A single-skin parawing has one layer of canopy fabric, with the airfoil shape held by the bridle lines rather than by air-filled cells. It is the lightest and most packable construction and the default for stash-and-glide riding. Single-skins deploy fast but sit deeper in the wing window and pull downwind when depowered. Double-skin (ram-air) designs form a closed wing profile that keeps driving upwind even fully sheeted out, at the cost of pack size and low-end grunt.
Single-skin or double-skin is the first call in any parawing design, and it sets everything downstream: weight, pack volume, deploy speed, and where the canopy sits in the wing window. Our parawing database covers 18 brands and 40 models, and the large majority run single-skin: BRM’s S3/Kanaha/Ka’a, Ozone Pocket Rocket, F-One Frigate, Flysurfer POW, Triple Seven P.T. Skin and most others.
Weight and pack size, mainly. BRM’s published specs have the 4.0 m single-skin Kanaha at 464 g against 753 g for their 4.5 m double-skin Paia, and a double-skin needs roughly 1 m² more area than the single-skin it replaces. Less cloth packs into a smaller bundle in the stash belt, relaunches easier off the water, pops open faster on redeploy. You pay upwind. Sheeted out, whatever pull a single-skin still carries points downwind, so your pointing angle tops out early and depower does less for you.
BRM has described its double skins as continuing “to drive upwind even when completely sheeted out to the lowest possible angle of attack,” and the Paia product page bills the design as optimized for “effective depower, upwind efficiency, and greater range.” The Inertia’s test found the double-skin Paia “absolutely rips upwind, achieving the best upwind angles we’ve seen from a parawing.” Between the two extremes sit reflex single-skins (the Flow D-Wing runs a reflex airfoil that resists collapse when depowered) and hybrids: Triple Seven claims the ram-air front half of its P.T. Hybrid adds ~30% top-end over its single-skin without losing low end.
Rule of thumb: single-skin for stash-heavy riding and surf, double-skin or hybrid for upwind and range. The Ozone Pocket Rocket V2 is the benchmark upwind single-skin, and sizing is covered in the parawing size calculator. All terms: glossary.