Can you use a tarp as a pool cover?
You can put one on a pool. It just will not do the job most people are buying a cover for, and the reason is one property of the material.
Quick picks
Ranked for the job you were going to use the tarp for. The first two heat water; the last one does not, and is on the list because some people asking this question want a debris cover and do not know it.
| # | Product | Best for | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Best overall Sun2Solar 1200 Series Crystal Clear Solar Cover 12-mil clear. Does the job a tarp cannot do at all: passes sunlight into the water, then holds the heat in overnight. | Most pools, most budgets — the default recommendation | |
| 2 | No photo Cheapest that works An 8-mil blue solar cover 8-mil blue. If the appeal of the tarp was the price, this is the cheapest thing that is still a solar cover. | Nothing we would recommend | |
| 3 | No photo Buy this with it Blue Wave Solar Cover Reel The reason people reach for a tarp is that handling a cover is a chore. This fixes the chore rather than the cover. | Any inground pool with a cover you are not using enough | |
| 4 |  If debris was the actual goal Blue Wave Arctic Armor Above-Ground Winter Pool Cover An opaque sheet with grommets, a 4 ft overlap and a winch cable. What a tarp is pretending to be, built for it. | Closing an above-ground pool for winter, not stretching the season |
#ad We earn a commission if you buy through this link, at no extra cost to you. It never changes the ranking. How this site is funded. Prices last checked October 18, 2026.
How we judged it
“Pool cover” is four different jobs wearing one name, and the tarp question only makes sense once you separate them. Any sheet you put on a pool is being asked to do some combination of:
- Admit sunlight so the water can absorb it. This is the only mechanism by which a cover makes a pool warmer rather than merely less cold.
- Stop evaporation, which is where roughly 70% of a pool’s heat loss goes. This needs the material to sit in contact with the water surface, not to span the pool above it.
- Slow conduction and radiation overnight — the insulating job, which is about trapped air rather than about light.
- Keep debris out, which needs opacity, a fixing system and enough strength to be tensioned.
A tarp can do the fourth job and part of the third. It cannot do the first at all, and it does the second badly for a reason that has nothing to do with quality.
| Plain tarp | Solar cover | Winter cover | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Woven polyethylene sheet with edge grommets | Bubble-wrap film, 8 to 16 mil | Woven opaque sheet, reinforced, with a fixing system |
| Passes sunlight to the water | No | Yes — this is the whole point of it | No, deliberately |
| Makes the water warmer | No | Yes, while the sun is on it | No |
| Suppresses evaporation | Partly, and only where it touches | Yes — it floats in contact with the surface | Yes, on a closed pool |
| Cut and sized for a pool | No — rectangles in standard sizes | Yes, and you trim it to the shape | Yes, with an overlap spec |
| Fixing system | Grommets, and whatever you tie it to | None needed — it floats | Cable and winch, or wall bags |
| Published lifespan | Rarely stated by anyone | Stated in thickness tiers | Stated, and warranted |
The row that decides this is the second one. Everything else is a question of degree; sunlight transmission is a yes or a no, and on a tarp it is a no.
Why the opacity settles it
A solar cover is not insulation that happens to be see-through. The bubbles pass visible light into the water, where it is absorbed and turns into heat, and then the same bubbles slow that heat leaving again after dark. The mechanism is worth understanding because it tells you immediately which substitutes can work: anything translucent and floating is in the conversation, and anything opaque is not.
Put an opaque sheet over a pool on a sunny day and you have shaded the water. You have also stopped evaporation from the shaded area, which is a genuine saving — but you have given up the gain, and in the middle of a season that is the wrong trade. This is exactly why a winter cover left on into spring leaves a pool colder than an uncovered one would have been. A tarp is a winter cover without the engineering.
The evaporation part, properly
The one real argument for a tarp is evaporation, so it deserves a fair hearing. Evaporation is the dominant loss on a pool — around 70% of the total — and the Department of Energy’s figures put the saving from covering a pool when it is not in use at 50 to 70% of heating cost. If a sheet stops water molecules leaving the surface, it is doing the expensive part of the job whether or not it is clear.
