Home → Blog → Resources → 11 of the Best Fabrics for Sportswear – Performance Sports Apparel
Whether you're training for a marathon, hitting the gym, cycling to work, or playing in your local football league, what you wear has a significant impact on your comfort and ability to perform. Over the last few decades, modern sportswear has embraced advanced technical fabrics and game-changing textile technologies, ensuring professional and amateur athletes have access to an incredible array of high-performance apparel. But this can make choosing between fabrics, or matching the right fiber to the right sport, incredibly tricky.
In this guide, we explore 11 of the best fabrics for sportswear, detail their pros and cons, and explain what activities they are suited to and why.
Performance sportswear is clothing designed to support physical activity and improve performance. Unlike everyday clothing, activewear tends to utilize technical materials and innovative fabric technologies to improve comfort, freedom of movement, durability, and temperature regulation.
As our understanding of sports science and ability to engineer fabrics and apparel to meet the needs of athletes and sports enthusiasts has improved, performance sportswear has developed at a remarkable rate.
Historically, athletic clothing was typically made from heavy cotton, which quickly became saturated with sweat during exercise. The emergence of synthetic fibres like nylon and polyester in the mid-20th century enabled manufacturers to produce lighter, faster-drying garments that excelled in sporting contexts. More recently, innovative textile technologies like Polygiene OdorCrunch2.0 and Polygiene StayCool have further enhanced brands’ ability to produce high-performance materials.
These technologies have been supplemented by advanced manufacturing techniques and design innovations like four-way stretch fabrics, seamless constructions, and laser-cut ventilation features. The result is sportswear designs that help athletes manage body temperature, stay fresher for longer, support a full range of motion, and enhance performance.
Different sports place different demands on clothing. Some require lightweight breathability, while others prioritize warmth, weather protection, stretch, or durability. Here are some of the best sportswear fabrics available today.
Polyester is one of the best fabrics for sportswear due to its performance qualities and versatility. Its moisture-wicking properties draw sweat away from the skin and to the outside of the garment, enhancing the evaporative cooling effect. The fabric is also lightweight, wrinkle-resistant, durable, and holds up well to repeated machine washing.
Pros
Cons
Sports polyester is suited to
Nylon boasts fantastic strength while remaining lightweight, comfortable, and relatively stretchy. It typically has a softer feel than polyester but is abrasion-resistant, making it well-suited to sports that include simple, repetitive movements or contact with sports equipment.
Sports nylon is suited to
Elastane is exceptionally stretchy, making it an ideal choice for sports apparel that needs to sit tight against the skin while allowing for a range of movement. This has made it one of the most important fabrics in the sports apparel industry. However, its lack of durability, breathability, and moisture-wicking capabilities means it is typically blended with other fibers to create better-performing fabrics. It’s one of the best sportswear material choices for activities such as cycling, yoga and pilates.
Sports elastane is suited to
Unlike traditional wool, merino wool is soft, breathable, and is capable of regulating the user’s temperature. It performs exceptionally well in both cold and warm conditions, and its natural antibacterial properties help with odor resistance. Merino is an excellent all-rounder, making it a top sportswear material choice for hiking and outdoor activities.
Merino wool is suited to
Bamboo-derived viscose is becoming increasingly popular in activewear blends due to its super-soft feel, excellent moisture management, and good breathability. It is often blended with synthetic fibres to improve durability and elastane to improve stretch.
Bamboo blends are suited to
Polypropylene is one of the lightest synthetic fibres available for technical sportswear. Highly hydrophobic, this relatively new synthetic fiber is regularly used in base layers as it excels at wicking moisture away from the skin and insulating the wearer, keeping athletes dry and warm in harsh weather. Because it doesn’t retain moisture, it is lightweight, quick-drying, and resistant to chafing. It’s one of the best sportswear materials for activities that may involve a lot of sweating, such as cycling or running.
Polypropylene is suited to
TENCEL Lyocell is an eco-friendly fiber made from sustainably sourced wood pulp. It combines softness with excellent moisture regulation and fantastic breathability. It also offers a degree of natural odor protection. It is often blended with polyester or elastane to improve durability and stretch.
TENCEL Lyocell is well suited to
Many leading sportswear brands now manufacture garments using recycled polyester made from post-consumer plastic bottles. While performance is similar to pure polyester, the recycled fiber drastically reduces reliance on virgin raw materials, one of the principal drawbacks of polyester and similar synthetics. This more sustainable approach ensures recycled polyester warrants an entry of its own. It’s one of the best workout clothing materials for those that want to reduce their impact on the environment.
Recycled polyester is well suited to
Modern fleece is lightweight, breathable, and excellent at trapping body heat to keep the user warm and comfortable in cooler conditions. It does not have the bulk of traditional wool and is ideal for mid or outer layers worn during chilly outdoor workouts. While modern performance fleeces are designed to wick sweat and dry quickly, they are primarily used in winter sports and cold environments.
