No one likes feeling grimy and sweaty while camping or after a long day at a music festival. A portable solar shower can be a game-changer in these situations, allowing you to feel refreshed and clean without having to queue hours for dirty festival showers or wasting a mountain of baby wipes.
Most solar showers are simply a flexible black bag with a shower hose attached. You fill the bag with cold water and lie it flat on the ground, ideally in direct sun. The dark colour helps the bag absorb heat and, depending on the weather, your hot shower could be ready in 1-3 hours.
Once it’s warmed up, hang the bag from a nearby tree or fence or just get a friend to hold it up high. Turn on the hose and enjoy a nice warm eco-friendly shower powered entirely by gravity and the sun. Alternatively, spend a bit extra for a ‘pressure solar shower’ – they use hand-pumped pressure instead of gravity so you don’t need to hang them up high.
A 20-litre shower should last around 8 minutes and while higher capacities are available, we haven’t listed them on this page as they usually take too long to warm in the British sun. And either way, they’re often more expensive than buying two separate 20-litre showers.
There are many different types and brands of solar showers on the market, so it can be tricky to know which one to choose. In this article, we’ll help you narrow down your options by sharing our top picks for the best portable solar showers for camping and festivals.
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How solar showers work
Fill the shower bag with water
Find a free water point near your tent and fill the bag to capacity
Leave the bag flat on the ground
Make sure it’s lying flat in as much sun as possible. The bag’s dark colours help it absorb heat into the water. On a sunny day, your hot shower should be ready in just an hour or two – and can become scalding hot if left too long! While it’ll take longer, the water should still warm up slowly on a cloudier day.
Hang the bag somewhere high
If you don’t have a shower tent, try using a nearby tree or fence – or ask a friend to hold it!
If you’ve spent the extra for a pressure solar shower, you can skip this step!
Enjoy your shower!
A 20-litre solar shower can provide around 8 minutes of hot water, enough to thoroughly wash long hair or even share with a friend.
The best solar showers for 2023
Amazon solar shower comparison
Here are three of the best solar showers available on Amazon – two that use height and gravity and one that uses pressure instead.
The first two gravity-powered showers have a 20-litre capacity which should give you around an eight-minute shower. The third, more expensive model gives you a few extra features, like a premium showerhead with a wider water flow.
The final solar shower below uses pressure instead of gravity to get the warm water flowing. Build up some pressure with a few quick blasts of the supplied foot pump and the water will flow upwards to the showerhead for a while, all without having to find something high and strong enough to hang it from – and because it’s a foot pump it’s easy to add more pressure if the water stops working while you’ve still got shampoo in your hair.
| Preview | Product | Rating | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | RISEPRO Solar Shower Bag 5 gallons/20L Solar Heating Premium Camping Shower Bag Hot Water with... | 4,954 Reviews | £9.90 | View on Amazon |
 | WADEO 12L Capacity Portable Camping Solar Heating Shower Bag with Temperature Indicator Foldable and... | 303 Reviews | View on Amazon |
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Gelert Hi-Gear 20L Solar Shower
Available at a range of high street retailers, this basic solar shower could well be everything you need for the next time you’re camping. Hi-Gear is a Gelert brand, so while it’s basic you can expect a decent quality product that won’t fall apart after you’ve used it a few times. The shower head is pretty basic and doesn’t have a ‘proper’ handle but that’s unlikely to bother you when you’re having a quick wash at Glastonbury.
The basic design means this is one of the lightest solar showers around, adding minimal weight to your bag and taking up almost no space when empty. It still has the usual 20-litre capacity so should give you around eight minutes of shower time. The manufacturers claim that in 21C weather, your shower water should reach around 35C after around two hours in the sun.
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Alternative: Outwell 20L Solar Shower
This one is pretty much identical to the Hi-Gear solar shower above and usually around the same price, it’s just available from different shops – useful if you’ve got one nearby or the other showers are out of stock when it’s time to buy.
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Alternative: Easy Camp 20L Solar Shower
This one is pretty much identical to the Hi-Gear and Outwell showers above – it’s just available in different places. Handy if you’ve got a Halfords nearby but lives miles from a Blacks or Millets.
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Quechua Premium 20L Solar Camping Shower
This one is a step up from the basic solar showers above. Instead of a hole punched in the top of the shower bag itself, the solid plastic hook, combined with the included loop strap, gives you way more flexibility in what you can safely hang your shower from.
The wider, premium showerhead gives you a more effective cleaning experience and the clever design means it can fold down into the compact package shown above when empty.
F.A.Q.
Can the water in solar showers get too hot?
Yes! Even in the UK, if they’re left in strong sunlight for too long the water inside can become scalding hot. It’s a side effect of the shower bags being efficient enough to warm the water in a couple of hours. If you’ve accidentally left the bag out for longer than expected, make sure to check the water won’t burn you. Most solar showers recommend adding cold water to quickly cool the contents and warn you that allowing the water to become too hot could damage the shower.
Where do I get the water from for a solar shower?
All camping festivals and campsites should have plenty of free water taps around the site. You can fill your shower directly from these taps, or alternatively, fill a larger water carrier at the taps and fill the shower itself from this next to your tent.