![]() ![]() Though the brand has another 600 fill power coat that I liked better, because it’s much thinner and weighs only 516 grams, I knew it wouldn’t be quite as warm, even though they have the same quality down. A thick, bulky jacket “will show you that they put more down in something,” says Deborah Beard, an associate professor of technical design at the Fashion Institute of Technology.įor example: My poofy new winter coat has a 600 down fill power rating and weighs 834 grams. If you can’t or don’t want to talk to anyone (or if the folks working the place don’t know the particulars of down), you can evaluate a coat by its poofiness. Email customer service, or if you live in an area with a decent store that carries winter coats, walk in and chat with the associates at the shop. The best thing to do in this situation is, quite simply, to ask. Not every retailer will tell you the down fill power of a coat even fewer will tell you the weight. ![]() Both of these being high is better for the warmth of the coat.”įind the Fill Power and Fill Weight for You ![]() “The higher the fill power, the better the insulation will be, but that is affected by how much of the down is in the product by weight. “The best way to use weight factor is in combination with the fill power because more down with a lesser fill power can be warmer than a higher fill power that has less down in the coat,” says Tanya Domina, a professor of fashion merchandising and design at Central Michigan University. This is why you can find super-slim down jackets with high fill power the jacket is made with very high quality down, but there’s not that much of it. A higher down weight (in other words, a heavier down coat) means there’s more down fill packed into a coat, which usually translates to a warmer product (see below). While fill power measures how much space the coat’s insulation takes up, fill weight measures-you guessed it-how much it weighs. Unfortunately, you can’t rely solely on fill power to determine how warm a coat will be. “So the reason that down is a really efficient insulator, and something that especially really like to use is because it is able to trap a lot of warmth, at a very low weight.”įor a very warm coat, you want high-quality down that can hold all that body heat, making use of the natural furnace of the body to keep it comfortable. Trapped air is what keeps you warm with any material, even wool or knits, says Laura Akita, the category manager at The North Face. “So the higher the fill power, the more of that lofty feather is there and the less of the quill is in there.” Fill power typically ranges from about 450 to 900 (see below), though that high range is expensive and usually isn’t necessary for most people (unless you’re climbing Mount Everest). Inside a coat, “it’s the loft in the feathers that traps dead airspace, and dead airspace is really what results in warmth,” says Corey Simpson, the communications manager at outerwear brand Patagonia. The more space the down takes up, the higher quality it is. You’ll know whether a coat has more fluffy down instead of poky feathers by looking at what’s known as “fill power.” Scientifically speaking, fill power is measured by how much space in a cylinder an ounce of down takes up after it has been compressed. ![]()
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