soft and smooth, with great protective features and a generous fit through the torso, and costs a lot less than many others in our lineup. Even our favorite shirt of the bunch, the Mountain Hardwear Crater Lake Hoody, isn't the most expensive, despite beating all the competition for several years in a row now.

Comfort and Fit

We asked a variety of women with different shapes to test the comfort of each model. We assessed shape and fit and checked how well each one moves with the body, evaluating both fit and stretch. We judged the feel of the fabric and seams against the skin and considered available features that add to the wearer's experience.

The impressively soft and stretchy Crater Lake Hoody stands out for being exceptionally comfortable to wear no matter what shape you are or the activity you are getting after. It's silky smooth, with seams in all the right places, and provides an almost ridiculous amount of stretch, allowing it to stay comfortable all day long outside or in. The bottom can cinch shut if you need to flip upside down, and the sleeves are actually long enough (and elastic enough) for long-armed women to feel comfortable. It also features a buttery soft hood that protects without impeding vision or movement or feeling like it's smashing your ponytail. For straight-up comfort that you can paddle, hike, get groceries, and fall asleep in, the Crater Lake Hoody has been and remains our favorite for years.

We also like the soft and comfy OR Echo Hoodie. Though not nearly as stretchy as the Crater Lake Hoody, it still provides exceptional comfort for everyday wear or heading out for a run or a hike. The Echo Hoodie's thumbholes are unique in that they're horizontal rather than vertical, allowing them to be closer to the end of the sleeve, creating less pull when you're moving. The cut is also significantly more comfortable and less awkward when you need to push up your sleeves.

If you still have a favorite hoody living somewhere in your closet, you'll love the sweatshirt-like fit and comfort of the Black Diamond Alpenglow Hoody. With a wide hem, cuffs that hold it in place without being tight, and no seams in the armpits for comfort while moving, we confess we even enjoy sleeping in this cozy garment. The NRS Silkweight Hoodie is also superbly soft and has a pleasant, comfortable weight. With drawstrings on its hood, a relaxed fit, and seams removed from the armpits, we love lounging in this sun shirt. It does lose a few points here, though, as the sleeves aren't long enough to use the thumbholes comfortably and for a scratchy liner protecting the inside of the thumbholes.

The Columbia Silver Ridge Utility and REI Sahara Long Sleeve are our favorites among the collared options we tested. The Columbia Utility has soft, thin, flowy fabric that drapes pleasantly on bare skin or over another shirt. Drop hems add a touch of shape and class without constricting any part of your body. The fabric of the REI Sahara might seem a tad crinkly at first but feels almost cool against the skin, and the shoulders have an impressive amount of stretch to keep even our broad-shouldered testers mobile. If oversized t-shirts are one of your favorite fits, the Sahara Shade Hoodie will be right up your alley. It has an oversized, drapey fit made of smooth, silky fabric and long cuffs with thumbholes.

The Patagonia Tropic Comfort Natural Hoody is notable for its great comfort with its buttery soft fabric and long, slim fit. Its thumbholes are a touch small, though, and not all of our testers love the extra elastic loops that go over your index and middle fingers to hold the cuffs against the backs of your hands. The Patagonia Capilene Cool Daily Hoody is another pretty comfortable option due to its athletic cut and exceptionally smooth, soft fabric. It tends to run a bit snug, though, and shorter through the torso and sleeves than most others.

The O'Neill Basic Skins is our favorite rash guard if water sports and beaches are your jam. It's absurdly comfortable and easy to wear and stays put, whether you're floating alongside a sea turtle or paddling out into the surf on your board. It has flat seams and is meant to fit quite tightly — perhaps not the most fashionable, but this fit ensures you'll be comfortable moving through the water without flowing fabric to drag you down.

Sun Protection

There is a lot more that goes into sun protection than just the UPF rating, though that's the bare minimum requirement for consideration in our roundup. Not all hoods, collars, or long sleeves provide equal protection. And it's one thing to be covered while standing unmoving in your yard and a whole other beast to cover up while you bike to work, boulder up a sunny route, or push the kids on the swings. We put the sun protection, coverage, and our willingness to wear these shirts during any given activity to the test to see how they stack up.

When it comes to maximal coverage, the Baleaf Hoodie with Face Cover is the cream of the crop. You might look a little out-of-the-ordinary with the gaiter pulled up over your mouth and nose, but the UPF 50+ fabric covering so much of your torso, hands, and face provides an impressive level of protection.

