Window Covers for Car Camping and Sleeping in the Car

Picture a wagon with the back seats folded flat, a mattress cut to fit, and a night or two planned at a rest area or a campground. The question is whether the same mesh set that keeps the sun off a child seat will do the job at 10pm and again at 6am. Mostly it will. There are a couple of things it won't do, and it is better to know those before you are lying in the back with a torch.

What the mesh does once you've stopped for the night

Our shades are black polyester mesh in a frame cut to one car's window. From inside you can see out clearly, and from outside it is harder to see in. In daylight and at dusk that means someone walking past your car at a campsite sees a dark window, not you and your gear.

At night it flips. Turn on a lamp or a phone torch inside the car and the cabin is now the brightest thing around, so the mesh is easy to see through from outside. If you want to read or get changed after dark, keep the light low and pointed down, or use a red headlamp. This is the main difference between mesh and a blackout cover, and we only make mesh.

The front pair is cut short at the mirror corner so the driver can see down the side of the car. Parked overnight that leaves a small triangle of bare glass at the front of each door. If it bothers you, a towel over the top of the door does the rest.

For day-to-day privacy on the road (kids, pets, tinted glass, how dark the mesh is), there is a separate guide to car window shades for privacy. This page is only about the car as a bedroom.

Fresh air with the bugs kept out

This is the part people are most interested in, and our product listings are specific about it: even with the window down, the shade still blocks sun, dust and insects. The frame sits in the door opening, not on the glass, so you can wind the window down a little and the mesh stays where it is.

A few practical points:

• Open the rear windows, not the fronts. The rear door panels cover the whole window. The front panels leave that gap at the mirror, which is exactly where a mosquito will find its way in.
• Open two windows on opposite sides. A small gap on each side lets air move across the car instead of sitting there.
• The third-row glass and the tailgate don't open. On a seven-seater those panels are there for shade and privacy, not airflow.
• Mesh is not a lock. A window that is partly down is a window that is partly down. Where you stop and how far you open it is your call.

We haven't tested the mesh against midges or sandflies, so we won't promise you a bite-free night on a mangrove creek. Against everyday insects it does what the listing says.

Condensation

Sleep in a closed car and you will wake up to wet glass. Two people breathing all night put a surprising amount of water into a small space, and on a cool night it ends up on the inside of the windows.

The airflow from those two open rear windows is the best fix we know of. The shades don't cause condensation and they don't stop it either. If the glass does fog up, the mesh can come off it damp, so wipe the windows in the morning and let the panels dry in the sun before you stack them back in the door pocket or the seat-back pouch.

The morning sun

The sun comes up early in summer, and a car parked side-on to the east lights up fast. The mesh takes the glare off the side windows and slows down how quickly the cabin heats, but it is a shade, not a blackout blind. It will be lighter in the car than in a tent.

Two things help:

• Park with the nose to the west. First light then lands on the tailgate, which you can cover on most of the wagons below, rather than the windscreen, which you can't with our sets.
• Get the windows sorted before you need them. Fit the panels when you pull up, not when the sun wakes you.

The morning sun is still sun. The Cancer Council says UV can be high even on cool and overcast days, and recommends sun protection whenever the UV Index is 3 or above, with the peak usually between 10am and 4pm. If you are packing up in the open after sunrise, the hat goes on before the shades come off.

What we don't cover: the windscreen

Our sets are for the side windows, the small quarter or third-row glass, and the tailgate. We don't make a windscreen panel. For sleeping, the windscreen is a big sheet of glass at the front of the car with nothing over it, so bring a folding windscreen shade or hang a towel off the sun visors. The guide to windscreen sun shades compares the types.

The front door shades are for a parked car only. Take them off before you drive. The rear door panels can stay on around town; the legal guide covers the road rules by window.

Which windows matter when you're lying in the back

Sitting up in the back seat, the rear doors are the windows that count. Lying down with the seats folded, your head and shoulders are usually level with the rear doors, and your feet are beside the third-row glass and the tailgate. That is the one time a full set makes more sense than the rear pair on its own.

The cars we cut that have the third-row glass and the tailgate on the listing, as well as all four doors:

• Toyota LandCruiser 200 Series and 300 Series
• Ford Everest
• Toyota Fortuner
• Kia Carnival, which is roomier to sleep in than most wagons

On those, every window we cut comes to $199.99 as a complete set, or $59.99 for the tailgate panel on its own. The Toyota Prado 150 Series has the four doors and the tailgate but no third-row panel. If you are not sure what the small glass behind your rear door is called on our listing, the third-row and quarter window guide explains it.

Utes are a different setup. Sleeping in a ute usually means a canopy or a rooftop tent rather than the cab. If you are shading the cab for a trip, the dual cab ute guide covers the cab rear window as well as the doors.

Where you can pull up for the night

The rules on sleeping in a car change from one council to the next and from state to state, and they cover rest areas, roadside stops, town streets and beaches differently. Check with the local council or your state's road authority before you settle in. We make shades; we are not the ones to tell you where you can park.

Kids and dogs

Shades make a parked car more comfortable for the people sleeping in it. They don't make it a safe place to leave a child or a dog, day or night, and nothing on a window changes that. If you are travelling with either, read the guides on shades for babies and shades for pets as well.

Ordering

Find your make, model and year in the product list. If your car sits on a changeover year, send us the build month from the compliance plate on the driver's door jamb and we will confirm the set before it goes out. The guide to build dates and generations shows you where to look.

Planning a longer trip with the car loaded up? The 4WD touring guide covers which windows we cut on the common touring wagons and utes.