Fleece is well suited to
Softshell garments combine stretch, weather resistance and breathability into a single layer.
They’re one of the best sportswear clothing materials for outdoor athletes who want windproof, waterproof and breathable clothing properties. High-performance sporting softshells will pack down small, allowing for easy transport should the conditions make them unnecessary.
Softshell fabrics are well suited to
Although pure cotton isn’t generally recommended for high-intensity exercise due to the way it absorbs moisture, cotton blends combine natural comfort with technical performance. Adding polyester significantly improves drying time and stretch, while cotton can also be added to elastane, bamboo, and lyocell to make tight-fitting apparel more opaque. Cotton blends are one of the best sports clothing fabrics for walking, gym workouts and everyday activewear.
Cotton blends are well suited to
Many of today’s highest-performing sports garments aren’t made from a single fibre. Instead, manufacturers carefully blend multiple materials to create fabrics that draw performance benefits from several different fibers. For instance, adding polyester to a blend will improve durability and moisture management. Elastane contributes stretch, and nylon abrasion resistance. Cotton can be blended into technical fabrics to improve softness and opacity, though the material will become more absorbent in the process.
Blended fabrics allow designers to create garments tailored to specific sports. Running apparel typically prioritises lightweight moisture management, while hiking clothing may combine durability with weather protection. Yoga clothing focuses on flexibility and softness, whereas compression garments require high elasticity and strength to support working muscles.
Fabric blends also improve garment longevity, comfort, and fit. As sportswear technology advances, blended fabrics are expected to remain the industry standard and will continue to evolve in line with new manufacturing techniques and textile technologies.
In many cases, the best fabrics for sportswear, no matter the activity is a material blend.
Performance fabrics become even more effective when combined with Polygiene’s advanced freshness and cooling technologies. Our solutions improve fabric performance, enhancing the fibers’ natural qualities or adding new qualities to compensate for a material’s weaknesses.
Polygiene StayCool
Polygiene StayCool is a groundbreaking textile cooling treatment that is integrated into fabrics during the manufacturing process. It features a thermo-reactive polymer matrix that activates upon contact with sweat, cooling the fabric between 2 – 3°C (4.3 – 5.4°F). At the same time, it enhances moisture-wicking performance to boost the evaporative cooling effect. In doing so, it keeps athletes light, dry, and comfortable when temperatures start to rise.
Polygiene OdorCrunch2.0
Our industry-leading odor control technology captures, absorbs, and binds to odor-causing molecules in textiles. By preventing smells from being released, it keeps garments fresh between washes. When the clothing is eventually washed, the absorbed odors are released and the technology’s odor-capture capacity resets. Polygiene OdorCrunch2.0 features no heavy metals, PFAs or nanotechnology, and is entirely skin safe.
Polygiene StayFresh
Polygiene StayFresh technology inhibits the growth of odor-causing bacteria on textiles. As a result, garments stay fresher between washes, helping users stay comfortable and confident, and allowing them to wear clothing multiple times before laundering. This helps reduce water consumption, energy use, and the wear and tear caused by regular machine washing, improving product longevity and reducing environmental impact in the process.
Sportswear that incorporates Polygiene odor-control technologies benefits from:
Sportswear that incorporates Polygiene cooling technologies benefits from:
There isn’t a single best material for every activity. Polyester remains one of the most versatile options due to its moisture-wicking, durability, and affordability. However, many premium garments combine polyester with elastane or nylon to achieve the ideal balance of comfort and stretch.
Nylon is generally regarded as one of the most durable sportswear fabrics. It offers excellent abrasion resistance, making it ideal for hiking, climbing, trail running, and outdoor activities where clothing experiences greater wear. Polyester is also considered highly durable.
Polyester, polypropylene, merino wool, and advanced synthetic blends are excellent sportswear fabric choices for people who sweat heavily. These materials wick moisture away from the skin and dry rapidly, helping maintain comfort during high-intensity exercise. Polygiene StayCool can be added to almost any textile to enhance moisture wicking and deliver a cool-to-the-touch feel on contact with sweat.
Lightweight polyester blends, nylon, TENCEL Lyocell, and fabrics incorporating mesh ventilation are excellent options for warm conditions. Garments with moisture-wicking and cooling technologies can further improve comfort during summer workouts.
The right sportswear fabric can make a noticeable difference to comfort, performance, and product durability. Whether you’re running, cycling, lifting weights, hiking, or practising yoga, choosing breathable, moisture-wicking materials helps regulate body temperature, reduce chafing, and improve overall comfort throughout your workout.
If you want to know more about how Polygiene technology can benefit your brand’s sportswear designs, get in touch with our expert today. Alternatively, head to the Polygiene in Sportswear page to check out Polygiene-treated products and explore the many ways our technology is changing performance textile design.
