I found this blackout tent the other day and it seemed like an interesting idea. It's basically a pretty standard pop-up tent but it's made from blackout material, so it will be dark inside on those sunny summer mornings (I know it rains all summer, humour me). So you could have an extra couple of hours of lie-in.

Then I started to think about it and it seemed there are a few problems. Firstly in our experience it's the children who wake us up in the morning not the sunlight (and I doubt it's the sunlight that wakes them up). However this tent isn't really designed for families with small children and so perhaps that's a moot point. The main issue I can see is the the blackout material is ... well ... black. Lovely sunlight absorbing black. Being black it'll get lovely and hot in that little pop-up tent. So despite it being really dark you'll still get woken up by the sun, it'll just be the sun's heat that gets you not the light. The other issue I can see is that even if you can stand the heat, the blackout material won't keep the noise out. As the tent seems to be pitched (excuse the pun) at festival goers, then the noise will probably wake you even before you start to slowly roast.

All in all I can't see this taking off a concept or being adopted more widely in other tents. A simpler solution I would think is an eye mask. Throw in a pair of ear plugs and you might get a decent lie-in after all. Assuming you don't have those pesky kids to wake you up of course, and you can resist the smell of cooking bacon that's wafting around the campsite.