When you want to cosy up with your partner on an adventure, a two-person or double sleeping bag is probably your best option. Sharing one sleeping bag ain’t doable. Neither is unzipping two and laying them on top of you. C’mon, we’ve all tried it.

From spring through to autumn double sleeping bags certainly make for a convenient, cosy way to share a night out together, and they’re especially suited to car camping or living ‘the Vanlife’.

Related: Best Backpacks For Hiking

The problem with many double person sleeping bags we’ve seen in the past is that they haven’t quite offered the thermal efficiency needed for proper hiking and camping in the wild. Unlike a single sleeping bag where you can hunker down and close up any gaps, with two people alongside each other in a double sleeping bag, heat is able to escape between your heads. Fortunately there are some options out there that have found a solution to this. You’ll see some of them below in this test.

How To Choose The Best Double Sleeping Bag

When choosing the best double sleeping bag, you need to consider all of the same factors that you would with a normal, single person one.

The majority of double sleeping bag options out there are made for campervan touring, and these might not be suitable for a cold night under canvas. It’s therefore important to always check temperature ratings to understand whether a bag will be up to scratch for the conditions you’re going to be taking on.

Also consider the materials. With down sleeping bags you generally get excellent thermal efficiency at a low carry weight, while with synthetic insulated sleeping bags, which are often heavier and not as warm as down ones, you can usually rely on the fill to still keep you warm even if it gets wet – something normal down can’t offer. That said, there are down options out there that come with a hydrophobic treatment to get around this problem. In the end it’s horses for courses when it comes to choosing between fill types.

If you plan to carry a double sleeping bag on a hike, one big thing to consider is that most of them cannot be split into two and therefore one person will have to bear the weight themselves. If it can be split up, keep in mind that it will likely mean there are more zips involved and therefore more areas where heat can escape. It’s another catch 22 and you need to weigh up the pros and cons with your hike and the conditions in mind. And remember, a sleeping bag is useless if you don’t have a good, warm sleeping mat to go with it. ​​

Best Double Sleeping Bags 2024

Here’s our selection and our winners in each category. We’ve selected the best for backpacking, best for van touring, best for those on a budget and we’ve also picked out our overall winner.

• Best Overall Double Sleeping Bag: Big Agnes Dream Island
• Best Lightweight Double Sleeping Bag for Backpackers: Thermarest Vela
• Best Double Sleeping Bag for Van Touring:  Sierra Designs Frontcountry
• Best Budget Double Sleeping Bag: Berghaus Indulge
• Best Zip Together Double Sleeping Bag: Rab Outpost 

Best Overall Double Sleeping Bag

1. Big Agnes Dream Island 20

Price: $270
Weight: 3.43kg
Best for: Campsites, wild camping
Key attributes: Warmth, technical performance

This is the the god of all double sleeping bags. They should all be made like this. Why? Because it offers all the obvious benefits of a double sleeping bag but with the same technical and warmth maximising features of a solo bag. It’s a synthetic insulated option, made using 50% post-consumer recycled polyester, with an optional divider down the middle of the hood so each of the inhabitants can cinch in and get rid of that gap where heat can be lost. There’s also a sleeve on the base where one big sleeping mat or two standard size ones can be slipped in. At 3.43kg, it’s not too hefty a weight either for a three-season option.

The Best Lightweight Double Sleeping Bag For Backpacking

2. Therm-a-Rest Vela Quilt 20F/-6C

Price: £289
Weight: 1.27kg
Best for:  lightweight backpacking
Key attributes: lightweight, lofty, water resistant

This quilt weighs just 1.27kg making it absolutely ideal for couples looking for something that they can use to snuggle together on backpacking trips. 

You don’t just drape this over the top of you. Instead, it has a footbox that you tuck your feet into, or you can even tuck your sleeping mat into it, and it’s oversized so that you have enough fabric to tuck under you at the sides to give you a nice and cosy cocoon. 

It’s filled with a 650 fill power down that’s ethically sourced and it’s treated with Nikwax to give it a high resistance to water. That means the fill will continue to loft and insulate even when it comes into contact with moisture. We’d say this is best suited to summer use, but it’ll stretch to milder days in autumn and spring so long as you use it with a sleeping mat that provides good insulation from the cold ground.

Best Double Sleeping Bag for Van Touring

3. Sierra Designs Frontcountry Double

Price: £300
Weight: 3.78kg
Best for: van touring, car campers
Key attributes: zipperless design is very comfortable

This is easily the best double sleeping bag you can get if you’re looking for something to use with your partner in a van, caravan or for car camping. It’s a little too heavy and bulky to hike with but it’s incredibly comfortable for frontcountry stuff, hence the name. During our test period with the Frontcountry, we loved the zipperless design and the big ‘comforter’ which essentially feels like a big duvet that you can tuck yourself under. We also liked the fact that you can use two single sleeping mats with this thanks to the individual mat sleeves. Then there are also the little foot flaps at the base that let you stick a foot out when you need to cool down a bit. 

