With coatings made from soft nanoscopic hairs we can give new advanced functions to materials. For example, in the future we could use these coatings to measure whether packaged food has spoiled. To design these coatings, it is important to understand how the coatings behave under different conditions, such as humidity. This determines the user experience. We have combined molecular dynamics simulations with experiments to gain a fundamental understanding of the behavior of the coatings in humid air. We have thus taken a crucial step in the development of these functional coatings.