The Mountain Hardwear Crater Lake Hoody offers top-notch protection. It has a hood that stays on decently even without ties, maintaining airflow while protecting your ears and neck. Its large thumbholes have plenty of fabric below them that fully covers your hands and even your knuckles from the sun.

The Crater Lake Hoody is a great option for dynamic movement, as its ability to stretch farther than you'd think possible makes it an excellent companion to stay covered no matter how you move. A drawstring around the bottom also lets you secure it in place during yoga in the park or a particularly tricky climb.

The OR Echo Hoodie offers some solid hand protection with unique, horizontally oriented thumbholes. The sleeves are long and stretchy to keep them from pulling on your hand webbing as you move, making it more likely you'll keep using the thumbholes even when it's hot.

The Echo hood features a ponytail hole, which doesn't earn any style points but massively improves your ability to keep that hood firmly protecting your neck and ears. While the UPF rating on this hoody is lower than most, it's still blocking over 93% of UV rays (just 5% less than the highest-UPF-rated shirts we tested), and its impressive suite of sun-protection features helps make up for it.

The hood on the REI Sahara Shade Hoodie has a cross-front top –- adding neck protection to its arsenal of already great sun-protection features -– and has a drawstring hidden inside for keeping your hood on no matter how windy it may get. It also has longer-than-average sleeves, making it easy and comfortable to use the thumb holes.

The NRS Silkweight Hoodie doesn't have that cross-front design but does have drawstrings that can be pulled very tight for windy paddling days and gusty ridgetops. Its thumbholes are well-placed, located to the side of the sleeve seam, and angled to match your hand's shape. The Sahara Long Sleeve may not have the protection of a hood and thumbholes, but its collar and scooped cuffs add protection, and drop hems in both the front and back help keep you covered as you bend.

If you appreciate extra hood security, the Voormi River Run and Patagonia Tropic Comfort Natural Hoody both have buttons for keeping your hood up when you need it most. The Tropic Comfort Hoody has a single button, while the Voormi has three buttons in a row for customized tightness. The Tropic Comfort takes secure coverage a step further, with small thumbholes and an elastic loop at the end of each cuff. By looping this band over your index and middle fingers, the cuff stays pulled down even while you move. The sleeves aren't as long as the knuckle-protecting Crater Lake Hoody and Echo Hoodie, but the extra loops help — even if the feeling of wearing them takes some getting used to.

Among rash guards, the Basic Skins provides excellent coverage by staying put while you swim and play in the waves. The Carve Designs Cruz Rashguard adds a little extra with its collar, half-zip fit, and extendable scrunching sides to find your perfect length. If fishing is more your gig, check out the Columbia PFG Tidal Tee. This button-down provides serious coverage in all the right ways, making it a perfect fishing companion. It features a large hood with a wide neck that keeps the neck protected from the sun without stopping the breeze off the water from cooling you down. The Tidal Tee also has the longest sleeves of any shirt we tested and easily covers the hands past the knuckles when using the thumbholes, even on our most ape-armed testers.

Breathability

Spending time in the sun while wearing a long-sleeved shirt isn't always the easiest feat. The breathability of your sun shirt goes a long way toward your ability to stand wearing it on hot, sunny days. To test breathability, we checked out the thickness and weight of fabrics, venting options, and drying speed and wore each shirt during high-output activities to see how they function when things get sweaty.

Again, the exceptionally thin, lightweight OR Echo Hoodie and Mountain Hardwear Crater Lake Hoody stand out in this category for being breathable. The Crater Lake is loose and flowy, in addition to being very thin. It also comes in mostly light colors, which helps it to reflect more sun than it absorbs. Though the Echo Hoodie is a bit tighter-fitting, it dries incredibly quickly, helping you to cool down faster through the cooling powers of evaporation. It is both thin and very lightweight and easily lets cool breezes cut right through to keep you moving in comfort.

The REI Sahara Long Sleeve is also quite breathable, with buttons that allow you to open up the collar as much as you need and wide, well-placed back vents that aid in letting off steam. If you've remembered to bring sunscreen for your forearms, tabs in the sleeves will hold them up above your elbows. The Columbia Silver Ridge Utility is another great breathable option. With quick-drying thin, light-colored fabric, a looser fit to facilitate airflow, and some large, strategically placed vents, this shirt is very wearable even on hot days. Both these shirts can easily have their sleeves comfortably rolled up (and sunscreen applied to your hands and forearms!) if you'd rather wear them that way.

