How to Bike to Work
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Clothing & Grooming

When you go on a recreational bike ride, your choice of clothing depends mainly on your comfort and safety during the ride. For riding to work, though, you need to consider both your needs during the ride and your needs once you reach your workplace.

Clothing for the Ride

Your best choice of clothing depends on how hard and how far you will ride. For short, easy rides, a very wide range of clothing will do.

For Any Distance and Riding Pace

Wear clothing loose or flexible enough to allow you to pedal without discomfort. You need to feel comfortable leaning forward far enough to use the brake levers and shifters easily.
Avoid baggy, floppy clothing that can get caught in the moving parts of the bicycle, wrecking the clothing and likely causing a crash. If your bicycle does not have a chain guard, roll your right pants leg up to your calf or secure it with a reflective leg band, pants clip, or rubber band to keep it away from the chain.
If you wear lace-up shoes, tuck the shoelaces into your shoes to keep them from getting caught in the pedals or chain. Trapped shoelaces really do cause bike crashes.
photo Dan Burden / www.pedbikeimages.org

Capes, ponchos, and loose-fitting jackets or coats, even if kept safely away from the wheels and other moving parts, will dramatically increase wind drag and make your ride noticeably slower for the same level of effort.
Wear a reflective vest or brightly colored top in darkness or dim light. Even when drivers see your lights and reflectors, they may not recognize you as a bicyclist on the road until they can see your outline. Bright or reflective clothing and reflective accessories make this much easier for them. Reflective leg bands, which bob up and down when you ride, also help.

For Longer or More Strenuous Rides

If you commute more than a half-hour each way, or prefer to ride at a pace that makes you sweaty, you should choose clothing that does the following four things. You might find work clothes that can do this, or you might decide to ride in one set of clothes and change when you get to work. Your riding outfit needs to:

Manage heat - Your body gives off heat as you exercise. Depending on the weather and your exertion level, you should wear lighter clothing for your commute than you would for walking or standing outside. If you over-dress, even in winter, you will arrive at work hot and sweaty. Good clothes for bicycling allow you to adjust how much air flows past your skin. In hot weather, you will want full ventilation with no adjustment needed.
Manage moisture - Even in cold conditions, you sweat. Trapping that sweat near your skin will make you uncomfortable and increase the chance of chafing. Clothing can help you manage moisture through ventilation (flaps with buttons, zippers, or hook-and-loop closures), an open weave (mesh, gauze, or other light materials), or low-absorbency fabrics (wicking polyester, polypropylene, synthetic stretch fabrics for athletic use, merino wool). Cotton and most other natural fibers absorb much moisture and release it gradually. Once wet, they stay wet for a long time and feel clammy against the skin. Low-absorbency wicking fibers hold little moisture and draw it away from the skin where it can evaporate more quickly. This will keep your skin drier and more comfortable in both hot and cold conditions.
Protect against pressure points - Clothing seams between you and your bicycle seat (saddle) create pressure points that can get painful on longer rides. Denim jeans, for example, typically have a heavy seam in a sensitive area. Bicycling shorts and tights are designed without seams between you and the saddle. Riding for longer times, especially on a road bike with a more forward-leaning riding posture, can put uncomfortable pressure on your hands. For longer commutes, a pair of padded-palm cycling gloves can make a good investment in preventing sore hands. If you ever fall, the gloves will also protect you from painful abrasions on your palms.
Avoid chafing your skin - In a half-hour ride, your legs will go up and down roughly 2400 times. If you cover your legs with a stiff or irritating fabric, especially if the fabric slides between you legs and the saddle, you can easily get chafed skin or a rash in a tender spot. Wet skin chafes more easily than dry skin. Wicking underwear, form-fitting bicycle shorts or tights, and soft fabrics will help prevent chafing.

Deciding Whether to Commute in Work Clothes

Most bicycle commuters ride in their work clothes rather than using a separate bicycling outfit and changing clothes at work. Two key factors might influence you to choose to ride in a separate outfit:

your bicycle ride to work is significantly more strenuous than your work or significantly warmer than your workplace; or
your workplace dress code demands attire too delicate, constricting, or uncomfortable to wear on a bicycle.

In the first situation, riding in your work clothes might leave you and your clothes more sweaty than your management and coworkers would appreciate. Sometimes, a simple change will allow you to ride in your work clothes. Removing a jacket, tie, or button-down shirt (worn over an undershirt) for the ride, or rolling up trouser legs, might make your work attire cool enough for riding. If you do this, you will need to carry the additional garments to the office. Read on for tips on carrying clothing to work.

In the second situation, riding in your work clothes might harm your clothes, make your ride uncomfortable, or impair your ability to ride safely.

