How to Prevent Condensation in a Rooftop Tent

1 Abr, 2025

One of the questions that we get most often from our customers is «what differentiates James Baroud rooftop tents from the rest?». We believe one of the answers is our focus on preventing condensation to allow our customers to get a great night of sleep. In this blog post, we invite James Baroud insider Bobby Huang to share his experience with this topic.

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Author

Bobby Huang was born in Shanghai, China and immigrated to the US as a young child spending his most formative years in the Bay Area before moving to Seattle for College. He discovered a love for camping and fly fishing on a trip to Yosemite during grade school and has been hooked on spending time outside ever since.

Professionally, Bobby has spent most of his career working for T-Mobile US where his last role was Head of US Distribution Strategy. He then spent a few years as Head of Retail Strategy at REI before joining James Baroud as Chief Commercial Officer. Today, Bobby, his wife Nicole and two daughters Sage and Aila make their home in Porto, Portugal where James Baroud is headquartered.

His favorite outdoor activity is camping with the family in their James Baroud Odyssey tent in the mountains of Northeast Washington state.

The Problem

I remember my first camping trip vividly. I was in the 4th grade, it was early fall just before school started, and we reserved a campsite near Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite National Park. Our campsite had a picnic table and a locking metal storage box. They were flanked by a few large ponderosas which dropped a ton of pinecones that I was responsible for picking up. Our tent was an old Coleman from the early 1980s which consisted of three large tarps and a bundle of aluminum poles. My sleeping pad was a kid sized inflatable green air mattress, and my sleeping bag was a no-name brand from Price Club. Tuolumne Meadows sits at 8,600 feet, so it got pretty cold after sunset, but the tent, air mattress and sleeping bag kept me comfortable through the night. The mornings, however, were a different story.

I can still recall waking up to cold drops of water hitting me in the nose. I would rub my face and slowly open my eyes to see the ceiling of the tent covered in droplets of water. My parents slept on a foam pad of which one side slopped into the edge of the tent where all the moisture dripped down. That part of their mattress was completely soaked, and the water made the inside of the tent smell like moldy old plastic. As I got older, I learned that this is common. Everyone who has slept in a tent has experienced condensation build up, especially at night as the temperature drops, and our warm breath hits the cold air causing moisture to be trapped in our waterproof walls. Condensation is a natural phenomenon, and most people just learn to deal with it. At least that’s what I believed, until I came to work at James Baroud.

James Baroud Barbecue — In cold weather conditions, the temperature difference between the outside and the inside of a tent when all doors/windows are closed create condensation. James Baroud’s rooftop tents are engineered to prevent this.

Fabric

During my very first factory tour, our founder Mario Martins picked up a patch of Odyssey fabric and said, “anyone can put two shells together and call it a roof tent, but it’s hard to find the best fabrics in the world and build a tent with them.” The fabric he picked up was a collaboration between James Baroud and a technical canvas company in Portugal. It consists of three layers:

The outside layer is water resistant.
The middle layer is a poly membrane to provide extra insulation against sound, temperature and light.
The inside layer is designed to absorb moisture.

If you sprayed water on the outside, it would bead up and roll away, if you sprayed it on the inside, it would get soaked up. This design is intentional because having fabric that absorbs moisture helps to reduce condensation.

Solar powered vent fan

I would later learn that fighting condensation is a bit of an obsession with the engineers at James Baroud. On a recent product walk through, they told me it started with the solar powered vent fan. It used to be an option, but now almost every tent comes with it as a standard feature. “The fan is meant to pull air out of the tent,” gestured one of our engineers. “The aluminized fabric we use on Evolution tents is breathable, so the fan works by pulling air in through the walls, but the poly membrane in the Odyssey doesn’t breathe so we cut these half-moon shaped vents hidden in the top corners. No one knows they are there, and that’s the intent, they’re covered by the top shell so rain can’t get in, but they’re exposed to the air which allows for ventilation, and ventilation removes condensation,” he added.

Insulation against metal

The condensation story doesn’t end there. In a previous blog where I discussed reasons we try to stay away from steel (rust, weight and inflexibility), I had one engineer also tell me that steel collects more condensation than aluminum and that we also wrap internal exposed aluminum with PVC fabric. Our users will see the four arms which hold up the top shell covered in fabric, and Odyssey customers can pull up the edge of their mattress to see fabric covering the aluminum profile that surrounds the bottom shell. All of which provides an extra layer of insulation against metallic parts, helping to reduce condensation even further.

Bobby recaps the key features that prevent condensation in the James Baroud Magma.

Anti condensation pad

Lastly, the engineers even considered a solution for condensation that can rise from the bottom. In the Odyssey, a foam padded liner not only reduces condensation but also provides temperature control. In our Evolution tents, an “anti-condensation” pad allows airflow under the mattress as an accessory. Check it out here.

30 years of experience

Perhaps the important lesson at James Baroud is that none of this happened overnight. We’ve been making rooftop tents for over 30 years, and every design element mentioned above was the result of a learning or bad customer experience that occurred over time. That is sometimes the overlooked benefit of buying from a brand that has been around for a long time, the experience manifests in a better, more thoughtful product. It also helps to have an engineering team who loves camping and constantly thinks about ways to make the tents better.

These days, my family and I primarily camp in our James Baroud Odyssey. In the mornings, I’m often the first person to wake up and the first thing I do is check on our little girls. I’m really glad I can introduce them to the outdoors in a safe, comfortable, fun, and dry environment. I absolutely love these tents, and I think you will too.