Marking your equipment

Marking your gear has many (useful) purposes:
- Identify what is yours
- Find the gear (brightly colored equipment helps)
- Put indicators or 'red flags' on your gear 

First of all make sure whatever you use does not affect your equipment in a negative way. Pay particular attention to personal protective equipment. The glue in stickers/tape and solvents in markers/paint can have effect on certain materials (especially plastics and textiles). Sometimes manufactures will sell specific stickers or markers to mark their products (helmets , rope, slings). Preferably mark your equipment on a part which is not safety related. If you have doubts, you can choose to tie strings or add zip ties with a tag to your equipment, which means there is no solvents of other chemicals interacting. (unless the string was contaminated)  

Second, make sure the markings does not get in the way. It can block the sight to parts of your equipment, both in operating the equipment, as well for inspections of your equipment (wear and tear, damages, etc). If string is used, make sure it won’t cause entanglement or choking hazards.

Third, make sure the markings can handle the environment it is being subjected to. This can be extreme temperatures, temperature swings, exposure to abrasion or even chemical exposure. For example; adding (reflective) tape to firefighting equipment can simply mean that the tape melts the first time you get close to a fire. Meaning you have to clean of the melted goo.

You can make your markings have additional function. Strategic markings can act like warning flags. For instance a visible red line when something is forgotten or a switch is set on life. Markings can also be zipper tabs, making it easier to locate and open a certain compartment. Or just a loop, so you can hang your equipment in storage. 

For finding and identifying equipment I use the following to make my gear stand out:

- Bright neon yellow reflective tape (a thick high quality version, which is also very abrasive resistant).
- Bright red cordage with reflective threads in it.
- Glow in the dark and reflective cordage. (white)
- Glow in the dark and reflective zipper pull tabs.

For safety markings or surfaces which does not allow tape of anything attach to it, without creating problems:
- Permanent markers (works best on rough surfaces, specialist markers are available for certain equipment)
- Nail polish (works best on smooth surfaces)

Note that sometimes you just can’t mark your equipment without causing a problem and sometimes you can only mark things on the inside.