CHAPTER
9

Bedrooms and Living Areas

In This Chapter

  • Finding comfortable places for everyone to sleep
  • Creating safe and functional loft access
  • Designing comfortable eating and lounging areas
  • Being productive in a tiny house home office

Having a comfortable place to kick up our feet at the end of the day, as well as a bedroom that welcomes us into a deep slumber, are two of the greatest joys that life has to offer. Whether a house is large or small, ornate or plain, the important part is that it should invite peace, calm, and above all, relaxation. With good design, your tiny house can become an oasis that you long to get back to each time you leave.

In this chapter, we cover bedroom options for singles all the way to families with multiple children, how to access lofts, and how to design them for the highest efficiency. Also, we talk about living areas, home offices, closets, home storage, and entertainment solutions.

How Many Are Home?

It used to be that singles were occupying tiny houses more than any other demographic, but today, more people are realizing this lifestyle is a great option for families, too. Creating an appropriate design for the number of people living in the house is the best place to start. Let’s go over various scenarios and look at options and solutions for each.

Single Person

Creating a comfortable sleeping place for just one person is pretty easy. If it’s just you, you can choose to build a relatively standard size loft (7'6" × 10') with a single or full mattress (rather than a queen), and you’re still left with an abundance of open space for clothes storage and anything else. Another option is to make the loft much smaller, which will actually make your downstairs feel taller and more expansive.

TINY TIP

If you truly want to economize on sleeping space, you can always use a twin-size mattress as the base cushion for your seating area. Come nighttime, simply remove your bedding from a cabinet and make your bed. With this configuration, you take up no extra space for a bedroom, freeing up loads of square footage for everything else you want in your tiny house.

You can place your bedroom downstairs, either as a studio configuration with your bed in the main living area or in a separate room. You can create a comfortable bedroom with a twin-size mattress, clothes storage, and shelving for as little as the size of a queen-size mattress (60" × 80").

Couples

Unless you prefer sleeping in a sardine can with your partner, you’ll likely want a queen-size mattress for catching your Zs. Queens are 60" × 80", and thus quite a bit larger than a twin mattress. In a loft bedroom under a shed roof, we recommend a space that’s 7'6" wide (full width of the interior trailer) and 10' deep. This is enough room for a queen mattress, dressers, laundry bin, dog bed, and space to move around as you access clothes.

You can use a queen mattress in a gabled tiny house loft, too, but head room is limited because the ceiling walls come down steeply on both sides. There also isn’t much space left over for clothes storage or moving around. One solution is to install a dormer (a window that projects vertically from a roof creating a bump-out) in the loft to open things up dramatically.

A dormer bump-out in a gable-roofed tiny house is a nice way to create more space in a loft. (Copyright Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. Photo by Theresa Lee.)

Downstairs bedrooms are an option for couples, too. You can design the sleeping room so it’s literally just a few inches larger than a queen mattress, taking up very little floor space while creating a comfortable and cozy place to lie down. Add some curtains to the windows, close the door, and you’ve got yourself a bedroom conducive to deep sleep. Incorporate shelves and perhaps raise the bed frame about 3' off the ground to create storage for your belongings and clothes.

Families

The days of THOWss being just for singles or couples are long over. More and more families are choosing the tiny house lifestyle and finding creative ways of crafting comfortable and happy lives for everyone. How one deals with the challenges depends on how many children are living in the household and how old they are.

Living tiny with one young child is quite easy, especially if there’s ample outdoor space for overflow when the youngster needs to run off excess energy. With infant children, parents often just sleep in the same bedroom with the baby, eliminating the need for an extra sleeping space for a while. A loft 7'6" wide by 10' deep is certainly large enough for a queen-size bed, toddler-size mattress, and some clothes storage. Create tall safety walls, gates, and rails along the loft and stairs so that the child stays safe once she begins to explore her world.

Once a child gets to be a little older and can safely access a loft via stairs or a ladder, it might be time for her to have her own bedroom. There are various ways of closing off a loft so that the child runs no risk of falling out. Kids love lofts and climbing up and down to get to them, so they’ll likely be thrilled to have one to call their own.

We recommend a tiny house 24' or longer to accommodate two lofts comfortably. Anything smaller will make it challenging to fit both lofts while keeping a sense of openness below.

Some families have created cat-walks with safety rails between their loft and the child’s loft, allowing a fun travel path for kids. An advantage to a cat-walk is that everyone can access the same set of stairs, rather than needing a separate ladder on the other end, which eats up valuable floor space in the design.

