You can cook in any large pop-up screen houses, but the YDYL screen house is wonderfully tall and wide, with plenty of space to fit the family around a table. It’s also large enough to fit around any coleman sundome pre-installed grills at your campsite. All of these screen houses are great options for a usable space for family picnics. Pop up the screen tent, slide your sleeping bag inside and you’re safe.
The Alvantor Screen House features a foldable tent frame that springs up. This REI shelter has a standard amount of room (100 square feet) with a peak height of seven feet, so lots of room for tall people. I thought so too until I discovered the magic of screen houses and how much they can up-level your average camping trip. L.L.Bean’s Woodlands Screen House is remarkably similar to our top pick, REI’s Screen House Shelter; the two canopies have an identical footprint and pole structure.
Summer just leave the screens open and you can enjoy being big free. At under 3 pounds, this is the lightest screen tent on our list that also offers a nearly hands-free setup process. The tent itself is made of flame-resistant 210 Denier polyester Oxford fabric with no-see-em mesh screen walls.
There are only two pockets in this 6-person tent, and in our version, the manufacturer sewed on one of the pockets backward. Getting in and out of the Evanston is also oddly difficult, as the doors only open halfway. Not only does this make things awkward, it is impossible to inflate or deflate your beds anywhere but inside the tent. They added windows on each side because the door only opens halfway, which places a large seam right down the middle. We should also point out that there are no clips or ties to tuck them away when the windows are open, so they just dangle in the wind. The Coleman Evanston has features that fail miserably in all but very specific situations.
At first glance, it looks like the square footage is quite a bit more than other screen houses in this article. However, because of the sloped angle of the tent walls, there’s less than 195 square feet of usable space. Though all of these shelters are self-standing and staking them may not be strictly necessary in calm weather, it’s wise to always do so in case the wind picks up unexpectedly.
Think of it as a camping dining tent where you can prepare food and eat comfortably without swatting yourself silly from mosquito attacks. My intention with these posts is to share some of the equipment that I find, or thought I would find, to make my hiking or camping experience coleman screen tent better. Not all of the items are “must haves,” but I plan to share tips or things I wish I had known before purchasing. While the previous version of this tent used beachy-feeling aqua and orange, the current version is a drab olive green more typical of other tents.
Note the mesh size of the screen walls on the screen tents you’re considering. Some tents may be designed to offer protection from even the tiniest of insects. These descriptions may state that they have “no-see-um” level screening. A screen tent needs to be easy to set up and take down at your camping destination. Remember – screen houses sometimes need to be taken down when the winds creep up, or a big rainstorm starts rolling in.
It’s quite lovely to sit outside on a rainy summer day, feeling the breeze and getting a break from the heat without getting soaked. There are many benefits of a screen tent, the most apparent being keeping those unwanted guests out of your hair–quite literally. ◊Pricing, selection, and availability of store clearance items are determined by each store. Items may be display models or not exactly as shown and may not be available in all stores.
The new-for-2023 Bass Pro Shops Eclipse Refuge Screen House offers a hard to beat price-to-value ratio in a lightweight package. It’s not the fastest to setup, but once you assemble it like a typical tent, it’s relatively sturdy, has plenty of tie-down points for wind, and when you’re done, it packs up small. The roof is waterproof with a 800mm polyurethane coating, but rain can slide down near the corner poles and work its way through the mesh. When you want a simple tent that will give you coverage during your backyard cookout, look for a large pop-up tent that has a 13X13 foot spread.
At 16′ x
10′ this tent gives you room to stand up and move around and sets up in 20
minutes. The tent provides 10′ x 10′ of interior space and has two large zippered doors. It has pre-attached poles that you simply unfold and extend to set up the tent. A floor adds to the weight and to the area that needs to be cleaned and/or dried out when the tent gets wet. This Gazelle pop-up screen tent might just be everything you’re looking for.