5 best blackout tents 2023: dark room tents for better sleep while camping
Our roundup of the best blackout tents that allow you to wake up when YOU want
If you like a bit of extra sleep in the morning, have teens who NEED extra sleep in the morning, a baby who needs naps in the afternoon or are going to a festival with lots of late nights and heavy drinking then you need a blackout tent in your life.
Blackout tents often also provide heat-reducing effects so you won’t just sleep darker, but cooler too.
No matter what kind of trip you’re going on, there’ll be a tent suited to you below.
Whether you’re going solo, with a partner, or going car camping with your whole family and need tents with blackout bedrooms for extra privacy we’ve got you covered.
In a hurry? Here’s our top 3 picks for the best black out tents.
Best tent with blackout bedrooms for families
The Ozark Trail dark rest tent provides fantastic blackout for families who are looking for a relaxing car camping holiday. It features 2 seperate rooms that are fully private from one another via a room divider.
Best budget blackout tent
The Coleman dark room tent is a fantastic budget tent that can block out a decent amount of light to help you sleep those much needed extra couple of hours past sunrise.
Best premium blackout tent
The Crua Duo features a stand-alone inner tent (cocoon) plus the Crua Duo outer tent. It offers premium blackout, heat regulation and noise dampening. It’s a 4-season tent that can be used in any climate or weather condition and will keep you warmer in winter or cooler in summer.
5 best blackout tents
Quechua Fresh and Black
A super slick, high-quality blackout tent with tonnes of features
The Quechua blackout tent is a super slick looking pop up tent that blocks out 99% of daylight and remains cooler in high heat than standard tents.
With its 99% light blocking, it is VERY dark inside during the day. In fact it’s so dark you won’t even notice sunrise or that it’s light outside.
It’ll be super easy to sleep past 10 am and not even realize. So if you are looking for a tent that allows you to properly sleep in after a few too many beers, this is the best choice.
On top of its ability to block out light inside, it also blocks light from inside your tent to outside of the tent.
This allows for maximum privacy if you are camping near to other people. Even with a light on inside the tent, no one will be able to see you or your shadow from outside.
Despite its relatively cheap price, the Quechua Fresh and Black feels and looks extremely high quality.
It also features some super handy features such as the vents being open and closable from inside of the tent, allowing you to open if you’re hot in the night or close if a storm begins, all without stepping foot outside.
While it’s fairly lightweight, its fold down disc design means it wont fit into a backpack.
If you can find a way to attach it to your backpack it would probably be okay weightwise to backpack with but may be too cumbersome. Having said that, it’s ideal if you have any sort of vehicle such as a car, motorcycle, or even bicycle.
The Quechua Fresh and Black is available in 2-person and 3-person sizes.
Ohnana Rayve 2
Designed for festivals such as Burning Man, the Ohnana was created to let you sleep off a hangover
The Ohnana Rayve II is a tent designed for festivals (if you couldn’t tell), such as Burning Man. But offers fantastic blackout properties and cooling technology.
The fact that it’s designed for festival-goers means you can rest assured that it’s black inside during the day. No one wants to wake up at the crack of dawn to bright sunlight and blistering heat after a night of debauchery fun.
With its reflective rainfly, the tent manages to stay up to 25°F / 14°C cooler than a standard tent on a 77°F / 25°C day. A noticeable difference that will buy you a couple of hours extra sleep without sweating.
The amount of light it blocks isn’t quite as substantial as the Quechua Fresh and Black, but is definitely still dark enough to allow you to sleep easily at any time of the day.
Despite its small aesthetics, the Ohnana tent can fit a queen size mattress and some belongings for 2 people comfortably.
It’s also super easy to set up and take down, taking about 5 minutes each way when you’ve practiced it once.
Ozark Trail dark rest 10-person
A large tent with blackout bedrooms for families and car camping
The Ozark Trail dark rest tent comes in various sizes, but the 10-person version is one of the only blackout tents on the market large enough to fit a whole family and is also one of the only tents that features separate blackout bedrooms.
Its dark rest technology blocks about 70% of sunlight, which is plenty enough to allow you to sleep in way past 5 am without being completely oblivious to what time of day it is.
It’s super convenient if you have teenagers or small children camping with you as the amount of darkness is perfect for daytime naps, sleeping in or killing the glare from phones and tablets, etc.
