Every site has one. A hi-vis vest that started life bright enough to be spotted from a moving digger, now the colour of weak custard with tape peeling off the shoulder. It still gets handed out every morning, because nobody wants to be the one who says it looks rough. A faded vest still looks like a safety garment. It just doesn't work like one.
There is no date stamp that tells you when to bin it. So here is what actually decides the answer.
There is no expiry date in the standard
EN ISO 20471:2013+A1:2016, the current high visibility standard, sets no shelf life and no maximum service period. You won't find a replace-by date on the label. What the standard does instead is define performance. The fluorescent background has to hold its colour, and the retroreflective tape has to keep throwing light back, across a tested number of wash cycles. Once a garment stops hitting those numbers it is no longer compliant, whatever the label says.
That puts the duty back on you. The Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992 require hi-vis clothing to be kept clean and in good working order, checked before it is issued, and replaced when it stops doing the job. The HSE guidance is blunter still, the darker the worksite, the more visibility you need. Condition, not age.
Read the label before you argue about the vest
The pictogram on the inside label carries more information than most people read off it.
The number next to the pictogram is the class. Class 1 needs at least 0.14 m² of fluorescent material and 0.10 m² of retroreflective material. Class 2 is 0.50 m² and 0.13 m². Class 3 is 0.80 m² and 0.20 m², and has to cover the torso plus either the arms or the legs.
Alongside that you should see the standard number and CE or UKCA marking. Then the bit that matters for replacement planning, the maximum number of wash cycles the garment is certified for. Both the colour and the tape are tested to that figure, and the tape still has to deliver a coefficient of retroreflection of at least 330 cd/(lx·m²) after those washes.
If no wash cycle figure is printed, the material was only tested to five cleaning cycles. Five. That garment has no business going through a site laundry twice a week for a year.
One detail for buyers. Reflective bands narrower than 50mm are treated as decorative and excluded from the class calculation entirely. A cheap vest with skinny piping can look busy and still scrape into Class 1 on the tape that counts.
The five minute inspection
You don't need a lab. You need a new garment from the same range, daylight, and a bench.
Hold the old garment next to a new one in daylight or under decent white light. Fluorescent yellow fading towards cream, or orange going dull salmon, means the colour has gone past its tested life. Shoulders and upper back take the most sun, so start there.
Then run your hands along the tape. Look for cracking, lifting edges, delamination, or stitching that has pulled away. Tape that has gone silver and matt rather than bright has lost its micro-prismatic structure. Any tape lifting at a corner will spread.
Check for contamination that won't come out. Cement dust ground into the fabric, bitumen, oil, paint over the fluorescent panels or the bands. If it won't wash out, that area no longer counts towards the class.
Fit and integrity matter too. Torn panels, broken zips, missing press studs and cut-down sleeves all change how much of the garment is visible. A dark-room check with a torch at eye level is quick and revealing, the tape should throw light straight back at you from every band, evenly. Branding counts as well. Embroidery or print over reflective tape, or a large logo eating into the fluorescent area, cuts performance just as surely as wear.
Wash it properly or lose the tape
Most hi-vis failures we see are laundering failures, not wear. Wash at 40°C or lower on a normal cycle, skip fabric conditioner, skip bleach, and don't iron the tape. Heat crushes the structure that makes tape reflective, and nothing brings it back. Wash hi-vis separately from workwear caked in bitumen.
Industrial laundries are the other culprit. High temperature tunnel washing is brutal on retroreflective tape and fluorescent dye. If your garments go through a commercial laundry, expect a shorter replacement cycle, and measure it against the wash cycle number on the label.
Keep a tally. Issue date and wash count written on the neck label in permanent marker costs nothing and settles most arguments.
Combining garments, and the class you can actually claim
Two certified garments worn together can reach a higher class than either on its own, but only where the combination itself is certified. A Class 2 vest over Class 1 trousers is not automatically a Class 3 system. If you are relying on the combined visible area, ask for the combination certification and keep it on file.
The usual example: our Bideford Leo EcoViz Poly/Cotton Cargo Trouser is a Class 1 garment with quadruple stitched Retromax+ tape, priced at £37.35. Worn with a Class 2 vest or jacket, the set can meet a higher class, provided the paperwork says so.
For highway work, Chapter 8 of the Traffic Signs Manual expects Class 2 as a minimum, and Class 3 on motorways and high speed dual carriageways. Track work generally calls for orange to RIS-3279-TOM. Those are the environments where a faded garment is most dangerous, and where we replace sooner.
Replacing without wasting money
If you are kitting out a crew, replacement cost per head is smaller than people expect. Our standard yellow vest is £2.99, and the RT22 short sleeve hi-vis polo is £11.50. Mid-range outerwear such as the Beeswift Super Bomber waterproof jacket is £45.64, and the Beeswift Deltic rail overtrouser is £51.89 for anyone working track or roadside. Buy the class your risk assessment calls for, and tape that will survive your laundry.
The cheap vest is still right for visitors and short duration jobs. It isn't right for a groundworks crew on a dual carriageway.
One page, five minutes a quarter
None of this needs a spreadsheet. A quarterly check of issued hi-vis, a written note of what was binned and why, and a replacement trigger based on condition, covers the legal duty and keeps the weak custard vest off a live site.
Browse the full hi-vis range, or hi-vis trousers. If you want us to check class and wash cycle figures against your risk assessment, call us on +44(0)1236 755544. We do it often, and it takes less time than reading the label sizes.
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