When taking a family camping trip, you need a tent that gives you a bit more space and rooms to accommodate more people and children.
This devision comes at a cost though - 6+ people tents are heavier, more bulky and more difficult to set up. But they are also super practical and work for large groups as well as families.
So, with all these extra hands on your trip, you can get enough help to put up a tent and pull it down afterwards. Hopefully.
I slept in a few of the best family tents with my own family and loaned a few to my mates. Here are my joint top 5, starting with the most notable 3 below.
Best Family Tents (Top Picks)
Best Overall
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Best Value
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Best Lightweight
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Top Tents For Families (Detailed Reviews)
I reviewed over 12 family tents for this article. Here are my top 5.
- The North Face Wawona for 6 People - Best Overall
- Coleman 8 Person Red Canyon - Best Value
- Ozark Trail 3 Room Cabin
- Wenzel 8-Person Klondike
- Core 9 Person Extended Dome - Best Lightweight
Read our complete buyers guide for family tents.
Best Overall Family Tents
1. The North Face Wawona for 6 People
The North Face Wawona is perfect when it comes to comfort, easy set up, weather resistance, and portability.
The Wawona has 86.1sq ft of floor area and a good peak height of 6’8”.
2 windows and 2 vents at the top will help you keep condensation under control.
With a total of 3 doors in the vestibule, people will be able to exit and enter freely. You are even able to cook and sit in the vestibule area during intense storms.
Wawona has no shortage of pockets, there are 10 of them inside the tent for all your things. There is also a line inside the tent to dry your clothing.
The Wawona provides excellent weather resistance. It does not bend or shift in wind and remains waterproof in heavy rain.
The Wawona weighs 20lbs and 15oz, and compacts down to the size of a standard camping sleeping bag. The duffle-style carrying bag allows you to stuff the tent in easily.
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Main Features
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Key Takeway
The North Face Wawona is a brilliant tent for family camping. It requires a no-hassle set up and offers superior weather resistance and ventilation. You will be able to keep things neat and safe thanks to all its pockets. Ideal for many family camping adventures.
2. Coleman 8 Person Red Canyon
The Coleman 8 Person Red Canyon is suited for 8 people, with room dividers, allowing you to create three separate rooms. This means you can share a tent with another family.
Measuring in at 17x10 ft, the sealed in flooring makes all the spacious interior suitable for sleeping. Protected with a rainfly, this tent offers good water resistance during rainy weather.
Its resistance to the elements includes a design that intends to deflect wind well.
For warmer nights, use its mesh panelling to allows for adequate airflow, adding to the comfort level.
The structure of the tent is pretty easy to assemble because poles are color-coded and shock corded for your convenience.
Significant headroom of 6 ft makes the space conducive and easy to access.
The tent shows up for the thrill of the adventure with value and quality, making it an understandable best value choice.
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Main Features
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Key Takeway
The Coleman Red Canyon 8 provides a tremendous amount of versatility, offering privacy and peace of mind in terms of protection from the elements. It offers extra sleeping space on the rainy nights outdoors. It comes with rainfly and the WeatherTec system with its welded floors and inverted seams, while a door awning helps to keep the elements out.
3. Ozark Trail 3 Room Cabin
4/5 Overall Rating
Thanks to its umbrella-like roof setup, with the Ozark Trail 3 Room Cabin you are not risking a complicated assembly process.
The tent allows you to divide the spacious interior into 3 separate rooms, with the inclusion of one queen air mattress and one twin air mattress.
The tent boasts quality ventilation features and 6 windows, making the space breathable for summer nights. While during the rainy days you can achieve good water resistance with the tent's full coverage rainfly.
The tent also has gear pockets and electrical cord access useful for messy family holidays.
You can enjoy some time in the porch area that has bug protection too.
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Main Features
What we like
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Key Takeaway
The Ozark Trail tent is accessible, easy to use and offers a nice breathable space. Overall, it's a good large tent for those who camp with friends and family often. It's on a heavy side, so it's best transported in a truck or camper van.
4. Wenzel 8-Person Klondike
The house-like design of this slightly difficult to pronounce tent - Wenzel Klondike 8 and 16x11 feet spacious interior, makes this tent incredibly useful.
Out of 8 people, 5 can fit in the main interior, of 98 sq ft, while 3 more can set up camp in the 60 sq ft. screen room that boasts zip up walls. For its size and quality it is good on the pocket and on the adventure.
This kind of design is best suited for campsites that are sheltered and not exposed to rough winds.
