Camp comfort: chairs, tables, shade and what is worth the space

Car camping is limited by volume, not weight. An estate boot holds roughly 400 to 600 litres with the rear seats up, a hatchback closer to 300 to 400, and every comfort item competes for that space with the tent, the sleep kit and the food. So the useful question is not what is comfortable, but what delivers most comfort per litre packed. By that measure a tarp beats a chair easily.

Ranking comfort by the litre#

The table below is a ranking, not a measurement. Volumes come from multiplying out folded dimensions, which anyone can repeat with a tape measure. The comfort score is an editorial judgement on a 0 to 10 scale: hours a day the item is in use, multiplied by how much it improves them.

A per-litre metric rewards small items so heavily that it is useless alone: the lantern beats the tarp eight to one, and nobody would take the lantern instead. So spend the boot in two passes.

Pass one, the cheap litres. Lantern, doormat, tarp, windbreak: 1.0 + 3.2 + 12.2 + 10.8 is 27.2 litres, and it changes the character of the whole weekend.

Pass two, absolute comfort with what remains. On a 400 litre boot: tent 60, sleep system for four 100, kitchen and cooler 60, clothing and food 100. That is 320, leaving 80. Take out pass one and 53 remain, which does not cover a table plus a tall chair, because 28.8 + 30.8 is 59.6. Two low chairs at 15.4 litres each come to 30.8, the same as one tall chair, and seat two people.

The rest of the load is in the car camping checklist. Comfort items are packed last and cut first, so fix the order before loading.

Chair height decides how the camp works#

Seat height is the specification that changes behaviour, and it is rarely on the label. There are two coherent designs and one incoherent one.

A low chair, seat 20 to 35 cm off the ground, puts your knees above your hips and reclines your torso. That suits three hours at a fire. It is wrong for eating and hard to rise from, because standing up from well below knee height demands more hip and knee range than many adults have comfortably. Adult knee height is typically 45 to 50 cm. A table chair, seat 42 to 50 cm, sits at or just above knee height, so you stand without using your hands.

The incoherent option is a low chair at a high table. Comfortable eating needs 25 to 30 cm between seat top and table top, which is why a domestic chair at 45 cm pairs with a table at 72 to 76 cm. Camp tables stand 50 to 70 cm, so subtract first: a 70 cm table with a 45 cm chair leaves 25 cm and works, while the same table with a 28 cm chair leaves 42 cm and puts your chin near the plate. A low chair is also the only one a four-year-old climbs into unaided, as our guide to camping with young children notes.

Why a camp cot sleeps colder than the tent floor#

A cot raises the deck 30 to 45 cm, which is good for backs, for getting up at night and for storing bags underneath. It is also colder than the same night on the floor, because the two lose heat differently. On the floor, heat leaves by conduction into soil buffered by its own mass rather than tracking the overnight air. On a cot, both faces of the deck meet air free to circulate, so heat leaves by convection into a fluid that is continuously replaced: no reservoir to warm, no still air layer to trap.

The fix is insulation above the deck. Match R-value to temperature the way our sleeping pad R-value guide sets out: around R-2 at 10 degrees C, R-3 or better below. A closed-cell foam mat adds a few litres and solves it. R-values published against ASTM F3340 are directly comparable between products, one of the few camp specifications you can shop on honestly. Where boot space is tight, a thick self-inflating mattress gives a comparable night for less total volume.

What shade actually does, and what UPF means#

Shade fabric changes two separate things, and only one of them is temperature.

Ultraviolet. AS/NZS 4399 defines UPF as the ratio of erythemal ultraviolet reaching skin without the fabric to the amount reaching it through it. UPF 50 means one fiftieth gets through, so 98 percent is blocked. UPF 15 transmits one fifteenth, or 6.7 percent. The jump from 15 to 50 is smaller than it looks: 6.7 percent down to 2, a difference of 4.7 percentage points of the incident dose. The rating says nothing about ultraviolet reflected up off sand, water or pale ground, which arrives under the tarp regardless.

Heat. On a clear summer day, irradiance on a horizontal surface at midday approaches 1000 watts per square metre, of which the diffuse sky component is typically 10 to 20 percent. A tarp removes the direct beam and leaves the diffuse part, so air temperature barely changes. What changes is mean radiant temperature, the quantity ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 55 uses alongside air temperature to describe comfort. Hence shade on a still 32 degrees C afternoon feeling dramatically better without moving the thermometer, and thin shade over a hot pitch still being uncomfortable. Height and airflow matter as much as fabric: a tarp 2.2 m up with open sides beats a low tight one.

Wind and rain rules for a tarp that survives the night#

Wind force scales with the square of speed. Using the velocity pressure relationship in ASCE/SEI 7-22, dynamic pressure in pascals is about 0.613 times the square of wind speed in metres per second. On a 3 by 4 metre tarp, that is 12 square metres:

These are upper bounds for a panel square to the wind; real loads depend on angle and on how air spills round the edges. The curve is the point: double the wind and the load quadruples, which is why tarps fail suddenly rather than gradually.

