Fabrics

Enlightened Equipment offers two fabrics unique to our company. The first is a 10 Denier (10D) nylon fabric and the second is 20 Denier (20D). Both nylon fabrics have a Durable Water Repellent (DWR) treatment and have a great feel and low weight. The 10D fabric favors minimal weight and maximum breathability as its highest priorities, whereas the 20D offers somewhat higher durability and water resistance at the cost of a bit more weight. 

Denier (Den or D): A measurement in terms of linear mass density, weight of a given fiber, defined as the mass in grams per 9000 meters. 

10D Weighs 0.65 ounce per yard2

Ripstop: When the fabric is weaved, thick reinforcement threads are interwoven in a cross hatch pattern. This makes for a favorable strength to weight ratio as well as making it difficult for small tears to spread.

Durable Water Repellant (DWR): A water repellant treatment used on all fabrics we offer.

10D

Our 10D nylon fabric is a light and breathable fabric. The 10D is heavily calendared on one side of the fabric so it will feel soft and smooth to the touch, with the other side being slightly less so to help give the fabric a sealed and smooth finish, this is also the reason the fabric is somewhat shiny.  

20D

Our 20D nylon fabric is a heavier more durable fabric that can withstand more abuse than our 10D material. The 20D material adds about 1 to 2 ounces of weight to a quilt if you make the whole shell out of the material, and if you just get the weather resistant stripes it adds about 1 to 1.5 ounces. 20D is also calendared, but only on the inside of the fabric. The fabric also has ripstop. While it’s tougher and more water resistant than our standard 10D fabric options, our 20D fabric also doesn’t breath as well. If you tried to use two layers of it, the restriction could make your quilt more clammy, and makes packing the quilt more frustrating since air can’t escape quickly enough to easily compress the quilt to a smaller size. It also has the potential to damage the baffles on the inside of the quilt, for these reasons we only allow 20D to be used on the outside shell of your quilt and not on the inside and outside.  

The weather resistant stripes are stripes around the top of your quilt and footbox that are 20D fabric instead of the normal 10D which gives you more moisture control and durability around the problematic areas of a sleep system, while still giving you the breathability of 10D in the middle. The top Stripe is for breath condensing under 30* and bottom stripe is for when rubbing against side of shelter. If you choose a 20D material for the outside of your Sleep system already, you do not need the stripes as it would be the same material.