How to sleep better while car camping
Are car camping products worth it? Reviews from a veteran car camper.
If you value quality sleep when camping, traveling, or living on the road, investing in a few products can make all the difference. After nearly two cumulative years on the road, here’s honest reviews of products/items for car camping and whether they’re worth it – from someone so invested in car camping that she started a whole company about it.
Window covers
Cost: $15-$25
Are they worth it? Absolutely.
If you’re planning on doing any stealth, parking lot or public camping (or even camping when there’s a fool moon out), magnetic window covers are highly recommended. They’re easy to install, just magnet them to the body of your car around the door opening, then close the door. These covers make it impossible for other people to see in, adding a safety element, plus they block the light. Need to sleep in a rest stop or a Planet Fitness parking lot? You won’t have to worry about the lights or late-night parking lot lingerers. A bonus of some magnetic window covers is that one side is reflective. This allows them to be used on hot sunny days to create shade and maintain a cooler temperature in your vehicle. On cold camping nights, the reflective materials turned inward helps keep the warm air in.
These covers come for the two front and two passenger windows, so what about the trunk window and the small windows in the cargo space. After much searching, that yielded no viable options, we made our own. Here's how you can make your own vehicle window covers for your cargo space and trunk: Start by grabbing scrap or newspaper and using painters tape to tape it to your window to make a template. You’ll want to reinforce any seams so that the template holds its shape when you remove it. Once removed, place it on a piece of cardboard or durable polycarbonate. Trace it and cut it out. If you make your cover tight enough, it will stick and sit inside your windows creating a cover. You can use this method to cover your cargo space windows as well as your trunk window.
Mosquito nets
Cost: $15-20
Are they worth it? Eh, it depends.
Your location and camping preferences will decide whether these are worth it for you. Do you like car camping in the summer, or in cooler months? Do you live near bodies of water or are mosquitoes bad in your areas? Are you comfortable sleeping with your windows down?
There have been a handful of times that the mosquito nets have really come in handy for me. All the rest of the time, I tote them around “just in case.” For some folks, feeling prepared is worth it. For others, saving money and getting by with as little gear as possible is the way to go.
Considering whether you’re comfortable sleeping with your windows down is a big factor with these mosquito nets as well. If you’re an urban camper staying in rest stops, parking lots or stealth camping on streets, maybe not. If you’re out in the woods (and not worried about bears crawling in your windows), maybe yes on the covers.
A real mattress
Cost: $100+
Are they worth it: You bet!
Travel can be exhausting. Throw a few nights of poor sleep in the mix and your chance of being your best self on your adventures, gets slimmer. Utilizing an actual mattress with some form of cushion on top means better sleep. Some folks prefer air mattresses, but these come with their own drawbacks: potato-chip-bag sounds all night, feeling when the other person moves if you aren’t sleeping solo, sleeping on a bag of cold air when cold weather camping, not to mention needing to air them up and the risk of punctures or mid-sleep deflations.
If your budget is higher and you’re looking for a higher end camping mattress (one that is resistant to firming up in cold weather), check out Hest.
If you’re looking for a space-saving, affordable option for your foam mattress, check out tri-fold mattresses. They can be folded and stored in the cargo space of your vehicle and unfolded when it’s time to sleep.
A sleeping platform
Cost: DIY: $150+, Professionally built: $1,400+
Are they worth it? My neck and back say yes.
If your vehicle is not 100% level inside (and none of them are) AND if you’re over 5’ tall, you’re going to need some form of platform to level and extend the area for sleeping in the back of your vehicle. Some folks have opted for a piece of platform on 2x4 legs and it gets the job done. Here are some of the pain points with this method from online forums:
- They’re heavy and hard to move
- There’s little flexibility for making adjustments on the road
- It’s hard to transition back to using your vehicle after a trip with a big piece of plywood in the back
- Storage is available, but difficult to use. Some folks have opted for sticking plastic totes underneath their beds to make it easier to reach items underneath in the middle of the platform, but these come with their own drawbacks.
Other people go with a professionally built sleeping platform. Here are some thoughts from consumers and folks online about going this route:
- The main concern is the upfront cost. The price can be a bit much for some people to fork out at once. However, the kit costs less than 10 nights in a very average hotel room and can even eliminate the cost of paid campgrounds.
The biggest benefits to using a professionally built car camping platform and kit are:
- There are some that are modular, like CarCamp, that allow you to fold them up into your cargo area at the end of a trip so you can still have your daily driver with back usable back seats.
