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Tents with (the outer tent) made of cotton or "technical cotton" (cotton blends) are heavier, more expensive, and take some more time to dry but they also have benefits (see below). Sure the weight is an argument against for backpacking but in other travel scenarios the benefits are more relevant.

Nevertheless my impression is a decline in selection of cotton tents. What's the reason for cotton tents not being more popular? Several people I spoke with mentioned a fear that cotton tends to leak but experiences of people that actually use cotton tents tell the contrary, so may it just be bad marketing?

P.S.: Asserted benefits of (poly-)cotton tents include

• better climate because the material breathes


• better sound insulator, less noise in wind and rain


• better resistance to UV light and heat, resulting in


• likely easier to repair

I grew up car-camping in a frame tent (slept 4 in about 1/4 of the floor area). Those things are heavy. Seriously heavy. Lifting the fabric onto the central pole with that half-extended was hard work for someone strong. The poles had to be pretty robust too, as the pitching process involved one or two poles taking most of the weight at various times. The whole thing took well over an hour to put up.

Some of the downsides of such designs could be solved with more modern constructions, but trying to lift that canvas by pushing on dome tent poles would get nowhere and/or snap the poles.

The bulk and weight made storage difficult. The fabric and pole set each weighed more than an entire similar sized nylon flexible-pole tent. At least here in the UK tents are often stored in lofts (attics) and getting a frame tent up a ladder was hard work if it even fitted through the hatch.

Even packing a car was harder due to the bulk. And they're too heavy for roof boxes.

If you did ever get home with a wet tent, that's a lot of fabric to get dry - and you have to get it dry thoroughly and quickly to avoid mould.

For scouts use, the needs are different. You need robust and large, but they're normally stored somewhere easily accessible, and you have a team of people to erect them (the ones I used were put up rather like raising a barn, in that several people pulled one end up, rather than ever having to lift the fabric high.

I think your question spells out pretty well why people prefer other materials (cost,weight) and they really aren't used for backpacking where weight matters.

The times I have ever seen them in use it was an outfitters camp where the tents are setup for an extended period of time and they had had mules/horses to pack the tent in. The other use case is car camping where the weight is less of an issue.

Beyond that there really isn't a use case for them.