Free tool
Layering & Clothing Advisor
Turn a forecast low into the layers you actually need at camp.
Demand temperature
10°C
Adjustments
+0°C
Your layer stack
- BaseBreathable tee + long sleeve backupMorning chill burns off mid-morning.
- MidLight fleece or shirt-jacketOne warm layer, sized for the evening.
- OuterShell in the packOut for wind, sunset or the descent.
All calculations run on our servers from the values you enter — nothing is stored.
Please note — This is a clothing guide for ordinary camping conditions, not a survival system. Wind, wet and cold together can create genuinely dangerous conditions well above freezing, and no stack of shop clothing makes exposure safe in a storm — turn back or shelter early rather than trusting layers in severe weather.
Cold at camp is almost never a temperature problem. It is a clothing-system problem. Two people can stand at the same swag on the same six-degree morning, one miserable and one comfortable. And the difference is that one of them packed a windproof layer and the other packed a thicker jumper that breathes like a cardigan.
This advisor works the way experienced walkers work. It takes the coldest temperature your night will reach and subtracts the heat that wind will pull off you. It credits back the heat your body will make if the day is hard. The answer is a demand temperature — the number your clothing system has to handle at its worst moment.
Then it hands you a stack. What touches your skin, what traps the warmth, what blocks the weather, and what to do about your head and hands. Each layer has a job, and the answer changes which jobs matter. A warm dry night needs almost nothing. A cold wet windy one needs every layer to be the right one.
The one rule that survives every climate in Australia is at the bottom of the result: cotton at camp is a risk, not a fabric. Everything else is tuning.
How the demand temperature works
The forecast low is the anchor, because clothing decisions are made at the worst moment of the night, not the median of the day. If you camp in a frost hollow, use the hollow's number rather than the town's. The Bureau tells you the town, and cold air drains downhill into places exactly like yours.
Wind comes off the top next. Still air is insulation you wear for free; moving air replaces it with your body heat on loan. Light breeze costs about a degree, a steady wind two, and an exposed ridgeline in strong wind three. Under a sheltered tree line you keep some of it back.
Activity goes on at the end. A day of hard walking runs three degrees warmer than your clothes' rating suggests. This is why the morning starts with layers peeled at the trailhead. A day of fishing, sitting and photos runs colder, and the credit flips to a penalty. Answer the effort question honestly, because it moves the answer by three degrees either way.
A worked example
Take a spring weekend in the Tasmanian central highlands. Forecast low of eight degrees, strong wind forecast, light rain about, and a day of moderate walking. Eight, minus three for the wind, plus nothing for effort, gives a demand temperature of five.
For five degrees the stack has three slots. A light merino or synthetic base takes the first. A fleece or light puffer fills the mid, and a shell that genuinely blocks wind closes the system. The rain answer forces that outer layer to be real waterproof rather than water-resistant. And the wind means the shell goes in the bag's outer pocket rather than the bottom.
Notice what the result does not say. It does not recommend a heavy winter bag, and it does not tell you to pack the expedition down jacket. The walking day means sweat management matters more than static warmth, and sweat you cannot dry is the fast route to being cold at dusk. The right kit is breathable layers you can peel, not one enormous warm thing.
How to use the advisor properly
Look up the forecast the afternoon before you pack, not the morning you leave. The Bureau's district forecast gives the night low, and camp-site reality is usually a little colder than the town reading. Add one or two degrees of pessimism if you camp in valleys, near water or on exposed plains.
Run the trip twice if the days differ. A walk that is hot by day and frosty by night needs the union of both answers. The sun protection from the day stack and the beanie from the night one. The advisor will give you two demand temperatures; pack the layers that cover both.
Treat the stack as slots to fill, not a shopping list. Most campers already own the answer — the job is choosing which of your fleeces and which shell belongs in the bag this weekend. The layers section tells you the role each item must play, so you can audit your wardrobe against it.
Reading your layer stack
The base layer's only job is moving sweat off skin. Merino forgives you for wearing it for days and stays warm damp. Synthetics dry fastest and cost least. Cotton does neither, which is why every result carries the warning: wet cotton against wind is how a fifteen-degree day turns into a hypothermia story.
The mid layer traps air, and air is the insulation. Fleece breathes and handles abrasion from pack straps. Puffers are warmer per gram but many shells overlap oddly with hip belts. At camp, a puffer beats a fleece for sitting still because it moves no air at all — which is exactly the point of it.
The outer layer blocks what the mid cannot: wind first, rain second. The shell-needed flag on the result is the one hard verdict. Wind at moderate or above, or any real rain, and a windproof layer stops being optional. A damp morning with no shell is a long damp morning with a damp back.
The evening test
Whatever stack the advisor gives you, add one layer more than feels necessary for the sit-around hours. Camp cold is static cold, and static cold is always worse than the walk in suggested.
Where this advice is weakest
The wind penalty uses open-terrain numbers. A camp among dense eucalypts or in a lee behind a dune can feel two degrees milder than the forecast says, while a lake shore or a paddock can feel the full force. Your site's exposure is the one input this tool cannot see, so err toward the honest value.