The catch is the phrase in contact with the surface. A solar cover floats: it is in contact across its whole area, including as the water level drops. A tarp is supported at its edges and has no reason to lie flat on water. In practice it domes in the middle, puddles where rain collects, lifts in wind, and makes contact over some fraction of the surface you cannot predict. You get some of the evaporation benefit, over some of the pool, for as long as it stays put.
| A 12-mil clear solar cover for a 16 x 32 ft pool | about $237 |
| An 8-mil blue cover, same pool | about $215 |
| A tarp of roughly the same area | a fraction of either |
The saving is real. The thing you bought is a different product.
Prices on this site are live retail figures with an as-of date, not estimates — see the ranked table at the top. The point of the arithmetic is only that a solar cover is already a cheap object, so the price gap is a small reason to accept a sheet that cannot heat.
The three places a tarp is genuinely the wrong object
- It is not sized to your pool. Covers are sold to be laid on and trimmed to the water shape; the sizing and trimming method is the whole reason a cover lies flat. A standard tarp rectangle on a round or kidney pool leaves overhang that catches wind on every edge.
- Water on top of it has nowhere to go. A floating cover sheds rain into the pool through and around it. A spanning sheet collects it, and a few inches of rainwater across a pool-sized rectangle is a weight no grommet pattern was designed for.
- It is not a safety cover and does not pretend to be. Nothing on this site is a safety cover — solar covers are not either, and we say so on every page that mentions them. The difference is that a safety cover is engineered and rated for load, and a tarp over water looks more solid than it is. If keeping somebody off the water is the goal, this whole category is the wrong aisle.
So what should you actually buy?
Work from what you wanted the sheet to do, which is how the ranked table at the top of this page is ordered:
- Warmer water: a clear solar cover, 12 mil on most pools. This is the overall pick and it is the only answer on this list that adds heat.
- Lower heating bills, nothing else: the same cover. The saving comes from suppressing evaporation, and a floating cover does that across the whole surface.
- Leaves and dirt out of a pool you have closed down: a winter cover, with the overlap and the cable. Not a tarp, and not a solar cover.
- Both, at different times of year: both covers. They are not two grades of the same product, and owning one of each is the normal answer rather than an indulgence.
Every pick, in detail
What each one publishes, what is good and bad about it, and — the section this category usually omits — what we could not judge without owning one.
Sun2Solar 1200 Series Crystal Clear Solar Cover
The value pick, and the one whose logic actually holds up. A clear cover transmits more sunlight into the body of the pool instead of absorbing it at the surface, and 12 mil is the point where lifespan stops being the limiting factor. Bob Vila measured this and the 16-mil blue at the same 4 to 5 degrees in an hour, so you are paying less for the same measured result and giving up some years of service life.
Best for Most pools, most budgets — the default recommendation
| Price shown for | 20 x 40 ft rectangleThis product is sold in several sizes on one listing. The live price and photograph on this page are the ones Amazon returns for this variant; other sizes are priced separately. | Retail listing |
|---|---|---|
| Thickness | 12 milThe manufacturer publishes no retrievable specification sheet; figure is as listed at retail. | Retail listing |
| Color | Clear | Retail listing |
| Stated lifespan | 3 to 4 years for the 12-mil clear tierSwim University's published figure for 12-mil clear covers generally. | Retail listing |
| Bubble side | Bubbles face the water | Published standard |
4 to 5 degrees F in one hour
Claimed by Bob Vila, measured across all covers in their group. Conditions: One hour under 2pm sun on 89 to 92 degree F days. Source
- Clear transmits more light into the water instead of stopping it at the surface
- 12 mil is the sweet spot: real service life without 16-mil bulk
- Cheaper than the 16-mil tier with no measured heating penalty
- Shorter published lifespan tier than 16 mil
- A clear cover shows algae and debris more obviously, which some people dislike
- Whether clear genuinely outlasts or under-lasts blue in the same thickness
- Real-world tear resistance at a pool with rough edges
- How much the clear material clouds over a season of UV
These need a unit in hand across a season. We do not have one, so we do not have an opinion worth printing on them.
