What Size Tent Do You Actually Need?

Here is the single most useful fact about buying a tent: the capacity rating is not a recommendation. It is a maximum.

A "4-person tent" means four standard sleeping pads laid side by side, touching, with no gear inside and nobody rolling over. It is a packing-efficiency figure, not a comfort figure — and it is calculated the same optimistic way by essentially every manufacturer, ours included.

How much floor space a person actually needs

A standard adult sleeping pad is 20 inches wide and 72 long. A wide pad is 25 inches. So the honest arithmetic is:

• 20 in per person — the manufacturer's assumption. Shoulders touching.
• 25–30 in per person — comfortable. You can turn over without waking anybody.
• + 20–24 in of extra width — for duffels, boots and a place to sit up and get dressed.

Two adults who want to sleep well need roughly 55–60 inches of width. That is a 3-person tent, not a 2-person. Two adults and two young children want about 84 inches plus gear space — which is a 6-person, not a 4.

Peak height is more important than you think, and less than it looks

Peak height is measured at the single highest point. In a dome, the walls curve away sharply, so a 51-inch peak gives you one small spot where you can sit up straight and a lot of floor where you cannot. In a cabin tent the walls are near-vertical, so the stated floor area is close to the floor area you can actually stand and move in.

That difference matters on exactly one kind of day: the rainy one. If you camp with children, in shoulder season, or anywhere it rains, standing headroom is the feature that turns a washed-out afternoon from a crisis into a card game.

The trade: cabin tents catch far more wind, weigh more, and take longer to pitch. Domes shed weather better and go up faster. Pick by which failure you would rather have.

Now in stock Four tent sizes, with honest sizing printed on every listing

2P backpacking, 4P dome, 6P family cabin and an 8P three-room — each one lists both the manufacturer's rating and the number of people it is genuinely comfortable for.

See the tents →

Reading the rest of the spec sheet

Waterproof rating (hydrostatic head)

Measured in millimetres — the height of a water column the fabric holds before it leaks in a laboratory. Rough guide: 1500mm handles light rain, 3000mm is the sensible three-season standard, 5000mm+ is for sustained heavy weather. Ours are manufacturer-rated 3000mm.

But the number is the least important part of staying dry. Taped seams matter more, because untaped stitching leaks regardless of fabric rating. And a fly that reaches close to the ground matters more still, because most "leaks" are splash-back off the ground, not water through the fabric.

Single wall vs double wall

A double-wall tent has a mesh inner and a separate fly. It costs a little more and weighs a little more, and it manages condensation dramatically better. You exhale about half a litre of water overnight; in a single-wall tent that ends up on the inside of your shelter and then on your sleeping bag. Buy double wall.

Vestibules

The covered area between the fly and the door. This is where wet boots, the stove and the dog live. A tent with two doors and two vestibules is worth real money to two adults — nobody climbs over anybody at 2am.

Poles

Aluminium is lighter and springier; fibreglass is cheaper and more likely to splinter in wind. For car camping fibreglass is fine. For anything you carry, aluminium.

Pick your size in one paragraph

• Solo, or two people carrying it: a 2P. Gear lives in the vestibules.
• Two adults car camping: a 4P. The extra floor is for duffels and dressing, not people.
• Two adults and one or two children: a 6P cabin. This is the most under-bought size in camping.
• Larger families, or two families sharing: an 8P with room dividers — so bedtimes do not have to be simultaneous.

Three things nobody tells you before the first pitch

1. Check your campground's pad size. An 8P tent is about 4.3 metres long. Plenty of reservable sites cannot take one. Look it up before you book, not after you arrive.
2. Pitch it once in the garden. Fifteen minutes at home removes the single most stressful moment of the trip, and it tells you whether every pole and peg is actually in the bag.
3. Buy or cut a groundsheet. It protects the floor, adds a little insulation, and — cut slightly smaller than the tent footprint — stops rain from pooling between the sheet and the floor.

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Not sure which size fits your family and your campground? Tell us who is coming and we will give you a straight answer — including when the smaller one is fine. Or run the gear finder, which now sizes a tent for you.