Personal cold varies more than any formula. Some sleepers radiate heat all night; others climb into a bag at ten degrees already shivering. If you run cold, nudge the forecast low down two or three degrees before answering, and the stack will land where your comfort actually lives.
Extremes need real gear advice rather than a stack. Above thirty-five degrees, the question becomes sun and hydration management, and the tools page has calculators for exactly that. Below zero for days on end. High alpine winter. You are buying equipment, not packing a weekend, and the layering logic still applies but the tolerances tighten.
The formula
Demand temperature = forecast low − wind penalty + activity credit, matched to a base / mid / outer layer stack
- Forecast low
- The coldest the night will reach, straight from the Bureau forecast for somewhere near your camp.
- Wind penalty
- Moving air strips heat: light takes off one degree, moderate two, strong three. Exposed sites feel the full hit.
- Activity credit
- Hard walking generates heat, so high effort lowers the demand by three. Sitting around all day raises it by the same logic.
Demand temperature to stack at a glance
| Demand | Base | Mid + outer |
|---|---|---|
| 0 °C or below | Merino top and bottoms | Heavy fleece or puffer, insulated jacket, shell, beanie and gloves |
| 1–6 °C | Light merino or synthetic | Fleece or puffer, windproof shell, light beanie for the night |
| 7–12 °C | Breathable tee plus long sleeve | Light fleece or shirt-jacket, shell kept within reach |
| 13–20 °C | Short sleeve, loose weave | One warm layer for dusk, shell only if rain shows |
| 21 °C and up | UPF shirt and shorts | Dusk flannel at most; the hat is the important layer |
Key terms
- Base layer
- The fabric against your skin. Its only job is moving moisture, and it fails at that job entirely when it is cotton.
- Mid layer
- The trapped-air layer — fleece, puffer, wool jumper. Warmth per gram is the mid layer's contest to win.
- Shell
- The weather barrier. A windbreaker is a shell; a proper rain jacket is a shell with taped seams and a hood that fits over a beanie.
- Wind chill
- The temperature your skin feels once moving air is factored in. Always below the thermometer reading, sometimes far below.
- Frost hollow
- A low-lying camp where cold night air drains and pools. Town forecasts miss them entirely; expect one to three degrees colder.
Pro tips
- Pack the stack so the shell lives in the lid or outer pocket — the layer you need is always the one buried deepest.
- Two thin bases beat one thick one: you can wear either in the heat and both at the cold end.
- Change the socks you sleep in at dusk. Dry evening socks are the cheapest warmth per gram in the whole system.
- In the Snowies or Tasmania, run the advisor twice — once for the walk's effort, once for the stationary dawn.
× Common mistakes
- Packing for the daytime high and being caught out at the eight-degree sit-around after dinner.
- Taking a thick cotton hoodie as the mid layer and wondering why the wind cuts straight through it.
- Wearing the puffer while walking, soaking it with sweat, then sleeping in a damp insulator.
- Forgetting that gloves and a beanie weigh almost nothing and fix half of every cold-camp complaint.
Frequently asked questions
Is merino really worth it over synthetic base layers?+
For multi-day trips, usually yes. Merino stays warm when damp and resists smell, so one top can cover three days of wear and two nights of walking. Synthetics dry faster and cost half as much, which wins for single overnights and sweaty summer use. Plenty of long-term walkers carry one of each and swap by forecast.
Why is cotton so bad when my grandfather camped in it fine?+
Because wet cotton stops insulating almost completely and stays wet for hours, and the old campers were either car-camping or unlucky. Your grandfather's dry-change-under-the-ute was the actual system. The rule is not cotton-never; it is cotton-never-against-skin-in-the-cold, which lets you wear it happily in forty-degree summer heat.
Do I need a rain jacket if the forecast says showers?+
Yes, and the advisor says so outright. A shower in still warm air is an inconvenience; a shower in wind at eight degrees is a clothing-system failure. A proper shell weighs a couple of hundred grams and doubles as a windbreaker all weekend. So the honest question is not whether you will need it but why you ever left it at home.
What about kids and old campers who run cold?+
Nudge the forecast low down two or three degrees before answering the questions, which stretches the stack to cover them. Kids lose heat faster because they have less of everything. Mass, insulation, and patience for sitting in a cold site — and cold-intolerant adults simply need the heavier mid layer the higher band suggests.
Does this replace the sleeping bag temperature calculator?+
No — they answer different halves of the same cold night. This advisor covers the hours you are awake and moving, where layers and wind rule. The sleeping bag tool covers the static hours, where metabolism, mat insulation and shelter type carry the load. Run the same forecast low through both and the evening is fully covered.
How we built this calculator
- Written by
- Track & Canopy Editorial Team — Gear & Sleep Desk
- How we calculate
- The demand-temperature model uses the standard wind and activity adjustments that Australian walking clubs and outdoor instructors teach for layering decisions, and band boundaries were checked against how common garments actually perform across the climates our team camps in.
- Sources & standards
- Last reviewed
- 15 October 2026
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Track & Canopy — Practical gear advice for Australian conditions. Estimates are planning aids, not engineering advice.