#ad We earn a commission if you buy through this link, at no extra cost to you. It never changes the ranking. How this site is funded. Prices last checked October 18, 2026.
An 8-mil blue solar cover
Skip it. This is the one place in the category where the cheap option is a false economy, and the published lifespan tiers say so plainly: 8-mil blue covers are put at one to two years, against three to four for 12 mil and five to ten for 16 mil. There is no measured heating advantage to the thicker cover, so thickness is buying you years — and the 8-mil is the tier where you buy the same thing again next summer.
Best for Nothing we would recommend
| Thickness | 8 mil | Retail listing |
|---|---|---|
| Stated lifespan | 1 to 2 yearsSwim University's published lifespan tier for 8-mil blue covers. | Retail listing |
- Cheapest entry into a cover of any kind
- One to two years against three to four for a 12-mil, at a fraction of the price difference
- Thin material is harder to handle without tearing at the edge
- No measured heating advantage lost by going thicker, so there is nothing to gain here
- Whether a specific 8-mil cover beats its tier average
- How much of the price gap is material and how much is brand
These need a unit in hand across a season. We do not have one, so we do not have an opinion worth printing on them.
#ad We earn a commission if you buy through this link, at no extra cost to you. It never changes the ranking. How this site is funded. Prices last checked October 18, 2026.
Blue Wave Solar Cover Reel
A reel is the single highest-leverage purchase in this whole category and almost nobody frames it that way. Every DOE saving figure assumes the cover is on the pool when the pool is not in use. A cover that takes two people and five minutes comes off on Friday and goes back on in October. A reel turns that into thirty seconds alone, which is the difference between the savings existing and not.
Best for Any inground pool with a cover you are not using enough
| Type | Wheeled above-ground-style reel for inground and above-ground useThe manufacturer publishes no retrievable specification sheet; figure is as listed at retail. | Retail listing |
|---|---|---|
| Why it matters | Converts a two-person five-minute job into a one-person thirty-second jobOur framing, not a manufacturer claim. The published savings all assume the cover is actually on. | Our arithmetic |
- Turns the cover into something you will genuinely use daily
- Keeps the cover off the ground, which is where covers get damaged
- Wheels, so it moves out of the way
- Costs a real fraction of what the cover itself costs
- Takes up deck space permanently
- Assembly is fiddly on every reel in this category
- How the tube and hardware hold up outdoors across seasons
- Whether the width range covers your pool without a wobble
- Assembly quality and hardware fit
These need a unit in hand across a season. We do not have one, so we do not have an opinion worth printing on them.
#ad We earn a commission if you buy through this link, at no extra cost to you. It never changes the ranking. How this site is funded. Prices last checked October 18, 2026.
Blue Wave Arctic Armor Above-Ground Winter Pool Cover
A closing cover, not a heating one, and that distinction is the entire reason it appears on this site. It is opaque woven polyethylene, it straps down with a cable and a winch, and its job is to sit on a shut pool from autumn to spring keeping debris and sunlight out. It will not warm your water, it is not designed to, and if what you want is a few more swimmable weeks then this is the wrong product and a solar cover is the right one.