The Jessie Kidden Safari Shirt is another thin, flowy, breathable button-up. Though it and the Columbia Silver Ridge Utility are both made from 100% polyester, the Jessie Kidden isn't quite as breathable, with a slightly more closed-knit texture. It's still well above average, though, and with a loose fit that maintains airflow and a massive vent across the back.

Interestingly, the Sahara Shade Hoodie is made of thicker fabric than most others we tested, yet it is surprisingly breathable because of the loose, flowy fit, designed to catch even the slightest breeze. It has a long drop hem on the front and back, with high-cut sides that leave plenty of space for air to pass through without exposing you to the blazing sun. Wearing this shirt in your normal size may produce a tunic-like fit — plenty baggy enough that gentle winds or even just the buffeting air caused by walking around manage to find its way inside for ventilation.

The Black Diamond Alpenglow Hoody has higher cuffs and a shorter hem than most other tops we tested, but it still has a breathable fabric that keeps air moving through fairly effectively. The Tropic Comfort Natural Hoody takes a different approach, leaving more space around your torso, with longer drop hems in the front and back and shorter sides to allow air to move inside the shirt. The Capilene Cool Daily Hoody is thin, lightweight, and reasonably breathable but also has a more snug fit that doesn't allow for as much airflow inside the shirt.

Versatility

Versatility encompasses many things, including the activities you can functionally accomplish in each top and their relative style. Style is, of course, very subjective. And clearly, the biggest reason to wear a sun shirt has little to do with looks. However, we think it's a bonus if a shirt can be both useful and make you look like a million bucks. We carefully considered each subject's overall shape and versatility and what colors and patterns it's available in. And, of course, our barrage of testers gave their input as to how much they liked or disliked every shirt during various activities and in diverse social settings.

A clear winner in this metric is the REI Sahara Long Sleeve. As a button-up, collared shirt, it fits better in more environments, settings, and activities. It's as easily worn on the trail or the water as it is in the office or a cafe. It's a fairly flattering shirt across many body types and comes in colors we think are flattering without being too in-your-face. Even testers who normally aren't fans of collared shirts appreciated the style of the Sahara shirt and the ability to wear it in multiple settings all within the same day, eliminating the need to keep a spare shirt in your car to change into between hiking and meeting the gals for a cocktail.

The Mountain Hardwear Crater Lake scored above average in this metric. Its aesthetic is solidly sporty-chic, and it's functionally versatile across many activities. We loved wearing this top for everything from trail runs to paddling sessions to mornings at the farmer's market.

Though a solidly athletic-looking shirt, the Echo Hoodie scores high marks for versatility across the sheer number of activities, environments, and temperatures in which we're happy to wear it. The Capilene Cool Daily Hoody is also impressively versatile. Not only do we love wearing it for a wide range of activities, but we also find its lack of thumbholes, pockets, drawstrings, and other “techy” add-ons to be much more aesthetically pleasing. It comes in slightly muted colors that our testers think are cute and hide dirt and sweat pretty well. The Baleaf Crew is a fairly versatile option. It lacks just about any athletic-specific features, has raglan sleeves, and comes in a wide variety of colors that offer something for just about everyone.

Two more athletic-looking garments, the Black Diamond Alpenglow and NRS Silkweight Hoodie, earn above-average scores for versatility because they feel like an old familiar sweatshirt (except lightweight and breathable) in all the right ways. We confess we happily slept in both of these tops after wearing them all day. The Columbia Silver Ridge Utility is another reasonably versatile collared shirt appropriate in many settings — active or casual. However, as it tends to run a bit large and be much flowier, we think it's slightly less universally flattering across a majority of body types. It comes in a number of different colors, so finding the right shade for your personality is that much easier.

Durability

We beat these shirts up during our testing to see if they could take it. From scrambling up rocks and scraping through twisted bushes to hauling landscaping bricks and washing them near-daily, we went beyond their “normal” scope of use. We also combed the internet to learn what failed for other people to see if it failed for us, too.

Both the Sahara Long Sleeve and the Silver Ridge Utility are constructed of sturdy material that withstood a lot of abuse from our testers. The Silver Ridge Utility is even sewn with ripstop nylon to help put your mind at ease. Both of these shirts are well-made with reinforced seams and thoughtful features to help them last the years. They showed nearly no wear, stains, or snags throughout our intensive testing process.

