Are Promotional Umbrellas Just Umbrellas?

Promotional umbrellas do not necessarily need to be meant for black in the rain, in fact there is a whole mother class of umbrella used primarily for blocking the sun. This opens up a whole range of new options when you decide to create a promotional umbrella for your company's marketing campaign. Rather than being relegated to passing out your promotional umbrella at events where it may rain you instead are now free to pass out your promotional umbrellas anywhere that people may want to avoid sun exposure. This acts as a powerful new idea behind branding your promotional umbrellas because now you can literally pass them out in rain or shine.
Realistically there is little if any difference between a promotional umbrella designed to withstand rain drops and one designed to block the sun. An umbrella is an umbrella the world around even if it is a promotional umbrella and even if it is made to block the sun. For this reason you do not really need a new promotional umbrella solely for the purpose of handing out at events where people want to limit sun exposure, rather now you just have another reason to order a larger run of promotional umbrellas because you are now able to pass them out at more events.
If you are planning to use your promotional umbrella at events that are going to be sunny you will probably want to avoid using dark colors when designing your promotional umbrella. It is not a necessity to have two different types of promotional umbrellas on hand, one dark and one light, but rather if you plan on using one style of promotional umbrella for both types of events from the beginning you should design your promotional umbrella's with this in mind. The reason for this is pretty simple, light colors reflects sun light better and thus will give people better protection; whereas if you're protecting against rain it doesn't really matter what color your promotional umbrella is, just that it is solid.
You are not limited to choosing white for your promotional umbrella to help reflect the sun, really any light color will do although whites definitely is the most effective. If you already have established corporate colors and they happen to be dark you should not change your colors to make a promotional umbrella that reflects the sun, but rather alter them slightly and use lighter shades.
For instance if your corporate colors are navy blue and Hunter Green you should simply use a lighter blue and a lighter green for your promotional umbrella rather than picking a new color palette altogether. This is likely to cause less customer confusion and will help solidify your brand's image. If you do not wish to change or a corporate colors at all to make a promotional umbrella for use under the sun you may simply want to go with a white umbrella that has your company name or logo a large black lettering. This type of lettering will show up great against a white background and you'll find yourself with a very effective promotional umbrella.