About tent capacities?!

[Excitedannie]

Do tent manufacturers honestly think we sleep like robots??? A 6 person tent would actually only sleep 3 comfortably in my opinion; a 4 person, only 2 etc. u less people do sleep touching each other with no space around them!

Drives me mad!!!!! AIBU or just easily irritated?!

They fit the right number of people if you all stay still and have no bags.

Our "couple" tent is a 4 man... fits a double inflatable mattress with room for a bag each side.

Our family tent is a 6XL (4 of us, 3 bedrooms)

I agree, the space allocation is normally based on roll mats. Air beds, SIMs etc are wider so in many cases that number of people wouldn't actually fit.

Spaces allocation seems to assume no bags!

Tents used to be based on how smalll you could get and be able to carry it knowing you had enough space. Now that the sizes have become exponential and are mostly carried in cars/vans it's more of a comfort decision how much space you want. But the method used to size them has been consistent. A 1 man can fit one person, a 2 man two and so on.

I agree, for leisure always buy at least one man bigger than you need so you have extra space for comfort and stuff.

however if you were military, hiking, an explorer or in an emergency situation - ie the people tents were really developed for - then 3 men sleeping side by side in a 3 man tent is correct. They need the lightest, smallest tent possible.

to be fair it is an accurate description when you think of it like there - there is literally room for 3 men, it doesn’t say 3 men + air beds + extra legroom + bags + the dog

DS and I have an 8 man teepee just for the two of us 😁

Yep - golden rule for holidays, festivals etc is that your bag counts as a 'man'. So a 4 man tent is 2 people + 2 bags, 6 man is 3 people + 3 bags and so on.

But tents don't just have sleeping space, they usually have a porch or some living space too, surely you can put bags there? Admittedly our big tent for longer holidays is an 8 man for 5 of us but that is so kids can bring pals...But we managed a hiking trip this summer just fine with five of us and a dog between a 2 man and 3 man lightweight hiking tent (so think very small, can't stand up type space) with bags and it was fine, just put them in a waterproof cover and put them in the porch!

It does depend what you want from your tent though

Hangs this made me laugh - and of course the small table for the make up and hair concoctions that my daughter needs!