Clothing Selections for Warm, Cool, and Changing Weather

Differences in metabolism and circulation make people very different from each other in our clothing needs. You might feel comfortable riding in a T-shirt and shorts in weather in which someone else needs long sleeves and a light jacket, or vice versa. These general principles can help you develop your commuting wardrobe, but only you can discover what works for you.
A ride to work in the morning will usually be cooler than a ride home in the afternoon or early evening. Wear a layer that you can remove for the trip home or sleeves you can roll up to keep from overheating on the way home.
If you ride at a high exertion level, start the ride under-dressed. If you feel comfortably warm standing still, you are dressed too warmly!
Wearing different layers in the morning and evening often makes sense, but layer-changing en route adds an unnecessary and inconvenient delay. Instead, wear an outer layer that you can make warmer or cooler by adjusting sleeves, zippers, buttons, or vents.
In hot weather, wear lightweight clothing made of non-absorbent, wicking fibers.
In cool weather, two inexpensive and light garments can greatly increase your warmth: a simple wind shell (windbreaker) and an insulating headband or helmet liner. Even the simplest nylon windbreaker, without special membranes or coating, will make you much warmer while riding. A synthetic fleece headband to cover your forehead and ears, or a helmet liner made of similar material, likewise weighs only a few ounces, takes almost no space to store, and can warm you dramatically. Using a headband and a wind shell over ordinary work clothes might keep you comfortable on a 40o F morning ride; removing the headband and shell might make you comfortable for the 70o F ride home, without changing any other clothes!
Stay informed of weather changes predicted to happen during your work day. Dressing for a dry 70o F ride to work and getting caught in 55o F rain on your way home can make for an unpleasant, or even dangerous, ride. For more information, see Commuting in Darkness and Challenging Weather.

Bringing Work Clothes to Your Workplace

If you decide to ride in different clothes than you wear at work, you will need to get your work clothes to and from the office without wrinkling or damaging them. Here are some options.

Carry work outfits to the office by car on days when you need to travel by car anyway. Bring enough to last until the next day you need to take a car or carpool to work. On that day, you can bring home your dirty clothes to wash. In between, commute by bicycle. This works only if you have a safe place at work for storing several sets of clothing and a bag of dirty clothes.
A variation on the first option: Plan to drive or take a bus to work on certain days, say Monday and Friday each week. On Monday, bring your outfits for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday when you will commute by bicycle. On Friday, bring home the dirty clothes.
If you have space at work to store several mix-and-match outfits, and a laundry service nearby: Bring the outfits to work, where they will stay. Every few days, have the dirty clothes laundered and returned to your office. You need bring clothes to the office only to expand or change your wardrobe.
Carry your clothes to and from work by bike, a day at a time. The rest of this section covers this option.

You can safely carry most types of clothing in a backpack, pannier, or duffle bag attached to a rack. See the Gear & Accessories page for more information. Follow these steps: Lay a clean towel or cloth on a flat surface. Lay the garments, on at a time, on top of the cloth. If necessary, fold each garment to make it no wider than the longest dimension of your backpack, bag, or pannier. Make sure that each garment lies flat on the cloth. Roll the cloth, with the garments, to fit into your bag. Put the garment roll into a clean plastic bag to keep the garments from rubbing anything that might stain them. Slide the bagged roll into the pannier, backpack, or duffel bag for the journey to work. If you need to carry suits or dresses routinely by bicycle, you might choose to invest in a heavy-duty garment bag made especially to attach to a pannier rack. Ask about them at your favorite bicycle shop or search the Web for "bicycle garment bag".

For less delicate and more wrinkle-resistant work clothes, you can dispense with the towel or cloth and fold the clothing as if you were storing it in a drawer or suitcase. It still makes sense to put the clothes into a plastic bag for the trip. Remember to pack underwear and socks as well as your other clothes! The clothing touching your skin gets more sweaty than the rest of your outfit does when you ride.

Cleaning Up and Looking Good at Work

Riding in cool weather or at a relaxed pace, you may not need to wash up when you arrive at work. Otherwise, you have some options to freshen up even if you do not have the time or facilities for a shower. You can do a quick upper-body bath with a wash cloth or sponge at a bathroom sink. You may not need to change clothing aside from your blouse or T-shirt. Keep a cloth towel at work, and bring it home to launder every few days.

Bring a comb or brush to work to make your hair neat after riding in a helmet. Admittedly, some hairstyles do not tolerate bicycle helmets well. We prefer to choose helmet-compatible hairstyles rather than give up the benefits of helmet use to accommodate a particular hairstyle. However, as much as we believe in helmets, the benefits of bicycling far outweigh the risks even if you choose to ride without a helmet.

How to Bike to Work
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