A rooftop tent sounds simple. Strap a tent to your roof, climb a ladder, sleep above the ground instead of on it. But before you hand over the money, there's a handful of things worth understanding so you end up with the right tent for your car, not just the one with the best photos.
What is a rooftop tent, actually?
It's a tent that mounts to your roof racks and folds out when you make camp. No pitching poles in the dark, no wet canvas rolled into the boot. You pull up, pop it open, and you've got a bed off the ground and out of the mud.
The trade off is weight and cost. A rooftop tent is a bigger investment than a swag, and it changes how your car handles a bit once it's up there. Worth knowing before you buy, not after.
Will it fit your car?
This is the bit people skip and shouldn't. Three things matter more than the model of your car.
Dynamic roof load. This is how much weight your roof can carry while driving, tent included. It's on your vehicle's compliance plate or in the owner's manual, not something to guess at. The tent's weight plus anything else on the roof needs to sit within that number.
Roof racks. A rooftop tent needs a proper set of roof racks underneath it, fitted to your factory roof rails or the correct mounting points for your car. If you're not sure what your car takes, that's worth sorting before you buy the tent, not after.
How many people it needs to sleep. Bigger tents weigh more and need a higher static load rating on the racks. A 2 person tent and a 5 person tent are not interchangeable just because they both fit on a roof.
If you're not sure where any of that leaves you, give us a call before you buy. We'd rather tell you now than have you find out on the side of the road.
Hard shell or fold out?
Rooftop tents generally fall into two camps.
Fold out tents unfold sideways or upwards on a soft cover. They usually give you the biggest sleeping area for the price, but take longer to set up and pack down, and the canvas needs a bit more care.
Hard shell tents have a rigid lid that lifts or slides open. Setup is fast, often under two minutes, and the hard shell copes better with branches, weather and general knocking about. You generally pay more for that speed and durability.
Our Roof Space 2 and Roof Space 4 are hard shell tents built around fast setup, sleeping 2 to 3 and 4 to 5 respectively.
What else do you actually need?
The tent is the start, not the finish. Depending on how you camp, a few extras make a real difference.
An annex. Something like the Family Base, a free standing annex that gives you a proper room at ground level, or the Light Base, a lighter option with no back wall for quick weatherproofing without the bulk.
A thermal inner tent. Worth having if you're camping somewhere the nights get properly cold. The Roof Space Thermal Inner Tent is built to fit the Roof Space 2 or 4 directly.
A panoramic screen. Lets you open both sides of the tent for airflow and the view without the mozzies joining you. See the Roof Space Panoramic Screen.
An awning. For shade and rain cover at camp without pitching a whole second setup. The Roof Space Light Awning adds 3 x 3.5m of cover using telescopic poles.
A shoe bag. Small thing, but it keeps muddy boots out of the sleeping area. See the Roof Space Shoe Bag.
And if you already run a Roof Space tent, we stock replacement tension straps and spring steel rods so a damaged part doesn't put the whole tent out of action.
What should you look for before you buy?
A quick checklist for whatever you're looking at, Roof Space or otherwise.
- Does it suit how many people actually camp with you, not just how many it's rated for
- Have you checked your dynamic roof load and confirmed your racks are up to it
- Hard shell or fold out, and does that trade off suit how you camp
- What does setup and pack down actually look like, especially solo
- What extras will you need on top of the tent itself, annex, inner tent, awning
Talk to us before you buy
If you're weighing up a rooftop tent, give us a call. We'll talk through what suits your car and how you actually camp, not just sell you the biggest one on the shelf.
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