Building on OSHA’s View of Reflective Safety 

Recently, OSHA published an article called The Science Behind High-Visibility Protective Fabrics that raised some excellent points about why safety standards like ANSI 107 exist in the first place. Regulations like these aren’t simply bureaucratic red tape, they’re critical guidelines designed to keep workers visible, safe, and protected in high-risk environments. 

At Safe Reflections, we appreciated OSHA’s focus on the why behind these standards. But as a company specializing in advanced reflective safety technology, we think it’s worth adding even more practical detail.  

In this post, we’ll expand on what OSHA discussed, explore other global standards that share the same goals, and show how science, testing, and innovation come together to deliver reliable, high-performance high-visibility clothing solutions for real workers in real conditions. 

Global Reflective Safety Standards, Common Goals 

Safety doesn’t stop at one country’s border, and neither do the standards that govern high-visibility protective clothing. While OSHA highlighted ANSI/ISEA 107 — the U.S. benchmark for high-visibility safety apparel (HVSA) — there are other critical standards worldwide. Each has its own requirements, but they share a common goal: protecting people by making them visible in hazardous conditions. 

Here are just a few: 

• ANSI/ISEA 107 (US): Defines design, performance, and testing requirements for high-visibility apparel, including brightness levels, colorfastness, and retroreflectivity.
• ISO 20471 (International): The global standard for high-visibility clothing. Very similar to ANSI 107 but with minor differences in garment classification and design.
• EN 471 (Europe, legacy standard): Replaced by ISO 20471 but still seen in older specifications. Focused on the same key factors: visibility, durability, and performance under real conditions.
• CSA-Z96 (Canada): Specifies requirements for high-visibility safety apparel suited to Canadian work environments, with classes and design features similar to ANSI but tailored to local needs.
• NFPA 2112 and NFPA 1971: Flame-resistant garment standards that ensure FR clothing meets stringent safety and performance criteria while maintaining visibility requirements.
• Chemical Safety Standards: Certifications such as Oeko-Tex and Bluesign ensure that reflective materials used in textiles adhere to the most stringent of the various world legislations on hazardous chemicals.

At Safe Reflections, we design products to help garment manufacturers meet or exceed these diverse standards. Whether it’s ANSI, ISO, or national transport guidelines, we recognize these different standards all share common goals: protecting workers using reflective safety materials that provide improved visibility, durability, and consistent performance in the environments where safety matters most. 

Why Testing and Innovation Matter in High-Visibility Gear 

Of course, meeting these standards isn’t automatic. It requires rigorous testing, continuous innovation, and an unwavering commitment to quality. This is where Safe Reflections invests heavily—because real safety depends on more than just a certification stamp. 

SRI Labs is our in-house center for reflective technology research and testing. Here, we get into the weeds of protocols that ensure our products don’t just meet requirements, they perform reliably in the real world. We invest in specialized equipment, including Xenon light chambers, wash durability testers, and calibrated reflectivity measurement systems to validate performance to ANSI, ISO, and other global standards. 

Key testing elements include: 

• Wash Durability: It’s one thing to make reflective safety trim and clothing that are reflective on day one. The challenge is surviving repeated washes while maintaining brightness and color within the required “color space.” While some standards might require maintaining performance after just 5 washes, we test for 50, 75, or even 100+ washes to ensure durability over the garment’s life. 

• Industrial Wash (IW) and Home Wash (HW): Different laundering conditions can affect performance. We do both types of durability testing, ensuring our reflective trims and transfers perform across environments, wash after wash.

• Initial Reflectivity: This measures how well the material reflects light when brand new. If a product starts out barely meeting requirements, it’s likely to fail quickly in use. 

• Industry standards: Often require an initial retroreflective brightness of at least 330 cd/lux-m2 and mandate retention of 100 cd/lux-m2 even after multiple washes to ensure safety over time.

• Colorfastness: Exposure to sun (simulated with Xenon light testing) can fade fluorescent colors. Maintaining brightness despite UV exposure is essential.

• Flame Resistance (FR): Many industries require FR-rated garments. Integrating retro-reflectivity and fluorescence without compromising FR performance is a complex design challenge. 

