You’ve bought the ticket, you’ve borrowed a tent, and now you’re staring at a pile of stuff wondering how much of it actually needs to come. Festival camping is its own thing. You’re sleeping in a field for three or four days, the weather does whatever it wants, and the nearest mirror is the front camera on your phone. Getting ready in that setting takes a bit of planning, so here’s how to sort your hair and skin without a bathroom to hide in.

Lighten up

Pack for a festival, not an expedition. You are carrying everything from the car park to a patch of grass that could be a solid fifteen-minute walk away, often twice if you forget something. One bag of toiletries you can actually lift beats three you can’t.

Work out what you use every day and bring only that. The full skincare shelf stays home. You want the two or three things you’d genuinely miss, not the ones you own out of guilt. And if it lives in a jar the size of your fist, decant a bit into something smaller.

The no-shower reality

There’s a real chance you won’t shower properly the whole weekend, and if you do, the queue will cost you a set you wanted to see. Plan around that instead of pretending it won’t happen.

Baby wipes are the workhorse. A big resealable pack does the job of a shower, cleans your hands before food and wipes the dust off your face after a hot afternoon down the front. Dry shampoo does the same trick for your hair, buying you a couple of extra days before it starts looking like you slept in a field, which you did. Beyond that, a toothbrush, a bit of travel toothpaste, deodorant, a small hand sanitiser and a fast-drying towel cover the basics. That’s genuinely the whole kit.

Sun and skin come first

More people get wrecked by the sun at a festival than by anything else. You’re outside all day with no shade, often facing a stage that happens to be pointed straight at the afternoon sun, and you don’t notice the burn until it’s done.

Two things do the heavy lifting: sun-cream and moisturiser. Put the sunscreen on first thing, before you leave the tent, and top it up after lunch because you will forget otherwise. A hat and sunglasses do half the work for you and save your face from squinting all day. Moisturiser matters more than you’d think. Wind and dust and dry nights leave your skin tight and flaky by day two, and a bit at night sorts it out. Lip balm with SPF is small and easy to lose, so bring two.

Drink water between all of this. Most of what people blame on the sun is really just being dehydrated in the sun, and it shows on your skin as much as anywhere.

Getting ready with no power point

A campground has no mirrors, no bathroom bench and, crucially, no power point, so anything that plugs into the wall stays home. That rules out a normal straightener or hairdryer. It’s why cordless styling tools built for travel have become the workaround for festival campers. The one I keep going back to is ghd’s Unplugged, mostly because it holds enough charge for a full look before it needs a top-up, which is really all you’re asking of it in a tent.

If a flat, frizz-free finish is part of your festival look, the only realistic option in a tent is a battery-powered straightener that works without an outlet, charged up before you leave and topped off from a power bank between sets. It runs about twenty minutes on a full charge. That’s plenty for one proper going-over rather than fiddling with your whole head, and it charges over USB-C from the same power bank you’re using for your phone. There’s a battery indicator on the side so you’re not guessing how much you’ve got left, and it comes with a heat-resistant case, which matters when you’re throwing it back in a bag that’s about to get sat on.

A couple of things to know. Twenty minutes is not endless, so do the front sections that actually show and leave the back alone. And keep it topped up. A dead straightener in a field earns you nothing but the weight of carrying it. Charge it the night before you drive out, bring a decent power bank, and it’ll see you through.

If straightening isn’t your thing, don’t force it. A field is a great excuse to let your hair do what it wants. Plaits, a bandana, a bucket hat, tying it back, all of it looks right at a festival and needs zero charge. Have a plan you can actually pull off in a tent, whatever that plan turns out to be.

Find your tent again

This isn’t grooming, but it’ll save your weekend. Campsites are a sea of identical two-second tents, and at 2am after a headliner they all look the same. Tie something to yours you’ll recognise from a distance. A flag works. So does a balloon, or a bit of bright fabric on a pole. Anything that lets you spot yours across a crowd beats wandering rows of strangers’ tents in the dark.

While you’re at it, note a fixed landmark near your spot: the food stalls, a big tree, the number on the nearest toilet block. The flag helps up close, but the landmark points you to the right corner of the field before you’ve even started looking.

Pack it the night before

Do all of this the evening before you leave, not the morning of. Lay the toiletries out, decant what needs decanting, charge everything that takes a charge, then pack the bag you can carry. Morning-of packing is how you end up at the gate realising the sunscreen’s still on the kitchen bench.

Get the hair and skin sorted and stay ahead of the sun, and the rest of the weekend is just the music you came for.