Dual loft configurations are the most common design option we’ve seen for families with up to two children. This setup frees up the entire downstairs for cooking, eating, bathing, hanging out, and so on. Young children often enjoy sharing their sleeping spaces with a sibling, and a tiny house loft, when designed well, is large enough for two toddler-size mattresses, toys, books, and clothing for two young kids.

TINY WARNING

It’s not unusual for well-meaning friends and family members to second guess people with children moving into a tiny house. These concerns are typically based on lack of information. There are numerous families with multiple kids living happy and fulfilling lives in tiny houses right now. Us included! Most children love living in a tiny house because it means more contact and attention from their parents.

This setup generally works well with children that are up to about 10-12 years old. After that point, the need for privacy begins to increase. In even the closest of families, it’s common for a child to want to individuate and spend more time with friends and the world around them. Whereas most young children thrive in tiny houses because the limited square footage invites a lot of contact amongst family members, it’s possible that the pre-teen won’t want to live in such close quarters anymore.

The tiny house lifestyle becomes more complex as children age. Tiny living with older children is quite possible (after all, we live full time with our 16 and 20-year-old children), but the solutions for doing so comfortably need to get a bit more creative.

In our setup, hOMe is the central quarters for our property. Our 207-square-foot floor plan and 110-square-feet in lofts, provides plenty of space for our four-person family to live, work, and sleep in full time. Our kids have plenty of space to hang out, eat meals, do homework, watch movies, and the like. It’s spacious enough for all our food storage and for three of us to cook in the kitchen at the same time.

All that said, both kids have their own sleeping cabins which are detached from hOMe. Since we live full time on our property in our tiny house and have no plans of moving it, we built both of our kids small sleeping cabins on fixed foundations. Though our daughter could use our secondary loft as her bedroom, she wanted her own space. The kids’ cabins are just steps away from hOMe so they still feel close. The cabins are small, modest, and provide enough space for their beds, desks, and clothes storage. They have electricity but no plumbing. Our own secondary loft serves as a guest bedroom for out-of-town guests.

A setup with separate spaces for older kids might not be a good fit for a family where there isn’t a high level of trust. Some teenagers do better with closer contact and supervision while others thrive with more freedom. Only your family can decide what’s best for it.

TINY TIP

For families with three or more children, a larger tiny house (30' or longer) makes the most sense. In a bigger setup, a family can have two loft bedrooms that can accommodate four people, as well as a downstairs bedroom for two people. Increase your living area proportionally to how many people live under the same roof.

A family needs space to move around comfortably without people bumping into each other, especially if there’s sibling conflict. Keep in mind that lofts create overflow space when things become a little busy downstairs. It’s likely rare (other than at meal time) that everyone in the household will be downstairs at the same time. Make the lofts roomy and practical and people will naturally gravitate to those spaces.

You may want to extend your tiny house to 10' wide if there’ll be four or more people living in it full time. That extra 18" of width makes a dramatic difference. In addition, you can build outdoor seating areas for dining and hanging out in. You’ll be amazed how often you use those spaces.

One discovery we’ve made in living in our tiny house for more than three years is that kids and teens love it. There’s something about the scale that seems to appeal to the younger generations. Tiny houses are after all, essentially glamorized play houses and most kids dreamed of having their own at one stage or another. It’s nice that our house is considered to be one of the “cool” ones amongst our kids’ friends and that both our son and daughter are proud of our tiny house lifestyle.

Multi-Use Furniture

As the tiny house industry has grown, so have clever space-saving solutions. In today’s market, you can find everything from beds that fold into walls, disappear under raised floors, and even drop down from the ceiling. Let’s look over each option to help spark your imagination.

Beds that fold into walls, also referred to as Murphy beds, have come a long way, and you can now find them with incorporated desks and even sofas that hide from view once the bed drops down. A Murphy bed can now serve not only as a bedroom but also as a seating area or work station. You can purchase these units premade, but you can also buy the hardware and build them yourself, saving hundreds of dollars.

On the nonlofted end of a tiny house, you can build a raised floor just tall enough for a mattress on a rolling platform. Pull this bed out at night before going to sleep, and slide it back after waking up.

On top of this platform you can install a kitchen, living area, dance space, or anything your heart desires. This is an efficient way of creating a downstairs bedroom that takes up no additional space. You can even pull the bed out partially from underneath, place some throw pillows against the platform, and create a comfortable seating area during the day on the bed itself. The key to this set up is leaving enough floor space open in the main living area so you can pull your bed open at night.

