Headroom in your car

Overview

Sleeping inside your vehicle offers plenty of benefits over the more traditional ways of sleeping on camping trips. However, one of the biggest considerations before ditching your tent for an SUV Camper is the topic of headroom – ie How much room you have between you and your car’s ceiling when laying flat in your car.

In this guide, we dive into the back seat and attempt to answer the following questions:

“How to maximize the headroom in your vehicle,” and
“How much headroom is best?”

How much headroom will I have in bed?

The exact amount of headroom you will have depends on a couple factors:

Your specific vehicle’s interior dimensions.
How high you may choose to loft your bed.

In order to envision the amount of headroom you’ll have in your TrunkMate bed, follow these steps:

First find the highest protrusion in your vehicle. For most SUVs, the highest protrusion is the folded 2nd row seat.
Now imagine a level plane 6″ inches above that highest point. This imaginary plane is the height you’ll be laying. This leaves room for the bed rails + bed boards + mattress to rest on top (see photos)

1. bed rails rest on top of the folded seat (+1 inch)

2. bed boards rest on top of bed rails (+1/2″)

3. mattress lays on top of bed boards (+3 to 5 inches, depending on your choice of mattress)

To get an exact measurement of the headroom, you can take a tape measure and measure from the top of the highest protrusion (ie the top of the folded seat) to the ceiling of the car. Now subtract 6″. This is your headroom measurement.

Of course you can influence this height by choosing a thinner mattress or removing the 2nd row seats from your vehicle (if your vehicle allows and you desperately need the extra headroom).

How Much Headroom is Best?

I often get asked: “how much headroom should I aim for? The answer is: however much you feel you need to get a good night’s sleep. There’s really no right answer and you are largely limited by the amount of space available to you in your vehicle. But as a general rule of thumb, if you are easily claustrophobic, I’d say to aim for being able to fully sit up in your bed without hitting your head on the ceiling. Having this much headroom when car camping is a luxury and definitely not the norm. In order to sit up fully in bed, you’ll need a mid to large-sized SUV or minivan.

I have customers who could care less about the amount of headroom as long as they can store all their gear underneath the bed. And I have customers who fully remove their back seats in order to maximize every inch of headroom. I have customers who are 6’4″ and 280lbs and sleep wonderfully in their small SUV, and I have talked to people who are 5’3″ and 100lbs and feel claustrophobic inside!

There’s definitely no normal as far as I can tell. So the best way to know for yourself is just to use your judgement. Hint – If you’ve read this far and are still excited about giving it a shot, then you’re probably well suited for car camping and will have no issues sleeping in your vehicle!

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Page Contents

Headroom in your car

Overview

How much headroom will I have in bed?

How Much Headroom is Best?

Heads up — This Section Is Being Updated