Work sandals or ventilated shoes?

Work sandals or ventilated shoes?

As the high-temperature season is approaching, we decided to outline two words about the work sandal that many people choose so often in the summer. Are sandals the right choice? As always, the answer is it depends on what you need to use them for.

Of course, no one says that work sandals do not fulfill their task, the only question is whether it can be better?

Currently, a lot of work shoes made of various ventilated coatings have appeared on the market. Models of Albatros work shoes made of SafetyNet, i.e. a breathable mesh that guarantees protection of the foot and very good breathability (e.g. Albatros Lift Blue shoes which you can see below).

There are also models made of breathable Cordura mesh, which is characterized by very good flexibility and resistance to mechanical damage.

Finally, you can meet models made of polyurethane mesh, but attention, those models in which the combination of different material structures occurs right behind the protective toe cap, are prone to damage when working on the knees, with frequent crouching and kneeling (below the Romulus Low model by Engelbert Strauss).

Albatros Lift Blue

Yeah, but what's a sandal net? Well, let's note that in the case of work sandals, usually in the entire shell of the shoe there is one / several ventilating notches and at most a small perforation in the area of the toes. In the presented models, the shell of the shoe, which is usually made of leather or airtight plastic, has been completely replaced with a breathable mesh. Let's take a look at how the foot ventilation looks like in two Base Protection models.

Ventilation

As you can see, the model on the left is entirely made of breathable material. Only the heel is built-up and there is no ventilation in this place. The second important issue is the comfort and safety of the foot. In the case of sandals, large vents can easily be covered with a nail or a screw in a shoe. Such a risk does not occur in the case of the net, because its meshes are fine and, apart from dust and really fine filings, do not allow anything to get inside the shoe. Naturally, we do not recommend such shoes for working in mud, on a construction site, or in places where solid protection of the upper part of the foot is needed.

We should also remember about two additional elements, without which there can be no comfort and convenience at work in the summer. A sock and an insole - a sock, of course, made of technical materials (nylon, spandex, polyester), while the insole is necessarily perforated and equipped with air channels to improve air circulation inside the shoe.