What to Look for in a Family Tent
Camping is the perfect way to enjoy the great outdoors and create long-lasting memories with your family.
Knowing what makes a family tent can make or break the overall camping experience. With so many great family tents to choose from, it is easy to get overwhelmed by all the options at your disposal.
One of my favourite things in the summer is heading out to the coast to go camping and soaking up the glorious sunshine; one of my least favourite things is waking up with the sunrise at 5am and by 8am feeling like I am trying to sleep in a sauna. The Mackenzie 4 BlackOut tent from Coleman features their BlackOut Bedroom design; this clever bit of tech blocks out the daylight, keeping the sleeping area cool in the daytime, up to 5°C cooler in fact.
The Spruce Falls is a classic four-man tent from Coleman with a few useful modern twists. It features the practical symmetrical design with a bedroom at either end and a living space in the middle. This division provides some much-needed privacy for families with older children or a group of mates.
This year we decided to upgrade our usual camping trip from a long weekend to a full 10 days of outdoor living. For this we wanted a very specific tent: something you can stand up in, as this makes getting changed and general moving about so much easier. We also wanted plenty of space in the sleeping area, as trying to share an airbed with my husband is similar to trying to take a nap on a bouncy castle at a 6-year old’s birthday party, so this year we want enough space for two single airbeds.
Summer is truly upon us, even if no one has told the weather. It’s time to pack up your airbed and portable BBQ and head to a field with one toilet for 200 people, it’s camping season!!! The Milano 10 is an excellent choice for a large family, group of friends or one person and their entire house, with a 200cm peak height most people will be able to comfortably stand which makes activities like getting changed and river dancing much easier.
During the gloomy winter months, my mind often turns to making plans in the summer and seeing as how I’m floating between post-wedding and pre-mortgage money is understandably a little tight, so a budget camping trip is looking like the only chance of a holiday this year. Luckily, I LOVE camping! If you are camping with a family, have friends too lazy to set up their own tent, or just like lots of space, the Saturn 6 from ‘Skandika’ could be exactly what you need.
One of the biggest pains in the butt when it comes to camping is actually pitching your fabric home. It often involves a whole bunch of poles that look exactly the same and trying to work out where on earth they go. The Igloo from Khyam takes away some of the hassle, but using their ‘Khyam Rapidex Quick Erect System’ (no giggling please), where all poles are sewn into the flysheet, all you have to do is simply click them into place which takes a matter of seconds. This makes it easy to move between sites and just sit down with a beer.
As my friends and I get older, our annual camping trip has progressed from 2 man tents, ground mats and a tin of beans to a miniature village with all the latest camping gadgets and creature comforts. The Coleman FastPitch Air Valdes 4 Person Tent is just the thing to knock my friends’ pop-up tents out of the park; the Valdes offers idiot-proof erection due to its inflatable pole system, with a high pressure valve for quick inflation and deflation, meaning the tent can easily be put up by one person.
There are tents and then there is the Nimbus 12. The tent itself is enormous, fitting 9-12 people with 3 separate sleeping compartments which fits 3 in 2 of the pops and 6 in the larger section.
There is a running joke within our group of friends that one of our mates couldn’t put a tent up even if his life depended on it. I kid you not, this year all he had to do was peg down the outer layer (someone else had already done the rest) and instead he opted for sleeping in his van all weekend, as the prospect of reaching for the mallet was just too much.