How to Sleep in a Heatwave: Camp Instead
Why You Can’t Sleep in a Heatwave And Why the Usual Advice Fails
Written By: Rob Porter
Date Published: 23/07/26
Read time: 3-5 Mins (approx)
It’s 2am. You’ve been trying to sleep for hours now, but you just cannot get comfortable, despite having a fan on, windows open and one leg out of the duvet. So, you searched “how to cool your house down” and it’s giving you the same ideas that you’ve already tried or you’re being told to spend hundreds of pounds on air-conditioning and external insulation. Great… but that doesn’t help you now or for the next few nights!
Let’s face it, British houses are built to trap heat. Which is great in January, but miserable in July.
All that brick and internal insulation soaks up warmth during the day and lets it back out slowly overnight. On a normal summer day it’s not so bad, but with daytime temperatures of 29°C and above, your bedroom can end up sitting at around 26°C at midnight while it’s 16°C in the garden.
That’s not a typo. It can be up to ten degrees cooler on your lawn than in your bedroom.
So instead of fighting a losing battle with your house or splashing out on air conditioning, there’s a simpler option: don’t sleep in it.
The Coolest Place to Sleep in a Heatwave is not indoors
A tent doesn’t store heat. No brick, no loft full of warm air, no mattress radiating the afternoon back at you. When the air cools after sunset (and it always does, even in a heatwave), the tent cools with it. By 2am you’re sleeping at the actual night-time temperature while your bedroom is still feeling like yesterday’s sunshine.
And because it’s your garden, the stakes could not be lower. The kettle, fridge, loo and the wifi are all a few steps away — plus if you don’t like it, your bed is right there as backup. It’s basically camping with a built-in escape hatch!
The kids, for the record, will think this is the greatest thing that has ever happened.
How to Set Up a Garden Tent for the Coolest Night’s Sleep
A few small decisions make a big difference:
The one catch (and the fabric that fixes it)
Fair warning: an ordinary tent turns into a greenhouse the moment the sun hits it. Lovely sleep until 6am, then a sauna.
Blackout tents solve this issue. Depending on the manufacturer, they block out between 65% – 99% of light, which keeps the inside properly cool. So you sleep in the dark until you actually want to get up.
We’ve got Fresh & Black tents in our fleet, all rescued and refurbished like everything else we hire out, and in a heatwave they’re the ones we’d pick ourselves.
Do you need to buy a tent for this? Short answer – No!
The Met Office usually spots a heatwave about a week before it lands. That’s enough time to book a tent hire with us and have it delivered to your door before the hot nights arrive. It turns up the day before your hire starts, you pitch it on the lawn, and, after some decent night sleep, you box it up, slap on the return label and we take it away.
You don’t even need to clean it. – Summer dust, dew, dropped ice lollies – our Return It Muddy policy covers the lot.
Compare that with spending £150+ on a new blackout tent for a few warm nights per year, cleaning and maintaining it yourself, followed by a game of “where do we put this?” for the other fifty weeks of the year. Seems like a lot of faff.
Sleeping Outside in a Heatwave: Your Questions Answered
Is Garden Camping Safe For Kids?
It’s arguably the perfect first camping trip. You’re metres from the back door, so any 2am wobbles are sorted in about thirty seconds. Expect them to ask to do it again tomorrow.
What If The Weather Turns?
If the heatwave breaks, then falling asleep to rain on the tent will probably bring you some relief. If there is a thunderstorm then bail out; that’s the whole beauty of garden camping, if you don’t like it then go inside.
Do I Need A Big Garden?
No. A two-person tent needs a patch of grass about 2.5m x 2.5m. Larger family tents need roughly 4-6m x 4m of flattish ground. Always check the pitched size of tent against your space.
How Quickly Can I Get A Tent To Hire?
If we have availabillity then you’ll need to book with us at least four days ahead, and then you’ll have it on your doorstep inside the gap between “heatwave forecast” and “heatwave arrives.”
Refundable Deposit
Thoroughly Cleaned
UK Wide Delivery
Return It Muddy
Heatwave Forecasted? Hire a Tent Before the Hot Nights Arrive
Check what’s available, sleep in the garden, then send it back dusty.
We’ll handle the rest.