Nowadays we are dealing with a big problem, we can't face without looking for a solution. Climate change is one of the main subjects of the last decade. With climate change you immediately talk about temperature change as well. Some parts of the world are dealing with colder winter, rainy autumns or more heat stress in mid summer. This is a complex problem with not an easy and single solution, but can we as textile designers help a little. Can textile help to cool down or heat up a room. What kind of material has the property to help with temperature changes? That is what the CLIMADE project is about.
Thermochromic inks are special pigments you can mix with a binder that loses colour when a certain temperature is reached.
Thermochromic inks SFXC 31°C reacting on heating with copper wire
7 mins in the Sense lab wearing white
7 mins in the Sense lab wearing red
7 mins in the Sense lab wearing black
Doing colour research in The Sense Lab in Munich. The sense lab in Munich is a laboratory where you can control te temperature in a room. We wanted to research if wearing different colours would affect the body heat. We took photos with a Thermochromic camera.
Does colours has an impact on the temperature around you?
You can see temperature change with Thermochromic ink!!
Testing Thermochromic inks 15 °C and 28 °C on cotton fabric
By placing a curtain in front of a window you will see the temperature change in a room and can react on that. You will also realize sooner if the heating is still on or you left a window open. It is a tool to visualize what is happening in the space around you. Imagine this curtain in a baby room or in an home nursing to help the parents or caretakers if the person can not react to temperature changing by themselves. Or in an office where people are sitting behind their desk all day and not paying attention to the surroundings.
The yellow shapes will disappear if the temperature reaches 28 °C. The pink shapes will fade away when the temperature reaches 15 °C. The blue colour is a normal pigment, because it is good to have a stable colour in the pattern to really see a lot of difference. So when the room is below 15 °C you see the whole pattern and when you only see the blue colour the temperature is around 28 °C.
The curtain with Thermochromic ink reacting on heat
The curtain with Thermochromic ink reacting on heat
Pattern made out thermochromic inks 15 °C reacting on the cold