It’s filled with synthetic fibres that create a down-like, lofty and cosy feeling. Unfortunately it doesn’t come with an ISO comfort rating. We’d say it’s perfect for summer nights and it’ll see you through the milder spring and autumn nights too.

Best Budget Double Sleeping Bag

4. Berghaus Indulge Double

Price: £74
Weight: 4.8kg
Best for: summer car camping and van touring
Key attributes: low cost, comfortable lining, option to turn it into two quilts or basic sleeping bags

This might be very bulky and heavy, taking up quite a lot of space in a car boot, but it’s very comfortable and its low cost compared to some of the other options out there. As such, we’d say this presents the best value out of the double sleeping bags here and we’d say it’s best suited to summer use outdoors but it’ll stretch into the other seasons if you’re using it in a van or car. 

The internal lining is a brushed cotton that has a very comfortable feel to it. Unfortunately, cotton being cotton, it doesn’t hold up too well against moisture, so you’ll want to avoid getting this damp. It has a built-in pillow but it’s nothing luxurious and we’d advise using separate pillows with this. 

Handily, this has zips on either side so you can turn this into two basic sleeping bags or two quilts if you want to.

Best Zip-Together Sleeping Bag

5. Rab Outpost 500 (x2)

Price: £600
Weight: 2.46kg
Best for: three-season backpacking
Key attributes: quality materials, excellent warmth to weight, can be used as a solo or double

Rab are well known for their sleeping bags and the intricate design thinking and quality materials that go into them and they haven’t dropped the ball with their Outpost sleeping bag. It’s actually a solo bag, but one that can be unzipped and opened up to form a quilt or it can be combined with another Outpost sleeping bag to make for a comfortable, technical sleeping bag for two people – albeit quite a costly one. 

Expect high quality, ethically sourced down, efficiency maximising baffles and lightweight but tough shell fabrics. With a comfort lower limit of -3C, this ranks as a three-season sleeping bag, giving you warmth right through summer and into some of the chillier nights in spring and autumn.

Best of the Rest

6. Vango Evolve Superwarm Double

Price: £90
Weight: 3.2kg
Best for: van touring
Key attributes: low cost, recycled materials

The Evolve Superwarm doesn’t quite live up to its name, but it’s a good value option if you’re looking for something low cost that can be used for those nights in the back of your van. Outdoors, it’ll be fine for most summer nights, especially with a good sleeping mat, but you wouldn’t want to use it on any nights that creep close to zero. 

It’s synthetic filled and has a zip on either side. Credit to Vango for using 100% recycled materials for the fill and lining too.

7. Outwell Campion Lux Double

Price: £65.99
Weight: 2.5kg
Best for: Camping, campervanning
Key attributes: Lightweight, bargain price, good warmth-to-weight

Outwell make products specifically designed for family camping and their sleeping bag collection has more of a focus on simple functionality and value as opposed to technical, top-of-the-mountain performance. This, their Lux Double, is a good value option that’s suited to campervan nights or for camping in temperatures not reaching below 0C. At 2.5kg that’s also a pretty decent warmth-to-weight ratio. There’s not much in the way of technical details, it’s just one of those does-the-job synthetic options. And we like it.

8. Coleman Basalt Double

Price: £99
Weight: 4kg
Best for: three-season camping
Key attributes: Lightweight, bargain price, good warmth-to-weight

An impressive -5C comfort limit rating comes courtesy of a whopping 2.3kg of synthetic insulation – making this bag lovely and cosy. It has a long and wide rectangular shape providing adequate room for two, and you get some nifty features including two phone pockets and an integrated head rest. If the temperature rises, the 360-degree zips can be opened to increase ventilation so you don’t overheat.

9. Coleman Hampton Double

Price: £59.95
Weight: 4.55kg
Best for: Car camping, campervanning
Key attributes: Superb price

Another option from low cost camping specialists Coleman. With its optimum comfort temperature of +6C and limit of +1C this is more of a campervan camping-type option rather than something for sleeping out in. It’s also on the heavy side so you wouldn’t really want to be sticking this in your backpack. But priced at about £76, depending on current offers online, it’s a useful option to consider if you’re not in the market for anything high spec.

10. The North Face Dolomite Double

Price: $170
Weight: 4.47kg
Best for: three-season car camping and touring
Key attributes: Warm, well-priced, good temperature rating

Harnessing the same design features as some of their popular solo sleeping bag designs, this option from The North Face is a double bag that will certainly do the job for any three-season use in the great outdoors. It’s all thanks to its lofty Heatseeker synthetic fill which is made from 30% post-consumer recycled polyester and has a temperature comfort limit rating of -7C. While it might not be as light as the Big Agnes (which has a similar temperature rating) it’s a fair bit lower in price.

Original article by James Forrest with updates by Will Renwick on 16/02/2024