A few more thoughts on the subject.

First, most of our outdoor activities are in pretty heavily wooded areas, hilly to slightly mountainous terrain (think foothills of the Appalachian Mountains), no deserts around here. Orange cordage disappearing in fall leaves would be a DEFINITE possibility. I would have mentioned this before, but I honestly hadn't considered this. I assumed this would be a general issue, but like everything else, it seems dependent on environment.

DW bought me some bright orange nylon cord (unfortunately not paracord but it was still nice cordage) for christmas and it went into one of my kits. Now any time I open that kit that orange just jumps out at me, which is why I thought orange might make a good color choice. Others have made good points though that almost any color can disappear under the right circumstances (i.e. orange in fall foliage, tennis ball green in underbrush, white in the snow, etc).

I've noticed a lot of newer fire and emergency vehicles are a neon green (with a definite neon yellow undertone) rather than the ubiquitous red. I've also seen golf balls in the past in this neon green as well as orange.

Personally, I don't like the red, it never looks very bright to me, but it IS DS's favorite color so I thought it might give him a slight morale boost in a bad situation.

Also, not that long ago, I did a corded handle on a walking stick in something like a neon blue and that stands out VERY well.

I also hadn't given much thought to visibility at night so thanks for the suggestion on the luminous paracord.

Looks like I'll be ordering small quantities of each to compare before making a decision to buy 1000 feet of any one color. But then, you can never have too much cordage around the house, right?