White is faster

The claim - every bunch has one. Usually at the café, usually holding a flat white, usually looking at someone's new bike: "White's faster, mate."

Nobody knows where it came from. Nobody has ever asked for the data. So, being a workshop run by engineers, we went looking.

Fair warning: this one is mostly for fun. Some of what follows is real physics, and some of it is a stretch. We'll tell you which is which, because that's how we work at the bench too.

Exhibit A: white runs cooler (true)

Put a black jersey and a white one in the sun and the black one cooks. In an informal test by Velo, the black jersey's surface peaked around 63°C while the white one topped out near 47°C.

Bottles told the same story: white kept the drink cooler for longer.

Heat costs watts. On a 30-something January ride out to Akuna Bay, anything that keeps your core temperature down keeps power in your legs. Point to white.

The fine print. Visma–Lease a Bike tested their black Tour kit on sweating mannequins and concluded fabric matters far more than colour. And a study of Bedouin robes found black ran hotter on the outside, yet the air underneath matched white. So white helps. A well-made jersey helps more.

Exhibit B: white paint is heavier (the plot twist)

Here's where the theory hits a pothole. To cover carbon properly, white needs more pigment and more coats than dark colours.

When frame maker Open launched a white version of its frame in 2013, it came in about 100 grams heavier than the black. Same frame. The black was mostly a tinted clear coat of roughly 30 grams. It's also why some brands now sell near-paintless frames: Orbea's raw finish saves 80–100 grams.

A hundred grams is a gel and a half. Not much, but you'll be carrying it up every metre of Bobbin Head. Point to black.

Exhibit C: aero, visibility and a certain jersey

Aero. The air doesn't care what colour you are. Drag comes from shape, position and fit. A white skinsuit and a black one cut through the wind identically. No points awarded.

Being seen. White is genuinely easier to spot than grey or black at night, according to research from QUT's Joanne Wood. But in daylight fluoro beats white, and at night reflective beats everything. A flashing rear light beats the lot. Half a point to white, and a strong nudge to charge your tail light.

The jersey. At the Tour de France, white is the jersey of the best young rider. Movistar even dropped its white kit so it wouldn't be confused with it. White is, quite literally, the colour of the fastest young rider in the world's biggest race. Correlation or causation? We'll leave that with you.

Vibes. A clean white bike looks fast leaning against the café window. That isn't science. But you've seen how the bunch reacts to it.

Exhibit D: head to toe, myth by myth

Myth 1: a white helmet keeps your head cool. Busted, mostly. In Velo's backyard test, the black helmet's shell hit about 80°C, hot enough to set an egg white. The white shell sat near 49°C. Then they checked inside. By the end, the black helmet's interior was about 44°C. The white one's? Also about 44°C.

Foam insulates; that's its whole job. An older test by Terry Morse found that once air flows over the lid, colour barely matters, and the black one even shed heat slightly better. Verdict: a white helmet keeps the outside of your helmet cool. Your head was never consulted.

Myth 2: white socks are faster. Busted, with a twist. For decades riders could choose from white socks or white socks, so every great ride in history was done in white socks. That's correlation, not aerodynamics.

The twist is safety. Drivers recognise a cyclist by the up-and-down motion of the lower legs. In a daylight open-road study, a fluoro jersey barely beat a black one, but fluoro on the legs was spotted about 3.3 times further away. Your ankles are doing more for your safety than your jersey is. Bright socks help; fluoro helps more.

On length, the Velominati say within 2 cm of the narrowest point of your shin. We don't make the rules. We just enforce them at the café.

Myth 3: white shoes are faster. Confirmed, emotionally. Black was once the only acceptable shoe; now almost the whole pro peloton wears white. There's a fair heat argument: plenty of riders report cooler feet in white on hot days, and the physics agrees.

But the real reason pros look so crisp is that someone else cleans their shoes after every stage. You don't have a soigneur. You have an old toothbrush and good intentions. Verdict: white shoes are faster for exactly as long as they stay white. Roughly one wet lap of Narrabeen Lakes.

Myth 4: so… white bibs too? If you panicked, we get it - 100%. The "law" is Velominati Rule #14: shorts should be black. Rule #15 even insists on black shorts with a leader's jersey. Written as a joke, enforced like scripture.

Then came 2026. Netcompany-Ineos rolled out white shorts (technically "very light grey"), and the internet called them a monstrosity. By July, Lidl-Trek riders were racing white bibs at a Tour where one stage was shortened as temperatures neared 40°C, and Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe flipped its kit upside down, turning its bibs white too. Remember Exhibit A: white sheds sun, so in a heatwave the rebels have physics on their side.

Black still has one undefeated argument, and it isn't style. Light lycra turns translucent when wet, which may be why the team quietly switched back to black for the soggy spring races. A white bib in the rain is a confession.

As for the nude and sand-toned bibs now appearing at café stops: technically legal, but from 20 metres back in the bunch it looks like you forgot something important. Verdict: white bibs are cooler in summer, fine in the dry, and a hard no if the Saturday forecast says showers. Black bibs aren't a law. They're just the ones that never let you down.

The verdict

Is white faster?

Jersey: cooler, yes.

Frame: heavier.

Aero: no difference.

Helmet: cooler on the outside only.

Socks: not faster, but easier to spot.

Shoes: faster until the first puddle.

Bibs: cooler, until it rains.

Faster-looking: without question.

Call it a narrow win for white in a Sydney summer, mostly on style points.

The real marginal gains are less glamorous, and none of them care about colour. A chain that's clean and inside its wear limit. Tyres at the right pressure for your weight and your roads. A fit that lets you hold the position for four hours instead of forty minutes. A worn cable or a dry chain costs you more than any paint job ever will.

There is one honest case for white, though. It shows everything: every chainring tattoo, every grey smudge on the bar tape. Own a white bike and you'll keep it cleaner. And a clean drivetrain genuinely is faster.

So if your white bar tape has gone the colour of a café floor, bring it in. We'll take a look at the drivetrain while we're there. No judgement about the bar tape. Well, a little.