Made of a sturdy wool blend material, the Voormi River Run Hoodie is one of the more durable models we tested. Even just wearing it feels solid and reliable. We tested it on some really scrappy trail runs through questionably maintained trails in the Wasatch Mountains and never found any snags despite scrambling through some serious undergrowth.

The O'Neill Basic Skins rash guard performed very well against the odds. Though it's not made for pressing through dense undergrowth, we found it excellent for water activities. Rubbing against sand, sliding along the edge of a life jacket for hours of paddling, and repeated saltwater adventures all left no marks on this impressive shirt. The NRS Silkweight Hoodie also has flat seams perfectly placed for paddling and is similarly built to last (without being so tight). Behind its thumbholes, it also has a durable material to stop them from ripping or fraying. While this scratchy layer isn't particularly comfortable to wear, it effectively makes the thumbholes more durable.

The Patagonia Capilene Cool Daily Hoody, Tropic Comfort Natural Hoody, and the REI Sahara Shade Hoodie are soft and smooth, with mostly flat-sewn seams (except for the sides). All three tops proved to be relatively durable during our testing.

Both the BD Alpenglow and OR Echo Hoodie seem fairly durable, with visually similar textures of fabric and flat-sewn seams. While the Alpenglow Hoody and two older versions of the Echo Hoodie picked up a couple of tiny snags during our testing, the Echo, at least, seems to have improved more recently. Our main tester took a nasty fall on broken asphalt during a run while wearing the Echo and utilizing its thumbholes. While her palms were much worse for the wear, with several deep cuts and a significant chunk of missing skin, the cuff of the Echo had just a single minor rip. In the months since that accident, despite continued and repeated wears and washes, those small tears have failed to grow any larger.

The Carve Designs Cruz Rashguard feels solid enough at first but ripped the first time we tried to undo the side ties to make the torso longer. The seam holding the two sides of the ties split right down the middle. The shirt is still wearable with minor holes, but we're rather disappointed at how quickly it came apart with just regular use. We also found that the side ties tend to get caught in the tops of pants and swimsuit bottoms.

Several of the shirts we tested come with a claim of odor treatment by either blocking the odor itself or blocking bacterial growth that leads to odor. We tested every claim by going for a 6+ mile run in the midday sun and heat, then leaving the shirt in a pile on the bathroom floor to smell the next morning. Only the Alpenglow Hoody and Tropic Comfort Natural Hoody seemed to have any noticeable resistance to odor. We're unsure if this effect will be able to last through years of laundering, but we appreciate it while it's working.

How To Choose a Sun Shirt

If you spend time recreating or working in the sun, a sun shirt can be really helpful to protect your skin from the sun's powerful rays. Here are some factors to consider before making your purchase.

What Activities Do You Do?

When and where you plan to wear your sun shirt will have a bearing over which one you choose. Most of the shirts in our test are fairly quick drying, but folks participating in water sports will definitely want a top that dries out quickly. If you're swimming, you may want a body-hugging rash guard, while folks who are hiking or doing yard work will probably want a looser-fitting shirt with more breathability.

What's UPF?

UPF is the rating given to clothing that protects your skin from the sun, similar to the SPF rating in sunscreen. UPF clothing protects from UVA and UVB rays. The average t-shirt usually has a rating around 5 UPF, but dedicated sun protection shirts range from 25-50+ UPF. An easy way to understand UPF rating is to convert it to a fraction. A UPF of 25 is letting 1/25th (roughly 4%) of the sun's UV rays through the material, and a UPF of 50 is letting 1/50th (roughly 2%) of the UV rays through. So a UPF of 50 is blocking 98% of the sun's UV rays from reaching your skin.

Features

Sun shirts can have a variety of features. Some are button ups with collars, which can transition from the trail to the office, while others have hoods and thumb loops to help cover you as much as possible. Those doing paddle sports will want to ensure that the underarm seams won't be bothersome or cause chafing while performing paddle strokes. It's also good to consider the color of your shirt. Light colors will reflect the sun, keeping you cooler, while the dark colors will absorb heat and make you warmer.

Conclusion

There's a lot to look for in finding the right sun shirt for your preferred activities and lifestyle. While we can't read your mind, we hope our intense, comparative testing process helps you identify the sun shirt that can (quite literally) help save your skin.

Looking for more ways to protect yourself? Staying safe from the sun is no easy feat. We've collected and tested a wide array of sun protection gear to help you get out there without suffering UV damage. From top-ranked sun hats to sunglasses for different sport disciplines, we want to help you keep your skin safe. We've also tested an array of sun shirts for men.