Tiny House Design
How anyone can bring their dream idea into realistic plans
What is this slideshow?
The goal of this slideshow is to give you an overview of designing a tiny house as well as a completed Tiny House design by me. I was interested in the movement and designing my own tiny home so I decided to take on designing a Tiny Home in SketchUp, along with specific dimensions and design specifications. This is a compilation of all my research layed out for a beginner to go through and design one of their own.
While doing research I couldn't help but realize the majority of the sources were ultimately trying to sell a mini course or pre-made plans for a premium price. These sources make it hard to get all the information you need without paying money and make it seem as if you need at least $40,000 to build your dream tiny house with all amenities. This further fueled me to create this slideshow to provide a guide to designing a tiny house and managing resources in order to bring back Tiny House to a nomadic lifestyle that can be catered to any financial statuses. This is meant to make the movement accessible to anyone. The ultimate goal is that once you use this source you feel confident in designing your own tiny home that fits your needs and desires while fitting your budget and following the law.
What is the Tiny House Movement?
Simply put, the trend toward tiny houses has become a social movement. People are choosing to downsize the space they live in, simplify, and live with less. People are embracing the tiny life philosophy and the freedom that accompanies the tiny house lifestyle. Tiny home generally refers to a home less than 400 square feet and has been associated with building on trailers, whether to transport or leave stationary, in order to get around building laws.
Finding Inspiration
The first step should always be to find inspiration and think outside of the box before you think about restrictions. All ideas are good ideas
First Considerations
To start there are two main types of tiny homes in consideration, those designed to be towed for long periods of time (THOW) and those that are built to be in one spot for extended periods of time. Because THOW’s will be on the road extensively they are required to be built by certified tiny home builders although it is possible to work with a builder to get the exact product you want. Another option is to buy premade tiny house plans (This will run around $500) and either build it yourself on or hire professionals to build it. Otherwise people build straight onto a foundation.
For my example I will be designing a home that can be towed consistently if built professionally or could be built by anyone as long as it is kept stationary.
What do YOU need in your tiny home?
Our goal was to sleep 4 comfortably if needed, have a usable kitchen, have some open space for activity, feel open / like an actual house and can shower outside/ sacrifice to have small bathroom.
Things to consider -
Do you want to travel frequently or stay put? THOW or foundation?
How many people do you want to be able to sleep comfortably?
Do you need full kitchen or can you survive with plug in appliances (burner+toaster oven)?
Loft or no loft? Can you deal with ladder/stairs in the middle of night?
Do you want ability to go offgrid? How often would you want to refill water?
What weather will you be dealing with? How cold/hot and humid will it get?
How much open space do you need? (Imagine a rainy day stuck inside)
How much storage do you need? Can you survive with minimal clothing options?
What kinds of electronics do you need?
Research Specifics
Once you generally know what you are aiming for you can start researching general topics to get an understanding of tiny house spacing, costs and other ideas. Look for general dimensions, layouts people use, small things you want to include and continue the search for imaginative ideas. You can use all types for small spaces for great inspiration like studio apartments, houseboats, so on.
You can search websites like facebook marketplace and craigslist and go to places like flea markets and construction sites to begin your search for free and used items to incorporate into your home. Think about how you are organizing your information to use later.
I would start with the list of sources I have later in the slideshow but would recommend finding your own as well as looking at forums, as they give the most updated information.
The most common size for tiny homes are; 16ft, 20ft, 24ft & 28ft
This is generally up to personal preference & how much space you need but it may be hard to sleep more than 2 in a 16ft and the larger you go the harder it is to tow.
My goal was to sleep 2 but have an easy option to sleep 4 comfortably, have a decent size kitchen and open space for activities, while still staying as small as possible, which led me to choose a 20ft trailer.
Size
16’
20’
24’
Trailer
Once you know the size of your house you need to determine whether you want to build on a trailer vs on foundation. There are three common types of trailers to build tiny homes on, a gooseneck trailer, a normal flatbed trailer or a specially designed drop down / tiny house trailer which may be more expensive but gives you an extra 6” of ceiling room as well as making the building process easier. I ended up choosing a 20ft Iron Eagle trailer for roughly $3500.
Drop Down / Tiny House Trailer
Types of Stairs + Roofs
Budget
At this point it is also important to establish a general budget to determine what kind of home and level of features you want / can afford. How much time are you willing to devote?
