If you work a 9-5, the weekend is your cherished time to escape from behind your desk and get out and explore.
Goto Sunday Campers to know more.
We&#;re right there with you. Camping to us is all about getting away from it all, and spending as many nights as we can under the stars.
But when you&#;ve got a busy life, making time to plan a camping trip is harder than it sounds.
That&#;s exactly why we love roof top tents, and it&#;s why we started Roofnest. A roof top tent is a convenient bed-on-wheels that&#;s ready to roll whenever you get the urge to drive away from everyday life and get some R&R in nature.
Roofnest&#;s hard shell roof top tents take the convenience and comfort of car top tent camping to the next level. Our tents pop up in under a minute, are durable and waterproof, and come with a comfortable built-in mattress. So you can get the best of the outdoors without sacrificing a good night&#;s sleep.
But there&#;s even more reasons you need a Roofnest than just convenience, ease, and comfort. Here are the top 9 reasons you should buy a roof top tent.
1. You Can Live the #VanLife Without Actually Living in a Van
When you search #vanlife on Instagram, you&#;ll see thousands of beautiful photos of people living picturesque lives in super stylish vans. They&#;re parked on a beach. There&#;s a campfire, and a surfboard, and a cute dog. We&#;ve got to admit, it&#;s pretty tempting.
But let&#;s face it: Not all of us are lucky enough to get to drive around the world in a van, waking up to a new locale each day. The full-time van life just isn&#;t an option for everyone.But let&#;s face it: Not all of us are lucky enough to get to drive around the world in a van, waking up to a new locale each day. The full-time van life just isn&#;t an option for everyone.
With a roof top tent, your car is automatically transformed into a bedroom on wheels, so you can live the #vanlife when you want, without actually living in a van.
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2. Elevated Camping Keeps Pests Out
Being elevated is the name of the game when it comes to camping. Staying off the ground means there&#;s less of a chance of encountering a snake in your tent, waking up to a spider crawling on you, or other unwanted and sometimes even downright dangerous encounters with critters.
With a Roofnest roof top tent, you sleep at a safe and elevated height, removed from the pests that can make sleeping on the ground uncomfortable at best, and dangerous at worst.
3. Roof Top Tents are More Comfortable
No matter what sleeping pad you buy for your camping setup, it&#;s never going to be as comfortable as a real mattress. When it&#;s time to get some shuteye in your Roofnest, you&#;ll enjoy the comfort of a high-density foam mattress that&#;s built right into the tent. Zero setup necessary.
Combine that with your tent&#;s thick, weatherproof walls, and you&#;ll almost forget you&#;re camping. And when the temperatures drop at night, sleeping off the ground will keep you much warmer.
After a long day exploring the Great Outdoors, a Roofnest is your ticket to a good night&#;s sleep.View this post on Instagram
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4. Roofnest Hard Shell Roof Top Tents Set Up in Under 60 Seconds
After a long day exploring the Great Outdoors, a Roofnest is your ticket to a good night&#;s sleep.
Tearing out of work on a Friday afternoon to get that perfect camp spot before the weekend rush?
With a regular tent, the scenario might look a lot like this: Pulling up to a campsite after dark, putting your head lamp on, finding a flat spot, rolling out your tent, setting up the poles, staking down your tent, attach the rain flap, unrolling your bedding, and hoping you didn&#;t just put your tent on top of a bunch of rocks.
A roof top tent presents a much more attractive alternative. Get to your campsite, pop up your Roofnest in one minute, and kick back by the campfire. We&#;ll let you decide which sounds better.
5. No Wasted Time Packing a Tent
With a Roofnest, you&#;re always ready to head out on your next adventure. You don&#;t have to dig out your tent and sleeping bags, only to realize you forgot the poles once you&#;re already 2 hours down the road.
During the camp season, your roof top tent can always be on top of your car, and most models let you keep your sleeping bags stowed neatly inside.
Leave the worry about where you&#;ll sleep behind &#; your basecamp is always with you. A Roofnest allows you to get out and explore more often and more easily.