Best for Closing an above-ground pool for winter, not stretching the season
| Price shown for | 24 ft roundBlue Wave lists each size and color of this cover as a separate item, so the live price and photograph here are for the 24 ft round. Check the size in the title before ordering — the listings are otherwise near-identical. | Retail listing |
|---|---|---|
| Material | Laminated scrim polyethylene at a 14 x 14 scrim count, reinforced heat-sealed seamsThe manufacturer publishes no retrievable specification sheet; figure is as listed at retail. | Retail listing |
| Fixing | 4 ft overlap, metal grommets every 2 ft | Retail listing |
| Underside | Black, stated to block sunlight and inhibit dirt buildup | Retail listing |
| Included | Vinyl-coated cable and a ratcheting winch | Retail listing |
| Warranty | 15-year limited — full coverage in year 1, prorated in years 2 through 15Unusually specific for this category, and unusually long. Read the proration: the full-replacement window is the first year, and the remaining fourteen are a declining credit. A warranty term is a commercial promise rather than a measured service life. | Manufacturer |
| Light transmission | None by designThis is the specification that separates it from a solar cover. A solar cover is transparent or translucent so sunlight reaches the water; a winter cover is opaque so it does not. | Published standard |
- Does the job it is actually for — keeps a closed pool clean through winter
- Cable and winch included rather than sold separately
- A 15-year limited warranty, which is long for a winter cover and published rather than implied
- Adds no heat and is not a season-extension product in any sense
- Far too heavy and awkward to take on and off daily, so it cannot double as a nightly cover
- Blocks the sunlight your pool needs, so leaving it on in the shoulder season makes the water colder
- Whether it reaches its stated warranty term in your climate
- How the seams survive standing water and ice load
- Whether the stated overlap is generous or tight against your pool's real diameter
These need a unit in hand across a season. We do not have one, so we do not have an opinion worth printing on them.
#ad We earn a commission if you buy through this link, at no extra cost to you. It never changes the ranking. How this site is funded. Prices last checked October 18, 2026.
Questions people actually ask
Will a tarp heat my pool?
Does a tarp stop evaporation on a pool?
Can I use a tarp instead of a winter cover?
What about a black tarp, or a dark cover?
Can I cut a tarp to fit my pool?
Is a tarp cheaper than a solar cover?
- U.S. Department of Energy pool-energy figures (evaporation share, BTU per pound evaporated, cover savings, recommended temperatures, wind effect)Recreonics, reproducing and attributing the U.S. Department of Energy · read 2026-09-02
- U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Saver: Swimming Pool Covers (archived — the live page now returns 404)U.S. Department of Energy via the Internet Archive · read 2026-09-02
- Hands-on solar cover comparison: 4 to 5°F measured in one hour of 2pm sun on 89–92°F days, with the method statedBob Vila · read 2026-09-02
- Solar cover guide: 0.7°F per hour under noontime sun, 10–15°F held, and published lifespan tiers by thicknessSwim University · read 2026-09-02
- Water density: 62.424 pounds per cubic foot at 39.2°FU.S. Geological Survey, Water Science School · read 2026-09-02
- Blue Wave Arctic Armor BWC908 24 ft round above-ground winter cover listing: 14x14 laminated scrim polyethylene with reinforced heat-sealed seams, 4 ft overlap, metal grommets every 2 ft, black underside stated to block sunlight and inhibit dirt buildup, vinyl-coated cable and ratcheting winch included, 15-year limited warranty with full coverage in year 1 and prorated coverage in years 2 through 15Blue Wave, as listed at retail · read 2026-10-03
#ad Where a retailer’s listing is cited above as the source of a published specification, that link is an affiliate link, at no extra cost to you. Independent sources and manufacturer documentation are never wrapped and earn nothing. How this site is funded.
Every URL above was fetched and returned content on the date shown. Where a figure is ours rather than somebody else’s, the arithmetic is on the page and on the methodology page. If you find an error in it, we would genuinely like to know.
Read next
Solar cover vs winter cover
The difference is light transmission, and everything else follows from it. Which cover does which job, whether you need both, and what a winter cover does to your water temperature if you leave it on too long.
Solar pool covers worth buying
Ranked on the specifications that actually differ between covers — thickness tier and published lifespan — because the only hands-on test in this category found no heating difference at all.
How a solar cover heats a pool
Transmission during the day, evaporation suppression at night. The two mechanisms separated, with the energy arithmetic for each.
Do solar pool covers work?
The 4-degrees-versus-15-degrees contradiction that runs through this entire category, reconciled from published physics. Three different quantities being reported as one.
What size solar cover do I need?
Measuring for round, rectangular, oval and freeform pools, why you buy up rather than exact, and the above-ground nominal-diameter trap that catches people out.
Liquid solar covers
How liquid covers actually work, why the mechanism means they help overnight and not in daylight, and the honest limits of what anybody can tell you about them.