Tent - Design Factors

Design Factors

Many factors affect tent design, including:

• Financial cost
• Intended use
  • Backpacking/tramping, lengthy duration for carrying the tent. Weight and size are the most crucial factors.
  • Touring, high frequency of pitching and striking the tent. Ease of pitching/striking the tent is important.
  • Static, staying at one campsite for a week or two at a time. A comfortable camping experience is the target.

• Camping season

A tent required only for summer use may be very different from one to be used in the depths of winter. Manufacturers label tents as one-season, two/three-season, three/four season, four season, etc. A one-season tent is generally for summer use only, and may only be capable of coping with light showers. A three-season tent is for spring/summer/autumn and should be capable of withstanding fairly heavy rain, or very light snow. A four-season tent should be suitable for winter camping in all but the most extreme conditions; an expedition tent (for mountain conditions) should be strong enough to cope with heavy snow, strong winds, as well as heavy rain. Some tents are sold, quite cheaply, as festival tents; these may be suitable only for camping in dry weather, and may not even be showerproof.

• Size of tent
  • The number and age of people who will be camping determines how big and what features the sleeping area(s) must have.
  • To allow for inclement weather, some covered living space separate from the sleeping area(s) may be desirable. Alternatively, cyclists on a camping trip may wish for enough covered space to keep their bicycles out of the weather.
  • To allow for sunshine, an awning to provide shade may not go amiss. Some tents have additional poles so that the fabric doorways can be used as awnings.
  • Internal height. Manufacturers quote the maximum internal height, but the usable internal height may be a little lower, depending on the tent style. Ridge tents have a steeply sloping roof so the whole height is rarely usable. Dome tents slope gently in all directions from the peak enabling nearly the entire height to be usable for a large portion of the tent. Tunnel tents have a good usable height along the center line. Frame and cabin tents have gently sloping roofs and near vertical walls. To fully evaluate the usable space in a tent, both the maximum wall height and slope must be considered. There are four useful heights used to evaluate appropriate tent height: lie down only, sit, kneel, stand. The exact heights at which these apply depend on the heights of the campers involved; those over 182 cm (6 ft) are likely to have less choice of tents than those who are somewhat shorter. As a starting point, sitting height is often between 90 and 105 cm (3 ft to 3 ft 6 in), and kneeling height may be between 120 and 150 cm (4 ft to 5 ft). These different heights are useful for evaluating whether certain tasks, such as changing clothes, can be accomplished in the tent.

• Number of sleeping areas

Larger tents sometimes are partitioned into separate sleeping areas or rooms. A tent described as viz-a-viz usually has two separate sleeping areas with a living area in between.

• Tent color

In some areas of some countries, there may be restrictions as to what color tents can be, thereby reducing the visual impact of campsites. The best colors for low visibility are green, brown, or tans.

An opposing consideration is of safety and calls for visible unnatural colors, such as bright yellow or red. Bright-colored tents can be easily spotted from the air in cases of an emergency. They are important in places where vehicles may not notice a low-visibility tent and run over its unsuspecting occupiers. Campers wandering away from camp will find their way back more easily if their tent is highly visible. Additionally, lost hikers may find rescue by spotting a visible camp site from afar.

• Setup effort

Some styles of camping and living outdoors entails quick setup of tents. As a general rule, the more robust the tent, the more time and effort needed to set up and dismantle, though specific design attention on quick setup (possibly in exchange for cost and/or weight) can alter that (for example, the Swedish manufacturer Hilleberg specify a design goal that their toughest tents should be easily pitched by a single camper in inclement weather while wearing mittens, but the implementation of that adds to their price). The style of the tent also has a great impact on its ease of use.

• Weather conditions

A tent can be more or less able to cope with cold weather or rainy conditions. The amount of water resistance is sometimes meassured in the unit millimeters, water gauge.