- Because some professionally built kits are modular, you can install and remove them piece-by-piece, making it easy for even more petite, solo campers to maneuver it.
- These can come with under-bed storage drawers providing easy-access storage, and also providing a table/workspace, as storage drawers can come with toppers to make table areas.
- At least one car camping kit (CarCamp) will work in a variety of vehicles. Have a Subaru Forester now but want to go car camping in a friend’s Honda CR-V? Just switch your kit.
Dog beds
Cost: $140
Are they worth it? Absolutely. Your sleep, and pet, will thank you.
If you’ve ever tried to car camp with a larger dog, or another person and a small dog, you’ve probably experienced the wiggling, the middle-of-the-night scouting, and the bed circling your dog does. With a collapsible front-seat dog bed, you can move even a large dog to the front passenger seat and a smaller dog to the driver’s seat to give them their own sleep – separate from you. CarCamp’s folding dog bed disassembles and lays flat so you can tuck it behind your seats or under your car camping mattress while you drive, then just stick it together (without screws or glues), adjust the legs to make the platform level on the seat and drop a dog bed or blankets on top. If you have a pet this is a necessity for car camping.
Rechargeable fans
Cost: $40
Are they worth it: Wouldn’t camp without them
If you aren’t planning on only cold-weather camping, battery powered fans can be your secret weapon. There will be times where the forecasted low for a night bites you in the butt. Sure, it’s going to get down to 57 at 5 a.m., but if it’s 78 when you go to sleep, you’re going to be warm. Throw another person or a dog in bed with you and you’ll have a sweaty bed in no time, especially with little air circulation. Rechargeable fans can make all the difference by helping push warm air from inside and pull cool air inside. For the best results, try two: one pointed inside the vehicle and one pointed out. You can clip them easily to you “oh shit” handles in the front and/or back of the car depending on how much direct air you’re looking for.
After trying a couple, our recommendation is a larger fans with a really durable clip. These will hold a charge all night long on medium speed and they move a lot of air. Other, smaller fans don’t have the full battery capacity to run all night and you don’t want to wake up sweating at 3 a.m. The durable clip also decreases the chances of a middle-of-the-night wake up from a falling fan.
Rechargeable magnetic lights
Cost: $30+
Are they worth it: 100%
Unless you’re the kind of car camper who plans well enough in advance to roll up to your campsite while it’s still light out every time, you’re going to need lights. And even if you do set up your bed and campsite before dark, you’re probably still going to need lights. Head lamps are a great solution for camping and car camping. Magnetic lights are wonderful for car camping. Magnet them to the side of your car and have a steady light – no bouncing around or blinding your friends who you look at them. Stationary lights means you’ll be able to find your lights when you need them, and they make cooking, eating and general movement around your campsite easier.
Opting for rechargeable lights is a nice benefit as well. Not only are you keeping some batteries out of the landfill, but you can recharge them from your car while driving or from a travel-sized battery pack for an easy power-up.
Jet Boil:
Cost: $110+
Are they worth it? Eh, depends on your goals.
Jet Boils are touted as one of the best stoves for camping and backpacking, but what about car camping? When living or camping in your car, space is at a premium. That’s one reason that a Jet Boil is great. With its small compact size it fits perfectly in the drawers of the CarCamp kit. The fact that it heats up really quickly is another benefit – more time for adventuring, less time watching water boil. Some of the reasons you might want to swap a Jet Boil for a larger stow-and-go propane stove is increased cook space. If you’re making food, or even hot beverages, for more than one person the JetBoil doesn’t really save you time. A traditional one or two burner camp stove is also more stable than the JetBoil. Having your stove and boiling water spill on your table, or worse into your car camping drawers isn’t fun. At the end of the day, whether or not a JetBoil makes sense for you depends on whether you value space and speed over stability and cook surface.
Camping Table
Cost: varies
Are they worth it? Nah
Sure, there are a lot of activities at your campsite that are made simpler with the use of a table. If you’re car camping for more than a night though, the drawback of toting a table around, just isn’t worth it. Instead, you can opt for a car camping platform with built in drawers with table tops. Having these built in means there’s no extra gear you have to worry about storing on top of your bed and no additional large items to move around while in transit.
What gear you choose for your car camping adventure is up to you and your goals. Are you looking to be a budget weekend warrior? A safe solo traveler? Or are you switching to long stints or life on the road. Whatever your goals, there’s gear out there to help you! CarCamps owner, Audra, has lived on the road full time. If you’re looking for a little help get started, ask a question – we’ve probably got an answer.