If you're after a wide brim hat for men or women, you're probably shopping for one thing: real sun coverage, not the token shade a baseball cap gives you. A wide brim hat is the difference between spending all day outdoors comfortably and fighting the sun every step of the way — but not every wide brim hat is built for Australian conditions, and almost none of them do anything about the flies. Here's what to look for, and where a wide brim hat can do more than just block the sun.
What makes a wide brim hat worth buying
A genuinely wide brim — not a narrow 5cm strip — shading your face, ears, the back of your neck and shoulders, not just the top of your head. UPF50+ fabric, since a hat that looks wide but lets UV through isn't doing its job. Breathability, via mesh panels or airflow so you're not sweating under it by 10am. And a fit that stays put in wind — an adjustable chin strap, not something you're chasing across the yard on a breezy day.
Wide brim hats for women
Look for adjustable sizing (a lot of "one size" wide brim hats fit like they were designed for one head shape), a brim wide enough to actually shade your shoulders, and a style you'll still want to wear after the first wash.
Wide brim hats for men
The same fundamentals apply — UPF50+, genuine brim width, a fit that holds in wind — without the assumption that "men's wide brim" just means plain and beige. There's no reason a practical hat can't also look good.
Built for farmers and grey nomads too
Whether you're in the sheep yards, at the beach, travelling in the caravan, or just in the garden for the afternoon, a wide brim hat should do its job without you thinking about it. Ours is designed to disappear into the day — wide enough to shade properly, light enough to forget you're wearing it, and finished with artwork that tells a real story.
The one thing most wide brim hats don't do
They stop at sun protection. The moment the flies or mosquitoes show up — and in most of Australia, they will — a plain wide brim hat leaves you swatting your face just like anyone else. Dreamtimez wide brim hats fix that: full UPF50+ coverage plus a built-in fly and mosquito net that tucks away into the brim when you don't need it and drops down in seconds when you do. One hat, for men or women, farmers or grey nomads, doing the job of two.
And the artwork is real
Every Dreamtimez wide brim hat features original artwork from an Australian Aboriginal artist, with ongoing royalties paid on every sale — so the hat looks like something, not just a beige circle of fabric. Shop Dreamtimez wide brim hats.
Shop the range: see our Fly Net Hat and Fly Net Hat with Detachable Scarf.