Jul 29, 2022

Showering at Music Festivals: Everything You Need to Know

It’s festival season - the time of year where millions of people across the globe gather to enjoy their favorite bands together, the camaraderie of their friends, and the joys of camping in large groups. The festival experience can be euphoric - but, as many experienced festival goers know, can also be torturous, and your experience is almost completely dependent on how prepared you are. As music festivals are naturally dirty experiences, there is one element of preparedness that is of crucial importance - hygiene, or more succinctly, the availability of showers.

Why you Need a Shower at a Music Festival

Arguably, having a shower available at a music festival is almost more important than having shower availability in your everyday life. Why? Here’s a few of the many reasons:

Since most festivals are in the summer / early fall, you will sweat.
Most festivals are in dirt lots or fields, so you will get dirty.
You will most likely be camping with several of your close friends you will not want to smell bad.
You (most likely) will be meeting new people, so you may want to look like you haven’t been rolling around in the mud for three days for that first impression.
You (most likely) will be in some pictures, and you may want at least one picture from the experience that you can show to your parents.

How To Shower at a Music Festival

Now, for experienced music festival goers, you likely have a solution to the shower problem. Most likely, those solutions are as follows:

Wet wipes - It sounds crazy, but yes, many people may bring a giant roll of wet wipes and use that in the place of a shower. Not only does this seem like a giant waste of paper, but it also seems like it would be a lot of work to get your entire body clean with this method.
Jugs of Water - Some people will just bring extra gallons of water to use on their bodies. This can be a pretty wasteful way to shower, as not only do you get no pressure, but you lose a lot of water when pouring it on you. You will also have to pack lots of extra water that you could be using for drinking - so you will take up more space in your vehicle and have less drinking water.
Onsite Showers - Many music festivals with camping facilities have showers onsite. These can be paid or free, but either way, you will have to wait in line for them, especially at the popular times. A sanitary shower experience is not guaranteed - but hey, at least you’ll be taking a shower .
Portable Showers - Many festival goers in the know may opt to bring a portable shower with them. There are many different types of portable showers, but the benefits of all of them is that you can shower at your campsite, and have enough water pressure to wash off dirt.

The majority of festival goers choose to use onsite showers, which is why lines are so long. This option requires no preparation or packing, so it ends up being the only choice most unprepared festival goers can make. Let’s take a look at what these onsite showers are like and what music festivals have them.

The Types of Festival Showers Onsite

The types of showers provided onsite at music festivals varies. It’s important to know what you’ll be getting into shower-wise before you go, especially if you’re a germaphobe, hate lines, or are shy.

Free Outdoor - At some festivals, some forms of outdoor showers are provided so attendees can either cool down or fully wash off out in the open. If you’ve got a bathing suit you can wear and don’t mind showering in front of large groups of people, these can suffice.
Free Stalls - What you’ll most commonly find at festivals are free showers that are either in small stalls like a porta-potty or in a portable trailer. As these are usually limited in numbers, and are used by thousands of people, there is typically a long line to use them, and they are usually not sparkling clean.
Paid Stalls - Some of the stalls provided at music festivals are coin operated or require a pass that is purchased for an extra fee. The fact that these are paid may mean that they are nice or that the line may be less long, but if there’s no other options onsite, it is likely they will be just as crowded as the free ones. They also usually have timers, so your shower will be rushed.
Facilities - Some of the top-tier music festivals or ones that are held on actual campgrounds may have actual running water toilet and shower facilities. Bonnaroo notably has actual running water toilets and indoor shower facilities. Undoubtedly these are preferable to the tight stalls, but it definitely doesn’t mean that there will be any less of a line and doesn’t guarantee they will be any more sanitary.

Outdoor free showers at Bonnaroo.

List of Music Festivals with Onsite Showers

So now that you know what to expect from onsite showers at music festivals, let’s take a look at the major music festivals with camping to see which ones provide onsite showers.

