Campers And Backpackers Are Trading In Their Sleeping Bags For This Love-It-Or-Hate-It Gear Alternative

If you're going on a camping trip, a sleeping bag is probably near the top of your checklist. But there's an ongoing — sometimes fierce — debate in the camping community about whether these are the best, most comfortable pieces of equipment for getting a good night's sleep. In the opposition camp, so to speak, are proponents of camping quilts, which are quilts made from sleeping bag materials, including insulated, lightweight, and hydrophobic ("waterproof") synthetics.

With a zip running all the way up the side, sleeping bags fully cocoon their users, providing warmth and a layer of fabric between person and sleeping mat. Quilts, however, are more like blankets, with no hood and often a small "foot box" to keep your feet warm and in place. They are also lightweight — a boon to expeditioners and thru-hikers — with some weighing 10 ounces less than top-of-the-range lightweight sleeping bags. Because the quilts are hooked to a sleeping pad or mat, rather than enclosing you like a mummy in a sarcophagus, they also allow for greater temperature regulation and mobility, a welcome reprieve for fidgety sleepers.

Counterintuitively, sleeping quilts have some insulation advantages, too. Insulation requires air pockets, but when lying in a sleeping bag, you compress the air between your body and the material, making that part of the sleeping bag unable to effectively insulate you. Because quilts lack this bottom layer of material, they are often as warm as sleeping bags, irrespective of the weight difference. You'll also need an appropriate sleeping pad to pair your quilt with — opting for the wrong one can keep you awake all night and make tent-sharing miserable. When choosing a sleeping pad, select an R-value, or the rate at which it loses heat, which matches the season you are camping: a value of one or two for summer, five or higher for winter.

A popular subreddit titled "Does anybody hate quilts?" shows that these pieces of equipment, despite their virtues, are not unanimously loved. Many of the appraisals say quilts are good for lightweight, three-season camping, whereas the draftiness can make them ill-suited to winter camping and the biting cold. It's also vital that the straps, quilt, and sleeping mat are working in tandem if you want to retain heat on the coldest nights. As one user wrote, "The aspect of quilts, however, that do need more R&D is the straps, or, stepping back, the system for sealing things up when it gets cold. Something truly innovative beyond adding zippers or being actually backboarded to the pad."

A reviewer for Garage Grown Gear also had an issue with draftiness, noting that buyers should select a quilt wide enough to wrap under the sleeper for maximum warmth. But that was a caveat in an otherwise positive review, in which the quilt, used across all four seasons, received high marks, including for weight and compressibility and overall temperature control.

But no piece of gear is ever going to be perfect. Justin Outdoors, a popular gear YouTuber, posted a video that covered "why quilts suck" but it was tellingly titled "And why Quilts are STILL better than Sleeping Bags." In his review, he notes that quilts are prone to coldness and can be prohibitively expensive, but praises their comfort and weight savings.