How long does sportswear take to dry outside?
Sportswear take about 1 hours to dry outside in mild sunny conditions. In humid or still air that can double, and on a short winter day they may not finish at all.
Estimated drying time
1h 18m
Sportswear take 1h on a mild sunny day. These conditions dry at 77% of that pace.
Why sportswear behave the way they do
Drying time follows how much water the fabric holds and how much surface it can present to moving air. Sportswear sit in the quick drying group at 1 hours in reference conditions, which is 20°C, 55% humidity, a light breeze and sunshine. Every other combination is that figure divided by how fast the air is working.
Humidity is the multiplier that matters most. Going from 50% to 75% can roughly double the time without anything else changing, because the air simply has less room to take the moisture. Still air does the same, since washing wraps itself in a thin layer of humid air as it dries and needs a breeze to strip it away.
Getting sportswear dry faster
Hang for surface area rather than tidiness. Anything folded double over the line dries at roughly half the rate, because you have halved the area meeting the air. Give the heaviest items the windiest spot and the longest run of line you have.
Then get them out early. The drying rate climbs through the morning, peaks in the early afternoon and falls away after about four o'clock as the temperature drops and dew starts settling back onto the fabric. At 1 hours, sportswear pegged out at nine and sportswear pegged out at two are very different propositions.
Washcast does this for your actual forecast
A drying window for every fabric you own, from the live weather where you live, plus a warning before rain reaches the line.
Compare with other loads
Base times come from the Washcast drying engine's fabric catalogue at reference conditions. The calculator estimates from those; the app computes the real window from your live forecast.