One of the really neat design features we’ve seen incorporated into tiny houses are ceiling beds. A mechanical system lifts the bed all the way to the ceiling and out of sight during the day and lowers it at bed time. These systems can be programmed to stop at a specified height enabling you to keep a sofa, work area, or anything else beneath the bed without needing to move it daily.

This amazing bed design mechanically lifts up to the ceiling during the day and lowers down before bed time. (Photo from The Tiny House Company. Photographed by Andrew Carter.)

Sleeping Lofts

Lofts are a wonderful asset in a tiny house. Because a THOWs can be quite tall, it makes sense to maximize internal square footage by creating rooms out of what would normally be empty space. Depending on your tiny home’s size, you can potentially add 50 percent or more of your usable square feet by incorporating one or two lofts. There are some important considerations to bear in mind when you’re designing a tiny house loft, so let’s review them.

Accessing the Loft

Getting up and down from the loft shouldn’t be a struggle. In fact, accessing a loft ought to be easy, so we suggest you always go with the safest option possible. Our preference is a set of stairs. When designed well, they’ll provide safe access to a lofted bedroom. The downside is that they take up significant floor space on the main floor.

If you do opt to build stairs, make sure to incorporate storage so that they work double-duty for you. Our stairs in hOMe provide an extra 25 sq. ft. of space enabling us to store our jackets, shoes, gloves, hats, scarves, dog leashes and collars, keys, purses, shopping bags, sunglasses, and so on. It’s quite amazing how much we can put in there.

Creating code-compliant stairs in a tiny house is challenging for areas that have not adopted the provisions of Appendix V of the 2028 IRC, but you can get them reasonably close. Aim for stairs with a 9" riser and 10" tread. This configuration is comfortable enough for easy and daily access to a loft, even though it doesn’t meet 2015 IRC standards. If your building department is using Appendix V, then code-compliant stairs are easy to build.

DEFINITION

The riser is the vertical portion of each step on a set of stairs. It’s the part of each step that actually rises the stairs from one tread to the next.

Tread is the horizontal step on a set of stairs. This is the part of the stairs that you actually step (tread) on.

We recommend eliminating the last step at the top of the run and creating a landing platform instead. Removing the step enables for an easier transition from the stairs to the loft area, both when going up and coming back down. The landing platform should be twice as deep as your standard treads and twice as tall as your standard risers for best results. Place a padded rug at the top of the stairs so that your knees are protected as you kneel onto the loft.

This image illustrates the hOMe stairs top tread and riser detail. Note that the tread as well as the riser are twice as large as those on the other steps. This allows for an easier and safer transition to and from the loft space to the stairs.

You can build alternating tread devices (stairs in which each step is staggered from the next one) to save some space in a tiny house. They’re a bit odd at first, but after using them a few times, you’ll get the hang of it. Alternating tread devices add a unique visual aesthetic to a tiny house design.

Most tiny housers just use loft ladders to get up and down. Typically, they’re stored out of the way when not in use. Choose a lightweight option to make it as easy as possible to move. Our hOMe ladder is simply a converted drop down attic ladder from which we removed all the extra framing. Though it’s quite sturdy, it’s so light that we can move it with just one hand.

We don’t recommend ladders that hang straight up and down. Instead, design or buy one that provides a comfortable angle to go up and down on. Completely vertical ladders, though space efficient, are awkward and scary, especially when transitioning in and out of the loft.

Ceiling Heights and Roof Layout

How much ceiling height you’ll have in your tiny house loft depends on your roof type, how tall your ceiling height is below the loft floor, and what kind of trailer you order. Nearly every tiny houser wants to maximize head room, so here are some simple ways to accomplish just that.

Use drop axles on your trailer. Drop axles maximize tiny house ceiling height by about 4-5" because the trailer deck can be lower to the ground. Drop axles aren’t a great option for people that plan on driving their tiny houses considerable distances and/or plan on driving their tiny houses through anything more than average grade changes.

Lower your loft heights as much as possible. We weren’t sure how much additional head room we should incorporate into our tiny house design for our bathroom and kitchen. We were worried that if we lowered it too much, we would feel like the ceiling was caving in on us. We also didn’t want to add too much ceiling height because we knew it would mean a reduction in ceiling height in our loft.

We opted to add four inches of head room above Andrew’s 6' height, which has been perfect. Even our 6'2" friends are surprised that they don’t feel a sense of confinement when under the loft. The point is that you might need less head room than you think to feel comfortable. Perhaps this is because our lofts aren’t very deep and because they open into a living room with very tall ceilings.