1. Align the ridge with the wind, not across it. Present an edge, never a face.
2. Drop the windward edge to 60 to 80 cm and peg it down. One low side sheds air over the top; a flat awning catches it.
3. Give every panel at least a 1 in 5 slope, meaning 20 cm of drop per metre. Flat fabric pools, and a puddle 40 by 40 cm and 5 cm deep is 8 litres, or 8 kg hanging on one unsupported point.
4. Guy at roughly 45 degrees, pegs driven at about 45 degrees leaning away from the pull, so load works against soil instead of levering the peg out.
5. Guy every pole on two axes. An unguyed upright is a pivot, not a support.
6. Retension before bed. Nylon absorbs water and stretches when wet, polyester much less, so a nylon tarp pitched dry is slack by midnight in rain.
7. Take it down at the forecast, not the gust. If gusts above about 15 m/s are expected, drop to a low A-frame or pack it.

The same physics governs the tent: tents in wind covers pole geometry and guy angle. If the forecast is simply wet, the weekend routine is in camping in the rain.

Lighting a table without blinding anyone at it#

The failure mode of camp lighting is one bright point source at eye level: glare, no dark adaptation, faces lit from below. Two specifications fix it.

Diffusion and placement. A rough model: a lantern sends about half its output downward over roughly 4 square metres. A 100 lumen lantern therefore gives around 50 lumens over 4 square metres, or 12 lux, which is dim. Some 300 to 400 lumens reaches 40 to 50 lux, enough to eat and play cards by. Indoor standards specify a few hundred lux for kitchen work, so camp lighting is far dimmer, and should be, because your eyes are dark adapted. Hang the source above head height, or bounce it off a pale tarp.

Colour temperature. Nocturnal insects respond most strongly to near ultraviolet and blue wavelengths. A 2700 K warm white LED emits far less below 500 nm than a 6500 K cool white one, and amber sources almost none. Warm white over the table, cool white pointed away, is the cheapest insect control available.

Head torch runtime and beam figures follow the FL1 standard, explained in our headlamp guide. For batteries: a 3 watt lantern for 4 hours a night is 12 watt hours, or 36 across three nights. A nominal 10,000 mAh bank at 3.7 V stores about 37 watt hours, of which perhaps 70 percent survives conversion to 5 V, so roughly 26 are usable: two nights of lantern and nothing else. Our power bank sizing guide does this for a whole camp.

Check this before you buy: the driveway rehearsal#

Forty minutes, worth more than any amount of reading.

1. Measure your boot in litres. Length by width by height in centimetres, divided by 1000, measuring height to the parcel shelf rather than the roof.
2. Measure every item you own, folded. Multiply the dimensions, divide by 1000, write the litres on tape stuck to the bag.
3. Add up the non-negotiables and subtract from boot volume. The remainder is your comfort budget.
4. Pack it for real, once. You learn which item goes on the back seat and whether the tarp poles fit beside the tent.
5. Pitch the tarp in the garden and hose it. Look for pooling and any panel under 20 cm of drop per metre, adjust, hose again.

Boot volume never changes, so write the numbers down and next trip is arithmetic rather than memory.

Common mistakes with camp furniture#

Buying the chair before the tarp. The chair improves three hours of a good evening. The tarp rescues a whole wet day, for 12 litres.

One chair height for everything. All low chairs and nobody eats comfortably. All tall chairs and the fire circle is a row of dinner guests.

Pitching the tarp flat. Flat panel, pool, stretched line, pole out. Slope is structural, not aesthetic.

Leaving the doormat at home. Three litres that keeps grit out of the tent.

Frequently asked questions#

What seat height should a camping chair be?#

For a fire circle or a beach, 20 to 35 cm gives a reclined position comfortable for hours. For eating, or for anyone who stands up often, 42 to 50 cm sits at or above adult knee height, so you rise without using your hands. Leave 25 to 30 cm between seat top and table top.

Are camp cots colder than sleeping on the ground?#

Yes, at the same air temperature. Air circulates under a cot deck and carries heat away by convection, and there is no soil mass to buffer the overnight low. Put a pad on the cot and match its R-value to the temperature as you would on the ground: roughly R-2 at 10 degrees C, R-3 or better below.

What does UPF 50 mean on a shade fabric?#

The fabric transmits one fiftieth of the erythemal ultraviolet that would otherwise reach skin, so 98 percent is blocked. UPF 15 transmits one fifteenth, or 6.7 percent. Defined by AS/NZS 4399, the rating covers ultraviolet only: nothing about heat, visible light, or ultraviolet reflected off sand, water or pale ground.

What colour light attracts fewest insects at camp?#

Warm sources. Nocturnal insects respond most strongly to near ultraviolet and blue wavelengths, so a 2700 K warm white LED attracts noticeably fewer than a 6500 K cool white one, and amber emitters fewer still. Use a warm, diffused lantern above the table and aim any cool white light away from where people sit.

How much wind can a tarp take before I take it down?#

Load rises with the square of wind speed. On a 12 square metre tarp presented flat, 10 m/s gives about 736 newtons and 20 m/s about 2940, equivalent to hanging 75 kg and 300 kg. Real loads are lower once the tarp is angled, but that curve is why failures are sudden. Above roughly 15 m/s forecast, pack it.

How much boot space does a family camping kit need?#

As a rough division of a 400 litre estate boot: tent 60 litres, sleep system for four 100, kitchen and cooler 60, clothing and food 100, leaving about 80 for everything else. That 80 is the whole comfort budget, and a table plus one chair is roughly 60 of it. Measure your own kit.