How To Fit A Queen Air Mattress In A 2, 3, 4, Or 6-Person Tent!

If you’ve ever wondered how to fit a queen air mattress into a 2, 3, 4, or 6-person tent, there are a few different things you are going to want to consider.

Can you fit a queen air mattress in a 2-person tent?

You can fit a queen air mattress into a 2, 3, 4, or 6-person tent by doing the following:

• inflate the mattress so the sides can fold a bit in a 2-person tent
• give up all floor space in a 3-person tent
• have only a little bit of floor space in a 4-person tent
• have plenty of room in a 6-person tent

I have always loved camping, but as I’ve gotten older, sleeping on the hard ground is starting to become less and less appealing. Deciding to camp with an air mattress was one of the best decisions I’ve made. 

The added effort of packing, blowing up, and deflating an air mattress has proven to be totally worth it for a good night’s sleep while sleeping under the stars. But figuring out what size tent can accommodate a queen size bed has been a bit more of a challenge.

Hopefully, the research I’ve done on mattresses and tent sizes will be as helpful to you as they were to me.

How Can I Fit a Queen Air Mattress Into a 2, 3, 4, or 6, Person Tent? 

It’s hard to know which has come further – air mattresses or camping tents.

Over the course of the last sixty years, tent camping has gone from being something that was done for obligatory purposes to something that people like to do for recreation as well. 

Air mattresses became popular in the early 2000s as a means to house guests when extra space was needed and an extra room or regular beds weren’t available.

The combination of these two ideas didn’t really take off until about five years after that, when people started realizing that an air mattress could be used when camping.

At first, the idea seemed preposterous to people dragging a full or queen size air mattress into the woods so that you could have a slightly more comfortable night sleep was something that seemed a bit unrealistic to most campers.

But as air mattresses continued to become more portable, lighter and easier to use, the idea gained momentum.

Now, there are actually air mattresses that are designed particularly for camping. These mattresses tend to be made of more durable materials, inflate and deflate quickly, and often come with cords that can be plugged directly into your car, or have battery packs that allow them to inflate.

Many of us own air queen-size air mattresses and would like to use the mattress we already own when we go camping. 

But in order to fit a queen sized air mattress into different sized tents, you may need to make a few adjustments to your tent in order to make it happen.

Let’s look at the ways a queen size mattress will fit into the tent you already own.

1. Don’t Fully Inflate the Mattress So the Sides Can Fold a Bit in a 2 Person Tent

Though most tents will allow for an air mattress to fit just fine, certain sizes will make housing a queen mattress a bit more of a challenge.

Take a 2 person tent for example. 

A 2 person tent will usually be 77 inches long and 50 inches wide. A normal air mattress is about 80 inches long and  60 inches wide.

Clearly, an air mattress is bigger than a 2 person tent. But, there are some things you can do to get it to (kind of) work. 

A solution for this is to put the mattress in the tent before you inflate it. This way, you can stop inflating the mattress when it begins to push against the tent’s wall.

You will have no extra space in your tent when you try and put a queen mattress  in it, but it can be done if it’s really necessary.

2. Be Willing to Give Up All Floor Space in a 3 Person Mattress

A queen size mattress will fit a bit better if you have a 3 person tent instead of a 2 person one.

With a 3 person tent, the mattress will still take up the majority of space, but you’ll find that there is a bit of room on the sides for a few items to be stored.

This is not to say you’ll have any real floor space. You won’t be able to walk around a queen mattress when it’s placed in a 3 person tent, but at least it won’t be pressed against the walls like it would be in a 2 person tent.

Most 3 person tents measure around 84 inches long and 68 inches wide. And – since most queen air mattresses are 80 inches by 60 inches, you can see this gives you just enough space for being able to navigate around it (though by no means will it be “roomy.”)

One option is to inflate the mattress inside the tent, like suggested with a 2 person tent. Because of the lack of space, it will be much more challenging to inflate the queen mattress outside of a 3 person tent.

3. Be willing to only have a little bit of floor space in a 4 person tent

If you have – or are willing to upgrade – to a four person tent, this is where you’ll see that a queen sized air mattress can actually begin to fit into a tent a bit more comfortably. 

It’s fairly standard for 4 person tents to be about 108 inches by 82 inches. This means that a queen air mattress will have a good 20 inches of floor space surrounding it around the sides and 20 inches at the foot.

And, at 20 inches, this means you’ll have almost 2 feet of free space to store your gear, move around and not feel quite so cramped.

Granted, a queen size mattress within a four person tent isn’t going to allow for tons of extra space, but it will feel significantly less claustrophobic than a two or three person tent will.

The other nice thing about a 4 person tent is that you have the option to inflate the mattress outside the tent and then bring it inside.

This is particularly nice if you need to use your car adapter to inflate the mattress and the cord isn’t long enough to be able to stretch all the way to the tent. 

With a 2 or 3 person tent, inflating the mattress outside the tent is pretty much impossible, as you simply can’t then fit it through the tent’s opening.

But with a 4 person tent, you have the ability to inflate it outside or inside and have no trouble either way.

4. But…You’ll Have Plenty of Room in a 6 Person Tent

If you are hoping to use a queen size mattress with a 6 person tent, you’re going to have no trouble at all.

A normal 6 person tent measures at around 120 inches long and 100 inches wide. 

Not only do 6 person tents provide much more space, you can usually stand fully upright in them as well. 

Not only will you have plenty of room on either side of the mattress, but you’ll have a good amount of room at the base as well

This means you can store shoes, backpacks or anything else you want to keep in the tent at the foot of your bed, and leave room on the sides for walking around. 

Not only that, you can actually get away with having two queen air mattresses in a 6 person tent if you need that much sleeping space.

Two queen mattresses means you’ll be left with little to no space again, but it is nice to know that you could fit two mattresses inside a 6 person tent if you need to. 

Key Takeaways

• Tents and air mattresses have come a long way in the past few decades in their comfort and design.
• Air mattresses used to be unheard of in the camping world, but now they’ve become a standard part of sleeping outdoors.
• You can fit a queen air mattress into a 2, 3, 4, or 6 person tent if you are willing to fully inflate the mattress so the sides can fold a bit in a 2 person tent, are willing to give up all floor space in a 3 person tent, are willing to only have a little bit of floor space in a 4 person tent, but you’ll have plenty of room in a 6 person tent.