• The EN ISO 20471 standard specifies the letter X: 3 classes for the garment

    The standard defines 3 colours: yellow, orange and red. The characteristics of protective clothing with high visibility are stated in the EN 20471:2013 standard.

    Class 3 Class 2 Class 1
    Basic material (fluorescent) 0.80m² 0.50m² 0.14m²
    Retro-reflective material 0.20m² 0.13m² 0.10m²
    Material with combined characteristics 0.20m²

    The basic material must wrap the body and has a minimum width of 50 mm over the full length.

    Sioen was the first to put a high visibility firefighter jacket on the market. Today, we still manage to make the positioning of the striping even more effective. Our Siotec department has already created and certified hundreds of different models.

Fluorescent vs retro-reflective

The fluorescent materials can be yellow, reddish-orange or red. It depends on the environment because you want to create a large contrast. They react with the UV of light and guarantee better visibility during the day. They don’t improve visibility at night.

The retro-reflective striping sends the light back to its source. They only improve the visibility of firemen at night by reflecting the lights of cars or other vehicles.

Type of retro-reflective stripings

There are 2 technologies for the retro-reflective stripings :

  1. The glass beads technology

  2. The micro-prism technology