Best Camping Lantern For Outdoor Adventures

To ensure that you use a camping lantern safely and in a way that it will provide you with the best experience during your next outdoor adventure, you should read our FAQs.

Let’s explore everything you need to know about camping lanterns, like how much light they should be able to provide.

How many lumens are good for a camping lantern?

The amount of lumens you need for a camping lantern will depend on when and how you intend on using it. If you just need enough light to be able to see around your campsite at night, 100 lumens will be enough.

Similarly, if you want to light up your tent, a lantern with around 200 lumens will be enough. 

If you want to be able to make nights around the table more engaging, you should ensure you have 300 or more lumens. This is also the case for more intensive tasks, such as reading at night, as having at least 300 lumens will be sufficient. 

To make it easy to estimate how many lumens you’d need, it’s good to note that approximately 900 lumens is roughly the same amount of light that gets produced by one incandescent bulb.

That should give you a good idea of how many lumens you’ll need in the next camping lantern you purchase.

Do you need a lantern for camping?

After reading our reviews of the best camping lanterns on the market, you can see why a lantern is very convenient to have. It also makes your stay in the outdoors a bit more comfortable and practical.

While you might think you can rely on flashlights and batteries, these are not practical. Camping lanterns are small and lightweight enough so you can pop them into a backpack and have them with you at all times.

Many can be taken apart so that they can provide even more light if required. If your camping lantern can be recharged by solar energy, you won’t have to worry about packing extra batteries. 

Lanterns come in handy when you want to illuminate a larger area, and many provide you with different lighting modes so that you can also dim them when required. This gives you greater flexibility and means you’ll have light for various tasks and activities during your camping trip.

There are also many lanterns that come with emergency features that can help you in a survival situation, such as water resistance, long battery life (in some cases the batteries can last up to a month), and flashing lights.

You can also find some red LED light features that will help you draw attention to yourself in an emergency.

Are propane lanterns safe in a tent?

If you want to use a propane gas lantern in a tent, you can – but you need to be very careful. Anything that’s fuelled by propane carries the risk of releasing carbon monoxide, which is poisonous.

This is why it’s important to ensure you don’t use lanterns in a closed area.

When setting up a propane lantern in a tent, the fuel that’s burned in the appliance replaces the oxygen inside the tent with CO2, which is dangerous to your health and can even cause death.

This is why propane lanterns in tents are considered to be dangerous and why it’s important to use a gas lantern in a tent that’s very well ventilated. 

This might not always be practical, such as on cold nights, which is why it will be safer to use an LED lantern instead. 

Whenever you use a propane lantern, make sure you check its flame. If it burns in yellow color, this is a sign that the lantern isn’t burning the fuel effectively, and it can be a sign of carbon monoxide being released by the lantern. 

Do lanterns give off carbon monoxide?

If your lantern uses gas as fuel, it will definitely be releasing carbon monoxide. This is why some gas lantern manufacturers state that their products are only safe for use outdoors where there’s sufficient ventilation.

The fumes that are released by a gas lantern are similar to those that a car gives off in an enclosed garage.

The danger of carbon monoxide is that it’s colorless and odorless. Yes, you should pay attention to the color of your lantern’s flame – if it’s yellow, that’s a bad sign it’s releasing carbon monoxide – but you can’t always tell when your lantern is releasing this toxic gas.

This is why carbon monoxide is the silent killer. It can make you sick without you even realizing it at first.

Inhaling carbon monoxide can cause weakness, dizziness, headaches, vomiting, confusion, and chest pain. Some people describe the feeling as being flu-like.

If you breathe in a lot of carbon monoxide it can make you faint and it could even be fatal. What further makes carbon monoxide dangerous is how it can build up indoors or in enclosed spaces.

This is why you should always tread carefully whenever you use a gas-powered appliance and only do so in well-ventilated, open places.

Conclusion

You can’t go camping without good lighting, and using your torch just doesn’t cut it as an effective light source. Its batteries run out quickly and it’s not a viable way to light up your cooking area, picnic area, or tent.

A camping lantern is a much better way to have the light that you need, and as we’ve seen in our best camping lantern review, many of these camping lanterns come with different lighting modes for increased versatility and comfort. No more glare that hurts your eyes!

The next time you hear a weird noise coming from the woods, you want to cook food on the grill after dark, or you want to enjoy reading a novel in your tent after everyone has gone to sleep in theirs, reaching for a camping lantern will ensure you can achieve your task with greater ease and enjoy your time outside. 

Resources:

• CDC.gov
• FindAnyAnswer.com