Skip to content
FestivalCamping
Gear

Sleeping bags

Nights get colder than anyone expects.

27 items · Ad — affiliate link

Buying advice

What matters here

The number that matters is the comfort temperature, not the extreme rating. Extreme means you survive the night. Comfort means you sleep.

And the number in the product name is usually not the comfort rating at all — it is the limit rating, which sits about four degrees lower. The "Deuter Orbit +5°", for instance, has a 5 °C limit and a 9 °C comfort rating. Read the name as the comfort figure and you will reach for a bag that is too thin, every time.

On top of that, the ratings are optimistic. The Swiss consumer magazine Saldo re-tested four sleeping bags on 28 May 2021 and found every manufacturer rating two to three degrees too flattering. So add two to three degrees — to the comfort temperature, not to the number in the name.

For a festival that means: in central Europe July nights drop to 8–12 degrees, and at altitude — Nova Rock, Frequency — sometimes to 5. A summer bag rated "comfort 15 °C" is the wrong call there, on precisely the one night it counts.

Gear