Tiny House Design Ideas

There really aren't a lot of ways to squeeze a bathroom, kitchen, living room and bedroom onto 160 square feet. But it is a tiny house after all. And then, the trailer that serves as the foundation limits some choices. For example, generally a door can't be placed at the hitch end. And the location of the wheels affect the placement of doors as well, and possibly other interior features. 

The kitchen and bath present the greatest challenges. In general, it makes sense to put the bathroom and kitchen near each other. Even though people prefer the bathroom not be close to the kitchen, the plumbing is just easier that way, and the rooms just fit together pretty well in the limited width. A lot of designs place the bathroom across an end, and the kitchen next room in. 

Sometimes you see the bathroom and kitchen across from each other, perhaps with the bigger kitchen area being an ell shape. Sometime this gives the area a galley look, with a solid wall along the bathroom, and cabinets to the ceiling on the other side. It seems dark and closed in to me. 

Putting the bathroom and kitchen at opposite ends is a possibility as well. This opens the house up, squares the living area up some, but its not common, probably because it presents some plumbing challenges. It's more efficient to have the water heater near both the kitchen and bathroom which isn't possible when the rooms are at opposite ends.

Putting the bathroom along a wall in the middle with the kitchen on the opposite wall is another idea I've seen. This leaves an open area on each end. This is probably the ideal arrangement to keep pipes from freezing, having everything in the middle. But, it might be better to have the heat somewhat centralized. This layout allows for a separate dining area or lower bedroom, and a loft above the kitchen and bath.

The challenge of the bedroom design in a tiny house is its size. An 80" long queen mattress barely fits lengthwise across the width of most tiny houses so typically people want it to run lengthwise. It's nice to have room on the sides to set your feet down and to make the bed. In a home twenty feet long, there's only four feet of living room space after taking out three feet for a bathroom, six feet for a kitchen, and seven feet for a bed. So the bed needs some special handling. Usually this involves putting the bed in a loft. But a Murphy bed, pull out couch, or custom bed/couch combination are possibilities. I've even seen plans where the bed pulls out from below a low loft holding the bathroom and kitchen.Some designs gain floor space by extending the floor out at the ends.

Ideally this house will allow a real bed, or at least a real mattress. So I don't particularly like the idea of sleeping on the living room furniture. The Murphy bed idea is worthy of consideration, but like the pull out bed idea, you still have to free up space in the living room area. That might require other furniture to be moved aside or stowed away every night. The pull out bed deals with this by using the partially extended mattress as a couch, reducing the need for furniture in the living area. But I'm not convinced that a mattress makes a good couch, or that a couch makes a good bed.

The loft is the obvious solution, and is pretty common. Access is usually by a ladder or stairs. The stairs are typically narrower and steeper than residential code would allow. Even then, the stairs take up a lot of floor space. Fortunately, the space under the stairs can be used for much needed storage.

A loft with a landing running along side the mattress has a lot of advantages. The landing would be 2 or 3 steps down from the mattress, so getting in and out of the bed would easier than from the loft floor. The stairs would take up less space, since they don't go as high, have fewer steps, and could even extend into the loft area with a shortened landing.  Also, you could put a tall closet on the landing, providing a better place to hang clothes. A major downside is that its more difficult to frame since the location of the stairs / landing prevent joists from being run across the width of the house to support the loft. And there isn't much room for a queen size mattress with no easy access to the other side.

I'd venture to say that every design I've seen would work better with a full size mattress, but perhaps a queen size should be the goal.

I'll start looking at specific plans next.