Everything You Need to Know about Choosing a Sleeping Bag
A good sleep system - your sleeping bag and mattress combo - will go a long way to making sure you are loving life when you are camping. No more long, cold, sleepless nights outdoors. With the right gear, you can get a great night of sleep.
So here is everything you need to know about buying the right sleeping bag for you.
Temperatures and Seasons:
First, sleeping bags are broken up into seasonal categories based on temperature ratings. The most common category is the THREE SEASON sleeping bag. You will also see summer bags and winter bags.
Three season: Typically, this will be an appropriate bag to use spring through fall. This is the most common sleeping bag available. Most sleeping bags here are rated to 15 degrees Fahrenheit. The bag is designed to keep you comfortable in a diverse range of conditions, from slightly below freezing spring and fall temperatures to warm summer nights.
If you only own one sleeping bag, it should be from this category.
Winter bags: These sleeping bags are burly. They are designed for REALLY COLD nights of camping, the kind you would experience in winter, in a snowstorm, while mountaineering at high elevations, etc. Winter sleeping bags will keep you safe and cozy (relatively speaking) in temperatures as low as 0 thru -20 degrees Fahrenheit. Sleeping bags with temperature ratings higher than zero degrees F do not qualify as winter sleeping bags (this is my opinion, although you may see them marketed as such). Winter sleeping bags are great for, well, winter camping. I recommend these bags for people who don't stop exploring once the snow starts falling.
I used Marmot's Col Membrane -20 degree sleeping bag while I worked as a wilderness guide. It was one of the best camping purchases I ever made.
Summer Bags: Okay, now we're back in general use territory. Summer sleeping bags are great when you are only going to encounter mild to warm temperatures. These will typically be good for camping when temperatures will not get lower than 40 degrees Fahrenheit. These bags are great for ultralight users as they are so lightweight and pack down very small.
This is a great sleeping bag to supplement your gear closet for specific adventures where you are unlikely to encounter low temperatures. But they are not diverse enough in their uses to be a good primary bag.
Expedition Bags: Expedition bags will keep you safe (relatively) down to temperatures as low as -40 degrees Fahrenheit. These sleeping bags are for serious adventurers only. Like, you're planning on crossing Antarctica or something. Otherwise, there's no way you need this and you're just a gear junkie with too much money on your hands.
The fit: women's vs. men's bags
The fit of a sleeping bag is surprisingly important. If you are a 5'2" woman using a 6'5" men's sleeping bag, you will be colder. Your body will be trying to warm up the extra space inside the sleeping bag. That inefficiency will affect your quality of sleep! There's actually no such thing as a women's specific bag or a men's only bag. But you will see sleeping bags marketed as such. The difference is in the cut.
A sleeping bag designed for women will have more room around the hips and less room around the shoulders than a men's bag. Women's bags might also be pink or purple, but there's no other real difference!
Sleeping bags typically come in short, regular, and long cuts. In general, "regular" is for people between 5'7" and 6'1".Before you buy, it's a good idea to actually get physically inside the sleeping bag. If you notice extra space, look for a bag that fits your body better.
DOWN VS SYNTHETIC
The next thing to consider: What's actually inside the sleeping bag? When you are browsing the aisles of REI or your local gear shop, you will typically see two types of sleeping bags; down and synthetic. Down sleeping bags are filled with down feathers, nature's best insulating material. Synthetic bags are filled with human-manufactured alternatives. The general differentiation is price. Down sleeping bags are more expensive than synthetic bags.
Pros and Cons of Down Sleeping bags:
Pros
best warmth to weight ratio
packs down smaller than synthetics
lightweight
will last you many years without losing insulating power
Cons
Price / more expensive
loses insulating power when wet
ethical issues (was the down sourced from ethical suppliers?)
rips in the fabric allow down to escape, losing it's loft
The debate between down vs. synthetic used to be a major topic. It's become much less intense in recent years. The biggest drawback for down, the reason people avoided down, was that if your sleeping bag got wet, it was essentially useless. So if you were backpacking in really wet environments, you simply couldn't trust a down sleeping bag to keep you warm if conditions went sour.
Advances in fabrics have made it much more difficult for water to penetrate a sleeping bag's outer shell. In addition, it is now common to see sleeping bags filled with hydrophobic down. Hydrophobic down is processed in such a way that individual down feathers are treated with some sort of chemical or wax that keeps down from getting wet. The effect here is that even in wet conditions, a down sleeping bag will still retain it's loft, which in turn will keep you warm and insulated.
Phew! That's about it! No go get out there and have an adventure!