Festival	Free Showers	Paid Showers
Coachella	Yes	Yes
Burning Man	No	No
Bonnaroo	No	Yes
FireFly	Yes	No
Desert Daze	Yes	No
Stagecoach Festival	Yes	Yes
Country Fest	Yes	No
Watershed Music Festival	Yes	No
Country Jam USA	No	Yes
WE Fest	Yes	No
Contry Stampede Music Festival	Yes	Yes
Country Thunder	Yes	No
Winstock Country Music Festival	No	No
Oregon Jamboree	No	Yes
Boots & Hearts	No	Yes
Summer Camp Music Festival	No	Yes
Old Settler's Music Festival	No	Yes
Lightning in a Bottle	No	Yes
Okeechobeee Music & Arts Festival	No	Yes
The Peach Music Festival	Yes	Yes
Imagine Music Festival	No	Yes
Bestival	Yes	No
Beyond Wonrderland	Yes	Yes
Northern Nights	Yes	No
Bass Canyon	No	Yes
Nocturnal Wonderland	Yes	No
Splendour in the Grass	Yes	No
Lucidity	No	Yes
Backwoods Music Festival	No	Yes
Down the Rabbit Hole	Yes	No
Electric Daisy Carnival	Yes	No
Dover Speedway	Yes	No
Lost Lands	No	Yes
Born and Raised	Yes	No
Hill Vibes Reggae Festival	Yes	No
Country Fan Fest	Yes	No
Summer Meltdown	Yes	No
Sound Haven	Yes	No
Red Ants Pants Festival	Yes	No
Solasta	Yes	No
The Days Between	Yes	No
Catskill Mountain Jubilee	Yes	No
Secret Dreams	Yes	No
Rocklahoma	Yes	No
Nelsonville Music Festival	Yes	No
Imagine Festival	Yes	No
Same Same But Different	Yes	No
Firewater Festival	No	No
Joshua Tree Festival	Yes	No

So you can see that most festivals that have camping also have onsite showers, whether they are paid or free. So if you have no other options, you can pretty much rely on an onsite shower.

The Downsides of Music Festival Showers

As we have said, there are some definite downsides to going with the onsite shower method. Let’s take a look at what you’ll have to put up with if you go that route.

Long lines - The primary downside is that if you want to shower at normal times - in the morning or at the end of the day, you’re going to have to wait. Since you’re waiting for people to take showers, you might be waiting a long time, hours in some cases. If you want to shower but don’t want to wait in line, you may be out of luck until 3am in the morning.
Can be costly - At some festivals where it’s $10 a shower, if you want to shower twice a day, that can add up at a multi-day festival.
Pressure to Shower Fast - If you’re paying for a shower or even if you’re in a free shower, there’s going to be pressure to take a fast shower - whether it’s from the clock or from the hundreds of people waiting in line behind you.
Can be unsanitary - As much as you don’t want to think about it, there will literally be thousands of people using the same 30-40 showers. While they do likely get cleaned at least once a day, you still have to consider that people are going there to wash nastiness off of them, so undoubtedly some of that grossness will be left behind in the shower. For those that are germaphobes - a festival shower may be a literal nightmare.
Can be a long walk from campsite - Depending on where you’re camping, you might be a 20 minute walk from the showers, which may not be a big deal to some, but if you’re exhausted at the end of a long day jamming out, could be enough to keep you from showering.

Long lines can make showering at festivals a nightmare.

Portable Showers as a Solution For Showering At Festivals

If you want to optimize your experience at music festivals, bringing a portable shower with you will make a massive difference. Bringing a portable shower will empower you to:

Save time - With a portable shower, you’ll be able to shower at your campsite, so you won’t have to waste your precious time waiting in the long shower lines.

Save money - If the festival is charging for showers, you could easily save $60-$100 in showers over a multi-day festival.

Take your time - If you have your own personal shower, you don’t have to race a clock or worry about the person in line behind you getting annoyed that you’re taking a long shower.

Avoid the germs - When you have a personal shower it means you won't have to enter the enclosed bacteria chamber that is the shower stalls. This could keep you from getting sick or picking up whatever other diseases that may lie within those four walls.

Not have to walk to shower - Your portable shower will empower you to shower right at your campsite. No long walks in your towels and flip flops.

The Best Portable Shower for Music Festivals

So you can see how a portable shower can greatly improve your festival experience, but the question remains: what is the best portable shower to use? When you’re considering what kind of portable shower to purchase for a music festival, there’s a few things you’ll want to consider.

