Tiny House
FLOOR
PLANS
Over 200 Interior Designs for Tiny Houses
By Michael Janzen
Copyright © 2012 Michael Janzen
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 978-1470109448
ISBN-10: 1470109441
For Julia, Katie, and Reagan
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 8x12
2 8x16
3 8x20
4 8x24
5 8x28
6 8x32
7 12x12
8 12x12 + Loft
9 12x16
10 12x16 + Loft
11 12x20
12 12x20 + Loft
13 12x24
14 12x24 + Loft
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to thank all the readers of my blog, TinyHouseDesign.com; Jay Shafer for the inspiration to begin my deep dive into tiny houses; Kent Griswold for the inspiration to blog about tiny house design; and my wonderful wife & children for the support and motivation they give me every day.
INTRODUCTION
A tiny house is exactly what it sounds like, a house with many of the amenities you’d expect in a home tucked neatly into a super small space. Many are owner-built on trailers allowing them to be classified as RV trailers, often placing them outside the realm of planning departments. However, in contrast to RVs, tiny houses are built like houses with stouter structures, high quality finishes, and natural materials. Most importantly they feel handmade and homey.
The idea of tiny house living appeals to a lot of people. Low cost of ownership often tops the list of reasons people choose to downsize their lives but there’s also often an underlying goal of achieving more independence and freedom. The trend may also be evidence of a societal paradigm shift as people wake up from the debt-bound American dream and begin to see that real change is needed. But then again, tiny houses may simply be a practical option that people can’t help but see the logic in the whole less-is-more, do-it-yourself, mortgage-free alternative to high cost housing.
As the awareness of tiny houses has increased, an unstructured and crowd-sourced tiny house movement has grown steadily. This trend has been fueled in-part by owner-builders sharing their own tiny house projects online. The free flow of sharing online has provided an ever-growing stream of information which has formed a substantial, yet amorphous, online body of knowledge that has amplified the creation of more tiny houses.
I’ve played a role in this growing movement as a blogger and tiny house designer. One thing I’ve learned since starting TinyHouseDesign.com in 2008 is that many people have a hard time imagining how to transform their lives to fit inside a tiny space. This is what led me to draw this book.
A floor plan is one of the most well understood types of architectural drawings for conveying interior space. Since the tiny house movement is mostly comprised of regular folks solving their own housing challenges, it often makes sense to start with simple drawings when noodling through what’s really needed.
To help make these designs more easily built, I’ve drawn them all using a common set of standard-sized components, most of which can be found at your local building supply, appliance, and furniture stores.
I’ve also drawn all the plans at the same scale. This way it’s easy to flip back and forth between floor plans and see how much more space a few square feet can provide.
Each chapter focuses on one size footprint to show the kind of combinations that can be achieved inside each size space. I’ve also included a legend with descriptions and dimensions that details most of the components you’ll see in the plans.
The following are a few thoughts that should make interpreting the floor plans a bit easier. You might also find these useful for your own future small space planning efforts.
Door & Path
The location of any door defines the path through a space. This might seem obvious but is especially important when planning a tiny space.
Paths also divide interior spaces. For example, if you want a front facade with a centered door sided by two narrow windows, you are also accepting that this first room will be split in half. In other words, an aesthetic choice on the exterior will partially determine the direction of the interior layout.
Ladders & Stairs
In many tiny homes loft ladders are often an afterthought or add-on, which usually works out fine because ladders are small and can be tucked away easily. I decided to take ladders and stairs a bit more seriously and made sure each design had a predetermined plan for how the loft ladder would fit.
You’ll notice that I often specify sliding library ladders but these could be replaced with small free floating ladders that are simply moved by hand from their storage space to their in-use space.
I often get asked why tiny houses don’t have real stairs. For comparison purposes I’ve included a normal staircase here and in the legend to show why stairs with a standard tread, rise, and run don’t work well inside a tiny space. Stairs take up valuable floor space unlike ladders and small spiral staircases.
Window Size & Alignment
Windows in tiny houses are typically small to balance well with the scale of the home. Most of the windows illustrated in the plans are 2’ wide except for the windows that flank the front door on some of the 8’ wide plans. These narrower windows are 16” wide.
For emergency egress a 2’x2’ foot opening is generally needed, so most of the windows would be 4’ tall. The exceptions to these would typically be windows located over kitchen sinks, desks, tables, in bathrooms, and lofts. The loft window would be 2’x2’ and the others would be 2’x3’. Many other window sizes would work well in a tiny house, these are simply the standard sizes I chose to illustrate in these house plans.
Utility Closet & Plumbing
While many people in the wider tiny house community are proponents of Lovable Loos, (toilets that consist of a wood box, bucket, toilet seat, and compost pile outside), I chose to leave these great little toilets out of these floor plans. Instead I randomly show a standard flush toilet and a common manufactured composting toilet.
Lovable Loos are typically much smaller than these more conventional toilets, so if you would prefer a Lovable Loo in your tiny house, just imagine it taking up about 1/2 the space of the manufactured composting toilet.
I’ve also included space in each plan for an externally accessed utility closet. This would be accessed through a simple door on the exterior of the home that blends into the exterior siding, masking its presence.
Items like gas hot water heaters and off-grid batteries are best located outside a home’s living space - so planning for a utility closet in the floor plan is ideal.
If you choose to build your own tiny home you’re going to eventually become intimately familiar with plumbing. If at all possible place all the plumbing in the same region of the house. This will save you a lot of time and money when installing the water heater, supply lines, drain pipes, and vents. But also try to avoid objects that are hard to plumb around like sliding pocket doors. I‘ve included sliding pocket doors extensively in these drawings and have intentionally avoided showing any need for pipes on those walls.
Lofts & Beds
Not everyone wants to sleep in a loft; but lofts can be useful for other functions other like storage, guests, and children. So I’ve included a variety of different approaches to sleeping accommodations on the lower level as well as solutions for lofts.
People & Privacy
In some designs you’ll notice that there’s little privacy for multiple occupants. In others you’ll see separate sleeping spaces for each family member/couple. Everyone has diffe
rent needs, so I wanted to provide an array of variations to show what might be possible.
But keep in mind that everyone in the household will need their own private space, which can present a tiny problem. This can actually require adding square feet at a rate that might resemble an exponentially increasing scale due to inefficiencies encountered when diving spaces.
This is not to say that families can’t happily coexist in tiny houses - it just means that extra attention to planning and daily routines need to be considered more carefully as the number of occupants increases.
On the next page you’ll find the legend, followed by 14 chapters of drawings - 230 in all. Enjoy!
CHAPTER 1
8X12
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CHAPTER 2
8X16
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CHAPTER 3
8X20
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CHAPTER 4
8X24
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CHAPTER 5
8X28
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CHAPTER 6
8X32
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CHAPTER 7
12X12
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CHAPTER 8
12X12 + LOFT
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Tiny House Floor Plans Page 1