6. Camp in Comfort During Cold Weather
If you&#;re in the mountains or other cooler areas, the camping season can be short and sweet. It can start late thanks to rain and hail in May, or be cut short by unexpected snowstorms in September.
That is, unless, you camp in a Roofnest.
With a Roofnest roof top tent&#;s fiberglass shell and insulated, weatherproof side walls, you can comfortably camp in the rain or snow. Throw in a Roofnest down blanket and our Ptarmigan insulation system, and you&#;ll stay extra warm no matter what Mother Nature throws down.
That means you can extend your camping season well beyond summer, and get a whole lot more use out of your Roofnest versus a traditional tent. More use equals more value.
Are you interested in learning more about roof top tent on top of the car? Contact us today to secure an expert consultation!
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Snow has come and we&#;re not complaining. &#;: @masonprendergast
A post shared by Roofnest (@roofnest) on Oct 10, at 3:55pm PDT
7. More Room for Your Gear
We know you can always use more room for your gear. Bikes, kayaks, crash pads, skis &#; the list goes on.
Sometimes your outdoor adventures can be limited by the amount of room (or lack thereof) in your car.Sometimes your outdoor adventures can be limited by the amount of room (or lack thereof) in your car.
A roof top tent lives on top of your car, which means you don&#;t have a tent cluttering up your precious cargo space. And with most of our tent models, you can store all your bedding inside your Roofnest, which frees up even more space.
And if you opt for our Falcon roof top tent, you can put crossbars on top of the tent itself. Not only will you have more room inside your vehicle, but you can mount gear up top as well. It&#;s the best of both worlds.
Did we mention you can also put solar panels on top of your Roofnest? Check it out:
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8. Roofnests are Aerodynamic and Fuel-Efficient
With the sleek and strong design of a Roofnest, you get better fuel-efficiency than with other roof top tents. And Roofnests are designed to be durable and weatherproof, so there&#;s no reason you can&#;t keep it on top of your car year-round.
You never know when an impromptu camping opportunity might present itself. Stay prepared.
If you&#;re not keen on winter camping, a Roofnest is easy to take off your vehicle. At the end of your camping season, unmount it from your ride and store for winter. When spring starts to spring, set it back up and you&#;re ready to roll.
9. Become Part of the Roofnest Flock
When you buy a Roofnest, you get so much more than a roof top tent. You become a part of the Roofnest Flock, our community of Roofnest owners.
You&#;ll have the opportunity to connect with like-minded outdoor enthusiasts who will answer questions, share amazing trail trips, and inspire you to keep exploring.
You might even run into a fellow member of the Flock on your next outing. New friends? We&#;ll never say no to that.
Take a Closer Look at Our Roof Top Tents
When you look at a roof top tent vs. a ground tent, there&#;s just no comparison.
Super fast set up. Durable hard shell design. Extremely comfortable built-in mattress. That&#;s just a few of the things that make a Roofnest the best roof top tent out there.
Every single one of our roof top tent models make for an evolved camping experience over traditional tents. And each of our unique models offers something special, from the super easy-to-use Sparrow EYE to the extra room inside the Condor XL.
If you need even more reasons to elevate your camping with a Roofnest, take a dive into each of our roof top tents and find the one that speaks to you.
Shop our collection of roof top tents >
The new accessory for suburban four wheel drives is sun-baked, bulky, and barely used.
There was a time when convertible cars were coveted by everyone and in particular a certain someone squirming in a school chair seven hours a day. Perhaps they&#;d lean back, close their eyes and imagine driving down a coastal highway with the canvas top folded down. Who is homework? Never heard of her. A convertible was the ultimate symbol of freedom, until , when Bridget Jones showed me that actually that much wind in your hair is not a good look. Convertibles are stupid.
Now, since convertibles are nowhere to be seen, the canvas is sitting on top of hard metal car roofs. The canvas packages started appearing in central Auckland suburbia on the tail end of Covid lockdowns, always perfectly clean, neatly zipped up and baking in the sun. It took me several months to know what these packages contained. Then, at a tiny campsite on the South Island&#;s east coast, a tent magically unfolded from one of them. It took about 15 seconds, only one person, and no shouting, for the tent to emerge. It teetered above all the campers, with a ladder connecting it to the ground.
