Kids Sleeping Bags for Backpacking

If you want to sleep well at night on a camping trip you first need to make sure that your kids sleep well. No one else is responsible for your kids warmth and comfort other than you, the parent.

However, kids have different needs to adults when it comes to sleeping bags. The design of children sleeping bags are a lot more simpler.

They’re made of cheaper materials than full-size sleeping bags. The use of down insulation is rather uncommon. People buy high quality sleeping bags for kids that won't outgrown in a few short years.

It's not only price that's the reason why synthetics are much more preferable to down. Synthetics are easier to clean and can be rinsed and washed repeatedly without causing too much damage. This is important especially when your kids are in the nappy years. Down sleeping bags for kids are costly and it's part of the reason why they don't get many buyers.

If you're not car camping or you're going to camp on organized campsites, weight is an important consideration. However, since kids sleeping bags are small, the difference may not be very big.

It may not surprise you that lower quality sleeping bags for kids are more popular with parents. Since kids sleep warmer than adults, down may be overkill anyway. Even with bigger surface/volume ratio which causes kids to lose more heat, they sleep warmer because they have a higher metabolic rate.

Most non-rectangular kids sleeping bags have a hood, draft tube and draft collar. The hood is useful because you can lose a lot of heat through your head.

The North Face Tigger is a popular choice of its safety features. There are no cords that your child can get tangled into while sleeping.

Heat can escape through the zipper coils but a draft tube (an insulation-filled tube that runs alongside the main zipper) prevents this from happening. Draft tubes are sometimes present to prevent heat from escaping up the sleeping bag.

You'll find that kids sleeping bags are also made by REI, Deuter, Lafuma, Big Agnes and Slumberjack among others.

There's a huge range of kids sleeping bags that can be found in the market from cheap baby-fat types to ones that have everything including shaped hoods, pad loops, draft tubes and more. However, cheap sleeping bags for kids are much more common and usually does the job well enough especially if it's to be used only in the summer.