There are also skylights that can be completely closed for darkness or opened slightly/fully if you want more light.
Along with its ability to block sunlight it’s also great for privacy. Even with lights or lanterns turned on inside the tent at night time, people outside of the tent cannot see in at all. Great for added security and feeling relaxed when chilling inside at night.
Being a family car camping tent, it offers tonnes of space. It can easily fit two queen airbeds with plenty of room to spare and with a peak height of 78”, can easily be stood up in, even if you’re 6 foot and over.
The tent comes with a complete room divider, allowing you to have two completely separate and private rooms if you wish.
Other neat features of the dark rest tent is that it literally takes 10-15 minutes to set up and take down, has pre-attached steel poles for easy set up, an electrical cord port inlet at the front of the tent, plenty of gear pockets and a hanging organizer in the ceiling.
Coleman Dome Tent
A blackout tent suitable for couples or small families and available with or without a screened porch
The Coleman black out tent is a great budget option available in 4 or 6-person capacity and the option of a screened porch. It features Coleman’s dark room technology which not only reduces sunlight but heat too.
While Coleman states that their dark room technology blocks 90% of sunlight, due to some strange design choices, it’s much less than that in reality.
While most of the material of the tent is made with blackout fabric, parts of the tent are not. This allows a lot of light to penetrate through.
The tent is definitely still much darker than your average tent, but 90% is a little misleading. If you just want to block out the glaring morning sunlight to get a few extra hours past sunrise then it will be absolutely fine, but if you’re looking for a proper blackout tent, this isn’t the choice.
Its blackout material does do a good job of providing more privacy inside the tent to outsiders. When a light is on inside you can barely see it, nor anyone inside of it.
While its heat reducing capabilities are not as good as some others on this list, it definitely does reduce the heat enough to prevent sauna syndrome on a particularly hot and humid day.
The tent comes with one e-port for easy electrical cord access and if you choose the tent with a porch room, is a great place to keep your dogs out of blistering heat when they want a break, or at night when you’re around the campfire.
Crua Duo Combo
A premium blackout tent perfect for serious campers, fishermen or hunters
Crua offers an interesting alternative when it comes to tents. They offer modular tents that can be added on to each other to create separate rooms. They also provide outer and inner tents.
The Crua Cocoon is an inflatable blackout tent that is nothing like an inner tent you’ll have seen before. Using patented materials the tent is extremely insulated to regulate temperature and keep you warmer in winter and cooler in summer, block out light and dampen outside noise.
Its ability to block out light is second to none due to just how thick the insulated material of the inner tent is.
The Duo Combo features both the inside inflatable cocoon and outer Crua Duo tent for easy configuration.
The Crua Cocoon requires an air pump to inflate it which can be bought on Amazon here if you do not already have a suitable one.
Recommended accessories
Odoland LED light and fan
The Odoland LED light and fan is a great accessory for your tent. It can be used in various positions such as hung from the ceiling of your tent or folded over and propped up.
It uses batteries and can last up to 20 hours continuously when used in light mode only, and 15 hours with the fan.
Intex hand pump
The Intex hand pump is perfect for inflating the Crua Cocoon, or for any air beds you may take with you on your camping trip.
Despite being a hand pump it is super quick to inflate tents, air beds and any other accessories you may have that require inflating.
FAQ’s
Are blackout tents worth it?
The words “sleeping in” are almost sacrilegious to many campers. But not everyone who goes camping wants to be up and out by the crack of dawn. Blackout tents are absolutely worth it if you prefer to sleep in past sun rise, have teen kids who NEED to sleep in past sun rise or if you enjoy a few too many beers at the end of your day.
Another neat feature of blackout tents is that the features that make tents darker inside often also make the tent cooler. While they wont be “cool” in the baking heat, they can be considerably cooler than a tent without blackout technology.
Are BlackOut tents cooler?
While some blackout tents won’t offer much in terms of cooling, many blackout tents are cooler than standard tents due to the technology used. For instance, Quechua’s Fresh and Black and Crua’s cocoon tent not only keeps out sunlight but drastically reduce the inside temperature too.
What is a BlackOut tent?
A blackout tent is a tent that utilizes various technologies, often named different things by different manufacturers, to reduce/block sunlight from entering your tent. It basically allows you to sleep for longer after sunrise, while providing privacy at night time by blocking people from being able to see into your tent if you have lights on.
