Travel Guides Outdoor Adventures Camping
Lexi Kassler
After a great morning hike and a scrumptious outdoor lunch, nothing’s better than a nap in your tent. But on those warm sunny days when there’s no shade around, it can be uncomfortable crawling into a tent with no airflow. In fact, it can feel a lot like you’re being cooked in a tent-sized Easy-Bake Oven, which is the exact opposite of what you want when you’re napping. But worry not; campers are nothing if not ingenious when it comes to crafting ways to make their camp more cozy!
The easiest way to keep your tent nice and cool is to reflect the sun’s rays with a reflective blanket. Reflective blankets are often found in emergency first aid kits and are typically used in urgent situations to keep you warm by reflecting your body heat back on you. However, when you find your tent creeping up in temperature, you can instead drape this blanket over your tent to prevent the sun from turning it into a sauna (and you into a sweaty rotisserie chicken).
Here’s why a reflective blanket is the key to comfy afternoon napping
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If you’ve never tried this camping hack, you might be wondering how this is such an effective trick for keeping your tent cool. Simply put, reflective blankets (also known as space blankets) are excellent at reflecting heat. According to a study in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, these blankets “have the ability to prevent and treat hypothermia by reducing heat loss through convection, conduction, evaporation, and thermal radiation.”
If you use the blanket with the reflective side in, you will trap the heat inside, keeping you warm. However, if you place the blanket on top of your tent with the reflective side facing out, the sun’s rays can reflect off it, keeping your tent cool. Another plus of using a space blanket is that they are typically quite small, so it won’t take up much room in your backpack if you’re on a multi-day hike. And if the temperature gets cold at night, you can simply flip the blanket over to trap heat inside your tent instead.
For an added breeze, open the flaps on both sides of your tent and try to adjust the direction of your tent to catch an occasional gust of wind. This will keep the air flowing in your tent and cool things down. That, paired with your reflective blanket shield, will provide the ultimate napping experience — even in the heat.