• Retroreflective Technology Types: Glass bead-based materials and micro prismatic films each offer unique advantages in reflectivity, flexibility, and durability. Our product development balances these factors to deliver reliable performance for specific use cases. 

Our reflective trims, including our signature AIREX® segmented trims and custom trim solutions, are engineered with these testing regimes in mind. They’re not just designed to pass standards, but exceed them, ensuring dependable safety performance for reflective workwear worn by workers who need it most. 

Buyer Beware: Not All Visibility Gear Is Created Equal 

One critical point OSHA made is that high-visibility safety gear isn’t as simple as dyeing a cotton T-shirt yellow. But even with these standards in place, the market is flooded with low-quality products that claim to meet requirements but fail spectacularly under real testing. 

A recent ISEA study tested “certified” high-visibility safety garments sold online — including from major online marketplaces — and found that about one-third failed testing by a huge margin. These weren’t borderline failures, they missed reflectivity and fluorescence requirements by a gulf, potentially putting workers at serious risk. 

What’s more, ANSI/ISEA 107 itself defines specific Types and Classes of high-visibility garments tailored for different applications — Type O (Off-road), Type R (Roadway), and Type P (Public Safety), with Classes 1, 2, and 3 specifying minimum reflective widths and total coverage areas to ensure 360° visibility. 

This is why sourcing from reputable manufacturers matters. When lives are on the line, you can’t afford shortcuts. At Safe Reflections, our trims and transfers come with full testing documentation and certifications. Our customers know exactly what they’re getting, and they can trust it to perform reliably in the field. 

It’s not just about meeting the letter of the standard, but protecting people who depend on this gear to be seen and stay safe. 

Fluorescence, UV, and Real-World Reflective Visibility 

Another nuance OSHA highlighted, but that deserves even more attention, is the science of fluorescence. Unlike retro-reflectivity (which bounces light back to its source), fluorescence works by absorbing UV light and re-emitting it as visible light. This makes fluorescent materials highly visible in daylight, even when it’s cloudy. 

But here’s where it gets really interesting for worker safety: 

• UV light peaks in early morning and evening hours, exactly when many road workers and utility crews are on the job. That’s why fluorescent clothing is especially important for dawn and dusk visibility.

• MUTCD(Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices): Used widely in the U.S. to guide traffic safety planning. It explicitly emphasizes visibility requirements for workers and notes the critical role of fluorescent materials in work zones, particularly during dawn and dusk when UV levels peak, to account for these lighting conditions.

• Even vehicle headlights can contain some UV wavelengths, helping fluorescent materials “pop” at night in ways ordinary bright colors can’t. 
   

At SRI we design reflective trims, custom trims, segmented reflective AIREX trims, and reflective transfers to optimize both retro-reflectivity and fluorescence. That means they’re engineered to perform in varied real-world conditions: daylight, darkness, headlight illumination, and mixed lighting environments. 

We also pay close attention to placement and design considerations that enhance biomotion cues, making it easier for drivers and equipment operators to recognize the human form in low-light situations. 

Additionally, Safe Reflections supports customization for customers who want branded logos, special widths, color options, or application-specific designs — ensuring safety requirements are met without sacrificing identity, comfort, or flexibility. 

This approach ensures maximum visibility for workers when and where it matters most. 

Conclusion: Be an Educated Buyer 

At the end of the day, it’s critical to be an educated buyer when it comes to high-visibility clothing and safety gear. Understanding what standards like ANSI/ISEA 107 and ISO 20471 are really trying to achieve, and how quality manufacturers back those standards with rigorous testing, can be the difference between premium safety gear that saves lives and phony gear that creates dangerous false confidence. 

At Safe Reflections, we’ve spent decades developing advanced reflective solutions that deliver proven performance in the toughest conditions. Our range of segmented trims and regular trims, FR-compatible solutions, and custom-engineered transfers are designed and tested to meet not only the regulatory requirements, but more importantly, highly demanding real-world needs. 

If you’d like to learn more about our approach, our testing protocols, or how our reflective technologies can help keep your workforce safer and more visible, talk to our team today. We’re here to partner with you in building safer solutions, one reflective innovation at a time.