Frame your ceiling/roof assembly with the smallest dimensional lumber possible. Our hOMe architectural plans call out for 4' × by 4' rafters on the shed roof (plus rigid insulation on top). In our snow zone in southern Oregon, this meets engineering requirements. If you frame your roof with larger lumber (such as 2" × 10" lumber), you’ll lose 6" of head room right off the bat. Instead, consider shrinking the space between the rafters from 24" o.c. (on-center) to 12" o.c., and keeping the same low profile rafter material. As always, run this idea past an engineer to make sure you’re safe.

Of course, the most important consideration is that your rafters must be able to safely carry any potential loads, so there’s no risk of roof collapse. Snow is extremely heavy and can add thousands of pounds to a roof system. Be safe. Use either engineered plans in which these variables have been factored in, or work with a professional who can help you determine the framing dimensions required for your climate zone and roof span.

Design a shed roof. We believe that a shed roof maximizes loft head heights. Shed roofs don’t have a peak at the center like a gable roof does, rather they just have a single slope. A shed roof maximizes head space in a loft when compared to a gabled option. This is because the highest point in a roof structure is reached only at the peak of a gable whereas the entire uphill side of a shed roof maintains the highest level for the entire length of the wall.

Emergency Escape and Rescue

Lofts can become dangerous traps in a fire, so it’s vital you consider an escape path in case your primary means of access to the front door is cut off. Think not only about how you’ll get out, but also how emergency rescuers will reach you in case you are unconscious. Keep in mind that firefighters carry large tanks on their backs and wear cumbersome equipment. Squeezing in through a tiny window won’t be an option for them.

TINY WARNING

A bedroom loft should have windows large enough to escape from. However, they also need to accommodate a firefighter with gear entering through them. We always recommend you have a folding fire escape ladder that easily attaches to the windowsill in case access to the front door is cut off.

The best means of escape from a loft is with an emergency roof access escape window. Similar to a skylight in look and function, this system meets code requirements of emergency egress when installed with no more than 44 inches from ground to the bottom sill.

Defining the Living Areas

Once you move into your dream tiny house, you’ll want a super relaxing place to kick up your feet and enjoy the fruits of your labor. What kind of lounger are you? Do you like a deep seating area to fall into? Do you like to play board games with others? Is watching movies your favorite way to decompress? Do you like to entertain a lot? Answering these types of questions will help you in your quest of creating the perfect tiny house living area.

Living Rooms

Living rooms range from bare bones all the way to spaces large enough to host six to eight adults at a party. If you like having people over regularly and want room to spread out, you should consider a tiny house that’s 28' or longer. Seating areas take up a significant amount of space, so a smaller tiny house simply won’t do the trick.

One of the best ways we’ve seen to create a larger living room is a galley kitchen installed in the middle of a tiny house with the bathroom on one end and the living room on the other. Assuming the living room is underneath a 7'6" × 10' loft, this configuration creates 80 square feet for entertaining enjoyment. This area is large enough for a sofa that comfortably seats six. Maximize this efficiency even more by building a custom seating area with embedded storage below the cushions and suddenly you’ve got space for all kinds of things that are needed in a home.

If your friend circle is quite close and you don’t mind getting cozy, you could certainly use one of your lofts as your entertaining area. We’ve held several small gatherings where we’ve all ended up in the loft hanging out and telling stories.

If you prefer to meet friends in other locations, you don’t need something quite as large as a living room. Perhaps you’d rather have a larger kitchen or home office. In that case, look at a small sofa or custom built option to fit your space perfectly. If you do buy one, look for a model that incorporates extra storage or some other added feature. You want all your furniture to serve at least one purpose other than simply being furniture.

Dining Areas

Eating around a table with people you love is one of the finer things life offers. Make meal time count by designing a dining area into your dream tiny house. The challenge though, as usual, is space.

Tables, when combined with chairs, take up a significant amount of floor space. That means creativity is a requirement when it comes to carving out a comfortable eating area. Tiny housers most often use a folding dining set to solve this issue.

A table can be as simple as a card table stowed underneath sofa cushions when not in use or as elaborate as a folding table and chair combo set that all get stored away into a small portable cart when done. You can also hinge a table off a wall and open it as needed. Folding chairs can be hung from the wall or stowed in a cabinet. Weatherproof chairs can be kept outside the front door, and brought in for meal time. The key is to be as creative as you can within your budget.

This tiny house boasts a large eating table and rolling benches that stow away completely underneath a raised floor when not in use. When open, this setup can accommodate eight people. (Designed and built by New Frontier Tiny Homes. Photograph by StudioBuell Photography.)

