About those orange tents

Post date: Aug 26, 2019 10:20:27 PM

Since we posted about highly visible and brightly colored tents on our blog, we've received a lot of comments. And we did some poking around. Turns out that REI and MSR only use that bright orange for rain flies on expedition/alpine tents--in other words, only on tents that are intended for use in snow. Same with Kelty. For their three-season tents, the rain flies for all three companies seem to be a nice calm grey....which is easy on the eyes. That's nice.

And as we have noted, our Tarptent is a lovely granite grey---and so are most backpacking tarps. Seems like those companies get the message.

Marmot, Big Agnes, Nemo, Black Diamond, and The North Face all use bright colors for many of their tents. Maybe they haven't actually read the Leave No Trace principles.

Here's what the LNT organization itself says: "Bright clothing and equipment, such as tents, that can be seen for long distances are discouraged. Especially in open natural areas, colors such as day-glow yellow may contribute to a crowded feeling; consider earth-toned colors (ie. browns and greens) to lessen visual impacts."

We welcome comments from tent manufacturers on this topic!