I hated it.
On that summer evening at the campsite, my partner and I side-eyed the roof-top tent. We were road tripping in the only acceptable vehicle for it, an old beat up Toyota van, with a double mattress stuffed in the back. Why, we wondered, would anyone want to strap a tent to their roof racks, taking the valuable space assigned to surfboards and kayaks? And why would they want to sleep up there &#; where, should they need to pee in the middle of the night, they were ten dark ladder steps away from the bushes or the longdrop? Forget about setting up camp and then going away for a little adventure, you&#;d have to pack it all up again. Also, it looked windy up there. What a painfully inadequate idea for a tent.
Camping is for vans, not roofs!Marketing for roof top tents suggests they are practical. Get one and worrying about pegs, blow-up mattresses and fights over which pole goes where are things of the past. They claim to have comfortable built in mattresses and amazing features like mesh windows and pockets for all your gear. This is probably all true because the tents are expensive. In New Zealand, many of them are Feldon Shelters, the smallest and most basic of which will set you back over $2,000. Meanwhile, a basic Kathmandu two person tent is $249.98 (it&#;s not as flash, but you can definitely camp in it). Hawkers of rooftop tents instead point out that they&#;re cheaper than campervans and hotels.
Given that so many of the tents appear to be neatly packed up and in immaculate condition, one can&#;t help but wonder what the price per sleep is. On Facebook marketplace, hundreds are for sale. All look to be in suspiciously good condition, with sellers claiming they&#;ve only been used &#;once&#;, &#;a handful&#; or &#;a few&#; times. One excellent amateur sales person noted its &#;easier to just get a room&#;. They&#;re selling them at about half the price &#; so hundreds per sleep &#; pretty close to fancy hotel prices, where you can also get a free bathrobe and toiletries in tiny containers.
A very modern campsite with a dreaded car tent (photo: Don Rowe)One unfortunate feature is that the roof top tents are warmer than regular tents. It&#;s listed as a positive, but anyone who knows about a summer morning in a tent knows that is actually a TERRIBLE thing. There are other cons which are more soundly put forward, like the fact they&#;re bad for fuel economy, and the weight they add at the top of the car isn&#;t great for handling. Still, what they promise is freedom, through the ease of driving anywhere, and easily popping open your tent.
I admit that the promise of popping up a comfortable tent in 15 seconds with little to no effort is appealing. So is the fact it would be impossible to accidentally position your thin camping mattress on top of a protruding tree root or rock. But as much as these things are painful and turn us into grumpy sleep deprived gremlins, they are also the joy of camping, to strip life, and you, back to the bare essence. If you want camping to be easy and comfortable, maybe you don&#;t want to go camping at all.
The appeal of any well-marketed product in our era is not the product itself but what it symbolises and adds to our personal brand. Consciously or subconsciously the tents aren&#;t bought to be used, but rather to prop-up people&#;s identities and daydreams. I&#;ve decided this in part because of the types of vehicles they&#;re most often seen on &#; they say the tents can be put on most cars, but you only ever see them on suburban four wheel drives. We all know that SUVs aren&#;t ideal because they pollute the environment more than smaller cars and make roads more dangerous for other users like cyclists. Little hatchbacks or station wagons would probably fill the practical needs of these drivers, but that is not what they&#;ve chosen to buy.
Just like they could drive around in a little city zipper, they could also go camping with hardly any gear and stay in a DoC hut for $15 a night. Then there are also the large, immaculate spades which are sometimes strapped to the side of the SUV. It&#;s as if the driver thinks their life might one day be so thrilling that they&#;re going to need to dig a big hole. Dream on.
There is one reason that I would debase myself by sleeping in a rooftop tent. If there were snakes around. Luckily we don&#;t have land snakes in Aotearoa.
Contact us to discuss your requirements of overlanding tent. Our experienced sales team can help you identify the options that best suit your needs.