What to Consider in a Portable Shower

Portability - Is it easy to carry to a water source to refill? Will it fit easily in your car? Does it require any external pieces to function like propane or an external water source?
Capacity - Will you be able to take a long enough shower to get fully clean? Will you have to take it back to a water source to constantly refill it?
Pressurization - Will it have enough pressure to knock off the dried dirt and grime caked on your skin at the end of the day? Will you be able to pressurize it without a hose or pressure source?
Heating - Is there a way to heat the water without direct sunlight? Will you need propane to heat it?

So you can see these factors are very important to consider. If you get the wrong portable shower with bad pressure, you may as well just be pouring water on yourself out of a jug. On the contrary, a good portable shower will be strong enough to knock off the toughest dirt and grime, will have enough capacity for a long shower, and will have heating options so that you can take a hot shower whether there’s sun or not.

Why RinseKit is the Best Portable Shower for Music Festivals

RinseKit is the original portable shower, invented specifically for showering in off-grid environments like music festivals. That being said, it has evolved dramatically since its inception, and its evolution has been specifically focused at making the best portable shower on the market. As a result of this innovation, RinseKit is the best option for showering at Music Festivals, for the following reasons:

Superior Portability - RinseKit is, as the name suggests, a kit for rinsing; which means everything you need to shower is contained in the RinseKit including the water tank, the hose, and the pressurization method. That’s what makes RinseKit the most portable portable shower - everything you need fits in a kit the size of a cooler. Other portable showers require external water sources and hand pumps for pressurization - RinseKit has all of that built-in. This means you can easily transport, pack and carry the RinseKit so that you can use it literally anywhere.
High Capacity - The RinseKit PRO series has models with 3.5 gallons of capacity and up - which is enough for at least a 5-7 minute shower. Other portable showers may boast similar capacities, but really, they are referring to the size of their tank, not the amount of water in it. Due to the fact that they rely on air inside the tank to create pressure, the size of the tank has to account for both the air space and water. RinseKit utilizes battery pressurization, so there is no need to lose water space to air space- the 3.5 gallons is the true capacity and not just the size of the onboard tank.
Strong, Consistent Pressurization - While other portable showers rely on pressure sources like hoses and hand pumps for pressurization, RinseKit uses a non-spillable lead acid battery to power a built-in diaphragm water pump. That means that the water pressure is very strong and consistent to the last drop, and that no repressurization is required. It’s enough pressure to knock off the dried mud and sweat that often plagues festival goers. It’s essentially like taking the same pressure as your home’s shower and putting it into an easy-to-carry container.
Heating Options - RinseKit has a number of heating accessories that can empower campers to take a hot shower anywhere. Our immersion heater can be charged from your 12v socket on your car and will heat the water in the RinseKit in about an hour. Our HyperHeater propane powered heater will heat up water to 110F in around 30 seconds - so you can have a piping hot shower instantly. This means you won’t need to put a water jug or a bag out in the sun - you can have a hot shower day or night.

best festival shower RinseKit has many uses at music festivals, showering being one of them.

So you can see that RinseKit has some significant advantages over other portable showers when it comes to showering off-grid. For music festivals, it's optimal mainly due to the fact you don’t need a pressure source to pressurize it, you don’t need an external water source, you can easily transport it and you can have hot water any time of the day.

For those that want to take a fully private shower, we also sell a two-room shower tent equipped with a changing room, towel rack, and built-in storage for toiletries. Combined with the RinseKit and one of our heaters, you can take a fully private, hot, high pressure shower at your campsite - and won’t have to wait in line or expose yourself to the nastiness that is public showers.

showering music festival

The PRO + HyperHeater + Shelter Tent, the ultimate off-grid hot shower.

So if you’re going to a music festival this year that allows camping, you need to be prepared for how you’re going to shower. If you’re the type of person that doesn’t mind a line, or wiping yourself down with wet wipes - more power to you, but we think that a RinseKit is the best solution for showering at a festival. With a RinseKit at your festival campsite you’ll get to spend more time jamming out with your friends, and less time standing in long lines to take the nastiest shower of your life.