The usability of the tent is highlighted in the 6.5 ft headspace, no need to sacrifice posture for the camping experience.
The mesh design to the roof and windows provides protection from insects while allowing fresh air through.
The main feature of the tent is the dome-like structure of the main compartment with the capacity to extend further, with the convenience of ziperlike walls.
The design of this tent is versatile in the sense that the screen room, with a spacious feel to it can be used for relaxation, protection, storage, with a similar bath-tub design to the main compartment, ensuring that your gear is not exposed to wet conditions.
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Main Features
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Key Takeaway
Wenzel Klondike 8 boasts a good waterproof material and the house-like structure provides a spacious interior.
5. Core 9 Person Extended Dome
Measuring in at 16x9 ft the Core 9 Person Extended Dome boasts a good amount of space, with an airy feel to it.
However, the promise of 9 people is a bit of a stretch, it's more suitable for 8 people.
This kind of floor plan provides campers with dependability and ease of use.
The drawcard of this tent is fabric that has H2O technology, working to block water absorption and maximise water runoff. Notably versatile in that the taped rainfly can be removed, for the tent to be used in warmer, drier conditions with relative ease.
The Core ventilation design ensures that cold air is drawn in from the ground and that the mesh ceiling allows for hot air to escape.
With the tent’s zippered panels on doors and windows, spacious interior, does not sacrifice privacy. So organisation and privacy make a camping experience all the more enjoyable.
There is a gear loft and organiser pockets, for a secure storage space, and more user-friendly with a designated space for electrical cabling.
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Main Features
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Key Takeaway
The Core 9 tent has a dependable, stable design that gives you peace of mind, and privacy.
Family Tent - Buyer's Guide (Key Features)
In order to understand family tent features that would provide the best experience, consider the following list of things to pay attention to before purchasing.
Floor Size and Height
When exploring the size of a family tent best suited for your needs consider the floor size, together with the height of the tent. As this allows you to weigh up whether there is sufficient headroom that makes the tent space more livable and inviting.
It might be better to choose a tent that sleeps one more person than you need, because this will give you some more flexibility in terms of logistics and prevent an uncomfortably snug sleeping experience.
Height space also gives you a sense of how comfortable it is to have the semblance of the upright position while in your tent. The extra room gives you space to use for standing and dressing, adding to the livability of the tent.
Would it not be easier to have one large tent instead of two smaller tents? The multi-room feature in a number of these tents brings the family closer together, while ensuring some privacy.
The screen-room feature contributes to the size of your tent and the ease of storage, so look out for this addition as it keeps messy gear out of your sleeping space.
Rinfly
The benefit of a rainfly on your tent is that it provides a sealant and protection from wet weather without suffocating the tent’s inhabitants. This is because they usually have the capacity to allow for ventilation to occur. A rainfly acts like the umbrella to your tent, giving you some extra coverage and its best to have a large rainfly. The construction of a tent with a rainfly is that there is essentially a double-walled design in order to allow for the best of both worlds with breathability without unnecessary exposure to the elements. A large rainfly extends the waterproofing to the entirety of the tent’s construction and some parts don’t need to be prioritised over others.
Ventilation
Check that the family tent you prefer offers adequate airflow, encouraging that hot air to escape and fresh air to emerge.
Windows that can be adjusted with zips give campers the ability to manage the amount of airflow that goes through.
The important part of choosing a tent with sufficient ventilation is that the rainfly that protects against the weather does not prevent mesh windows from doing their job.
Ventilation in the ceiling allows for air to circulate through the tent and minimise the amount of condensation that builds up.
Capacity
Family tents are a special tent category which represents exactly that - perfect camping tents for a few adults and children. Although some of the larger tents can allow for a camping trip with friends, thanks to more or less equal room devision, most of the regular family tents are not as welcoming to filling them to a capacity with just adults.
Have a look at the way the rooms can be divided to check if you can work with the layout for your next camping adventure.
Materials
Tents that use polyester, nylon, and polyethelyne in their fabric composition provide a water-resistance to the construction of the tent.
The benefit of synthetic materials is that they do not need to be coated to be resistant to water.
Nylon manages to resist abrasion quite well but is not as water resistant as polyester and this contributes to the quality of your camping experience, particularly if you are often exposed to wet weather.
Also check that the seams are sealed in order to reinforce the capacity of the material to withstand weather changes. The Weathertec features in the Coleman tent work at ensuring that the floors, seams and zippers are protected for better water resistance.
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