Low budget might mean opting for less windows , single burner, simple storage, simple window+sizes, doing your own manual labor/ learning skills & spending a lot of time finding you own materials or cheap or free (TIME IS MONEY)
Generally low budget is $5,000 - $15,000 depending on how much time spent
High budget / off grid is at least $20,000 - $50,000 in material spending
*These are general estimates*
Following Code
This is where you might realize some of your aspirations are not legal due to coding and restrictions. This means they must follow the International Residential Code section of the ICC which restricts many things including having a loft because they are classified as RV’s and mobile homes.
Thankfully members of the Tiny house community were able to add an appendix (Appendix Q) to this section specifically designed for tiny home builders. This appendix lays out realistic and safe building standards for tiny homes to be legally built/designed. It was created by the Tiny Home Industry Association because of how fast the industry is developing and in order to relax some code originally outlines decades ago. Although not all states have adopted appendix Q there is a process to get them to easily adopt it.
Now it is a puzzle to fit everything you want into the allowed restrictions and parameters but many crazy things and grand ideas can still be accomplished. I will outline the codes that apply to tiny homes through appendix Q in the next slide.
Legal Parameters
House
Loft
Bathroom
Stairs
Summary of Dimensions
General Dimensions
Before you start sketching and shelling out ideas it is important to continue research and establish the general dimensions of certain things.
Start Sketching
Tips:
Although it may be more time consuming sketch to scale (Use graph paper or ruler)
Draw door swings
Draw three angles
Don’t stick with first idea
Dont forget things like...
Comfortable Dimensions
Other human dimensions you should think about are counter height, bed height, seat height, table height, preferred ceiling height and tolerable bathroom width, you don’t want to sacrifice for a design and then end up uncomfortable daily. You want to make sure you are comfortable with all the dimensions you design, you could measure things in your house that you are used to.
Some to consider:
Counter height = 36”
Seat Height+Table Height = 18” + 28”-30”
Bench Depth = 18”-22”
Bathroom Size = At least 36” wide + 50” long
Stair Height = 5’
Give counter at least 3’ in kitchen, 4’ is best
Tape it out and see for yourself
Make space feel larger through design
Think about design elements -
My Inspiration
Although not necessary it is helpful to have a specific example to use for your main inspiration so that you generally know you are doing things correctly and have it layed out in a way that makes sense. From there you can do whatever you want. I found this example while finding engineering specifics around Tiny Home, it stood out to me because it was designed with the help of an engineer and is designed to be on the road for years.
Original Ideas
This is the start of my process. After researching extensively I began sketching, noting specific dimensions of components and playing with the use of space. Although I am not artistic part of the process was seeing what things would actually look like and altering them.
Use online design software
You can do the majority of 2d and 3d design in SketchUp free. This program is very easy to learn and allows you to easily experient with designs without having to go into depth to make your ideas come to life.
Once you do have specific ideas it allows you to customize/build anything you want as well as insert components made by other people, such as a premade bed perfectly sized or a sink to insert into your kitchen.
You can also download premade Tiny Homes on sketchup to see how they designed them and interact with their models, as well as copying any aspect from theirs (Like a sink) to place directly into your model
My Design Process
The next part of my design process was designing the tiny house in SketchUp, essentially putting the detailed sketches into SketchUp. I included 2d models of the dimensions in order to give a better feel or the space and see how it looks more simplified. In the next slides you will see what each component ended up looking like in SketchUp as well as small details you can add while in the program.
Bathroom
This powder room is designed as minimally as possible, meant to be used with outdoor shower and easily accessible kitchen sink
Kitchen
Stairs
Living Room
Loft
Final Design
THE END
Thank you!
Bibliography
Tiny House Bloom - Goes over everything with great detail in blog format.
The Tiny Life - Does the best job of summarizing each part specifically to build - easy to find information, best for initial planning
Tiny House Giant Journey - Briefly goes over everything and includes detailed examples+stories of other tiny homes in blog style and youtube videos
Tiny House Community - Answers many common question and gives good amount of information
The Tiny Project - Organizes premade builds+plans as well as specific information on financing and building tiny home as well as gives huge database of other sources.
Tiny Home Builders - Gives great information for physically building tiny home as well as answering many initial questions people have.