Beach Umbrellas Are Dangerous and Inconvenient. I Love This Majestic (and Safe) Alternative. | Reviews by Wirecutter

Oct 18, 2024

By Kit Dillon

Kit Dillon is a writer focused on bags and travel gear. He has worked for Wirecutter for a decade and lost count of the number of bags he has tested.

Did you know that beach umbrellas send some 1,000 people to the hospital each year?

An astonishing number for any item, but especially for a humble piece of beach equipment.

I mistrust these parasols dug precariously into the loose sand, each one a potential missile. More so, I fear the spectacle of having to chase one down the beach, apologizing as I go.

Enter the Shibumi Shade, one of the simplest—and lightest—pieces of beach equipment I’ve ever seen (right up there with the beach towel). Weighing just 4 pounds and measuring 26 by 5 inches when bundled away, it’s small enough to pack in a suitcase and take on a vacation, and it’s lighter and more nimble than many beach chairs—all things never once said of a beach umbrella.

With a beguiling, minimal design, this shade is easy and quick for one person to set up. As long as a steady wind blows, the fabric floats above you, providing enough sun coverage for six people without buckling or collapsing.

The Shibumi Shade’s entire design consists of two parts: a single arch of high-strength segmented aluminum rod, such as you’d find in the brace of a camping tent, and a large lightweight sail of paraglider fabric.

No knots of cotton string to untangle, no rusted hinges to snap into place, no heavy pole and heavy fabric ready to fly away at the slightest wind, no matter how firmly it is staked into the earth. It is everything the beach umbrella isn’t: immovable in the face of a hurricane. And it can all be set up by just one person in under a couple of minutes.

All the Shibumi Shade really needs is a light wind to lift its sail and create a cavern of shade above your head. It’s charming to lie under the canopy as it snaps in the wind suspended, somewhat magically, between you and the sun. If you ever ran under sheets drying on a line when you were young or hid under blankets thrown in the air by your parents, sitting beneath the Shibumi Shade is a lot like that. Watching the shade ripple beneath the wind is a feeling that’s whimsical and nostalgic and somehow rare and startling all at the same time.

That’s when it works, of course.

If there’s no wind on a given day, or if the wind isn’t blowing continuously in one direction, the Shibumi Shade will be stymied into listlessness. On windless days, it is more window draping than sun sail.

I’ve found small workarounds when this happens, adjusting the shape of the Shibumi Shade to form it into a kind of lean-to. While doing so generates shade, though, it also deprives the shade of the sail-like properties that make it so enjoyable to use.

It also takes up a substantial amount of real estate on the beach. As a result, the design is banned by some communities, particularly on the east coast (though public support has also led to some easing or rewriting of public ordinances). If you’re planning a beach trip this summer, it’s worth checking your local beach policies before deciding to pack a Shibumi Shade.

If your beach has banned it, we’re also fans of the beachBUB, a more classic monopole umbrella that is weighed down by a sandbag to keep it from flying away and wreaking havoc.

The Shibumi Shade is bound, for better or worse, to the wind. Imperfect as this natural arrangement is, it is also essential to its beauty. And in its faults is a reminder of the wider world around you: the sun, the sand, and all the things you came to the beach to enjoy.

How many objects in this life can, in their failure, remind you that nature isn’t a thing that can be mastered every second of the day? It’s temporary. All of it. And that’s more than enough to think about on the beach while you wait for the winds to change in a more favorable direction.

(Editor’s note: In the time since this was published, Shibumi came out with attachable sand anchors, which keep the shade taut even when there’s little to no wind—they’re called The Wind Assist. We’ve tested them, and they pretty much eliminate the only issue we’ve had with the Shibumi. Of course, a set of two is a $30 add-on to an already expensive shade, so there is that.)

This article was edited by Alexander Aciman and Christine Ryan.

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Kit Dillon

Kit Dillon is a senior staff writer at Wirecutter. He was previously an app developer, oil derrick inspector, public-radio archivist, and sandwich shop owner. He has written for Popular Science, The Awl, and the New York Observer, among others. When called on, he can still make a mean sandwich.