Light Blue or Dark blue.

[elshortt]

What do you guys/girls think about dark blue dress uniform shirt as aposed to light blue. We currently use light blue shirts, but are trying to change over to dark blue. My Captian, Chiefs, and I all agree that it looks more respectable, and more pro like. So what do you think?

[KenNFD1219]

My FD used dark blue shirts and pants for years. We changed to light blue for fire fighters and white for officers a while back. Dark blues tend to fade if you are using cotton or cotton blends. After a while, the shirt and pants do not match and look lousy. IMHO, light blue with dark blue pants looks good.

The color does not make you look professional. Wearing a clean uniform that fits, with the appropriate patch/badge/insigna is was makes a professional appearence.

[pvfire424]

There almost seems to be a trend in FF level personnel in Dark/Navy blue, officers in light blue, and chief officers in White.

A twist on that is our officers are also issued grey polo shirts. Fire chief also has white polo.

[Driver76]

Ken is right, the color of the uniform is never as impressive as whether or not it is clean, neatly pressed and fits well.

On the job (EMS) we wear light blue over navy pants ... looks good. We also have a waist length navy jacket for cold weather and they never seem to match the color of any of the guys pants ... looks like crap on alot of people.

For fire the paid guys wear navy over navy (never matches) and the volunteers wear the navy full dress uniform with double breasted 3/4 length coat whenever we have to wear one. Looks sharp but a little hot in summer.

[elshortt]

On the job (EMS) we wear light blue over navy pants ... looks good. We also have a waist length navy jacket for cold weather and they never seem to match the color of any of the guys pants ... looks like crap on alot of people.

I also work in EMS. My paid job is an EMT (not an ambulance driver!!!) with an Ambulance Company. We wear a simular uniform. But we wear grey polos over navy pants in the day and Dark blue Jump suits at night.

I understand that its having a nice clean, well put together uniform is what matters. Where I'm from, Chiefs wear white, all other officers and firefighters wear light blue. I just think the dark blue looks better is all. Thanks for the replies.

[SafetyPro]

Light blue shirt with navy pants used to be pretty standard around here, but most departments changed to all navy in the late 80s/early 90s. We made the change when we went to Nomex station uniforms in the early 90s. We kept the light blue shirts, and that's what our trainees wear now.

Our BCs have recently begun wearing all black, which seems to be the standard now for Chiefs. I know LA County's been doing that for some time now, and most of the other departments in the area have now adopted it.

We've also eliminated our metal name plates...last name is now embroidered directly on the right chest of the shirt...white lettering for the navy shirts (FFs, Engineers, Captains) and gold lettering for the black shirts (BCs).

Our Chief usually wears a white shirt with black pants, but I believe he has the all black uniform as well.

[vafyremedic]

Again, using my last two departments as examples, the one in Maryland had light blue over dark (navy) blue for FF's, and white for Capt.'s and above. The one I'm with now, has dark blue for shirts and pants for FF's. Lt's and Op's Capt's wear light gray shirts and pants. Tech/Support Capt's, and Chiefs wear white shirts over black pants. Weird combo's but they seem happy.

[LaFireEducator]

We use dark blue for our station uniforms (polos with FIRE in large white letters on the back) and t-shirts, as they tend to hide sweat and daily dirt well. There has been some discussion about going to a dark blue button down as a station shirt but there has been concern about looking like the sheriff's deputies.

Our dress shirts are light blue with white for officers.

[cellblock]

I'm Security/EMT at a Steel Mill. When I first started we wore polyester uniforms, dark blue (black really) slacks with light blue shirts. Looked good. Then someone realized that we work in a STEEL MILL and wearing a ployester uniform when working at a steeel mill where scrap metal is being melted and cut and formed might be a bad idea. So we were issued new uniforms. Now we have cotton/poly blend uniforms, black slacks AND shirt. As stated before by Kennfd, the uniforms fade after several washings. While I'm no big fan of polyester I perfer the old colors as opposed to the all black uniforms we have now.

[WCENG23]

Our FF and Engineers wear gray polo style shirts with black pants and the officers wear white polo style shirts with black pants.

[achief15]

We have a few uniform variations in our combination department. Everyone has an embroidered red polo shirt to wear at department functions, Navy dress shirts (white for officers) and pants. We are going to switch over to dark gray uniform shirts and black pants. May not sound good to you at first, but when we ordered samples it made a great impression, plus we won't look like everybody else at an event. Our career guys are issued black pants, black and ash grey T-shirts, red and Khaki (tan) polos, Khaki coats and black job shirts. The black T's look great with gold lettering.

[firemanmikey]

On my combination department we used to all wear light blue fore FF's, Capt, and LT's, Chiefs wore white. So the guys who wore light blue were to supply their own pants. One guy showed up in Wranglers with a HUGE "turkey platter "belt buckle. LOL. Looked retarted! The next guy would wear black dress pants and the other guy would wear dark navy blue pants, and so on. So really it couldn't be called a uniform, because there wasn't anything uniform about anyone. Now we all just received new uniforms and we wear dark navy blue, rank is determined by the amount of stripes as usual.

[Weruj1]

we are navy blue here also .................white shirts for Class "A" uniforms ....everything else is dark/navy blue.

[Chief2701]

All duty personell to include myself wear Navy over Navy while on duty. Name strips and badges are embrodiered, rank by collar bugles. Presently Public events - Chiefs White, Officers Gray and FF's Navy. The white and gray shirts will be phased out over the next year.