Tents and Shelter, Sized by the People Sleeping In Them

The four decisions that make up a tent purchase

Tent listings are full of numbers, and only four of them change the trip. Everything else is detail you can ignore until you have camped a few times.

Size, measured in square feet per sleeper. Capacity ratings are a floor-area division, not a comfort promise. CORE Equipment publishes both figures for its own tents — its 14 by 9 ft model is listed as “9 (industry standard) / 4 + gear (most comfortable)” — which tells you exactly how far apart the two numbers are. Take the number on the box, subtract two, and that is the group it actually suits. Aim for 20 to 25 square feet per person.

Height, which decides how much of that floor you can use. A dome tent slopes its walls inward, so the perimeter is space you can lie in but not sit up in. A cabin tent with near-vertical walls gives you nearly the whole footprint at full height. That is why a Eureka Copper Canyon LX 6 at 100 square feet and a 7 ft peak feels enormously bigger than a dome with the same floor and a 72 in center. If you camp anywhere it rains, buy the height.

Weather protection, which is mostly not the fabric rating. Family tents typically publish 1,200 to 1,500 mm of hydrostatic head, measured under ISO 811 by raising water pressure against the fabric until it penetrates. That number matters less than three things it does not describe: whether the seams are taped, how far the rainfly reaches down the tent, and whether you can tension the fly so it never touches the inner wall.

Setup type, which matters more than it sounds. An instant tent keeps its poles attached and pitches in one to two minutes; a pole-and-clip dome takes ten to fifteen the first few times. In daylight in calm weather the difference is nothing. At 9pm in wind with tired children it is the whole evening. You pay for it in weight and packed length: CORE's 9-person instant is 40 lb in a 48 in bag, against about 16.8 lb for a Coleman Skydome 6.

What size, for whom

What a beginner can safely ignore

• Denier numbers. 68D polyester tells you the yarn thickness. It is a rough proxy for durability and it will not decide anything for you.
• Season ratings. Nearly every tent sold for family camping is a 3-season tent, so the label distinguishes nothing.
• Pole material, up to a point. Fiberglass poles are heavier and more brittle than aluminum, and at the family-tent price point that is what you get. It only becomes a real consideration in wind.

What we have not done

We have not pitched any of these tents in a storm, left one out for a season, or measured a floor with a tape. Every figure on these pages is a published manufacturer specification, with the one exception clearly labeled: OutdoorGearLab's measured floor for the Coleman Sundome 6, which we cite because it usefully shows how far a listed size can drift from a measured one. What we do instead of testing is set out at how we research.

When the tent is settled, the next thing that decides whether the trip works is what you sleep on, not what you sleep in: see sleep systems, and the packing list at checklists.