Give consideration to how often you’ll host others for dinner. Since making the move to tiny, we entertain seasonally and have people over when the weather is conducive to sitting outside. During the cold winter months, we meet people in town for get-togethers. We actually enjoy the break from entertaining and then get excited when the weather warms to a point that we can have dinner parties again.

If you opt for a tiny house with a larger living area and a U-shaped sofa on one of the ends, you can incorporate your dining area into that space. Look at the RV industry for special floor brackets that allow you to insert table legs easily. Attach your table top to the legs and voilà, you’ve got seating for several people around a large dining room table. When done, fold and stow your table top and legs.

Home Office Spaces

More and more people are working from home these days as the increased ease in earning a living from the internet has enabled many to cut the shackles from the commuter burden. Many tiny housers work from home and we’re here to tell you, creating a functional office in a small space is no problem at all.

The key to creating a tiny house office is digitization. Typically, there isn’t enough room for excess documents, which can end up consuming a lot of space. Instead, you’ll need to invest in a scanner and digitize documents as they come in. You’ll also need to ensure you move into your tiny with nothing but the basic documents.

It helps to know what type of worker you are when designing your tiny house office. For example, Gabriella feels most productive and relaxed while sitting on her bed in the loft. Andrew, on the other hand, gets a little too relaxed when sitting up there, so he needs a desk. Do you require a designated work desk or can you use a laptop and move it when done, freeing up the work area for other uses?

TINY TIP

Most of us have been programmed to believe that we must sit at a table and chair in order to be productive. However, some people actually get more done while sitting in a more reclined position, like when on a bed. Try working in different positions before deciding what kind of workspace you need for yourself in your tiny house.

Laptops are highly recommended because they free up valuable desk space and can easily be put away at the end of the work day. They also use significantly less power than desktops, which makes them a must for off-grid tiny housers. In fact, you can even charge them in your car when running errands!

An entire office can fit into a 13' × 5' tall cabinet. That’s enough space for two shelves for loose documents not ready to be scanned and other miscellaneous items. It’s also enough room for basic supplies such as a stapler, envelopes, tape, a slide out drawer with a small printer and scanner, and a box for recycling. That’s what we personally use and we are 100 percent self-employed and both work from home.

Entertainment Areas

If you’re a television viewer, you can incorporate your lounge area into one of your lofts and use the mattress as the seating area. A queen-size bed is large enough for three or four people to enjoy a movie together. You can, of course, place your TV downstairs if you prefer. They’re so light and thin these days that they can easily be mounted to a wall or to a telescoping bracket. With the option of hooking up the internet to a TV, one hardly even needs to store DVDs anymore.

If you’re more of a puzzle and game fan, make sure to design a space that accommodates that. We’ve seen some creative solutions to the challenge of incorporating large tables into a small space. One such example is a pair of slide-out benches and a large table that stow away under a raised kitchen platform. If you want something badly enough in your tiny house, think outside the box and make it happen.

Closets and Storage

Storage and closet space is limited in a tiny house when compared to a conventionally sized home, so you’ll likely need to downsize your personal belongings before making the move to tiny. If you own a lot of clothes, pare down your closet significantly. You may find you actually prefer having fewer choices, since you won’t have to waste anytime wondering what to wear.

If you’re unsure of what to keep and what to part with in your closet, you may want to check out what’s called a capsule wardrobe. The theory behind this system is that with just a few basic and complimentary pieces, you can combine items and create a lot of diversity with what you wear. Typically, a capsule wardrobe includes the following items: nine tops, five bottoms, and five pairs of shoes. A few key accessories are encouraged as well.

How much clothing storage you can have in your tiny house is largely a function of how highly you’ll prioritize a place for those items. It’s also dependent on what size house you move into. If you end up creating your own capsule wardrobe, you’ll hardly need any space at all.

TINY WARNING

Several notably successful figures choose to have a wardrobe with very limited options, even though they have more financial resources to buy anything they want. The reason? By minimizing distractions and decision fatigue in their lives (such as deciding what to wear), they can focus on the things that are important and that really matter to them.

As a general rule of thumb, in a 20' or less tiny house, you’ll typically have enough clothing storage for two people with a basic wardrobe and about three to four pairs of shoes each. You can of course create more space, but it will likely result in a sacrifice of square footage from somewhere else in the home.

In a larger tiny house, you should be able to build enough storage for a complete, year-round wardrobe for two people, several pairs of shoes, and some hanging space. If you’ve thinned out your closet to a set of functional basics, you’ll have more than enough room for all the clothes you need.

Lofts typically provide enough space for a dresser or two or some type of shelving system. We have two sets of dressers in our 7'6" × 10' loft. Each of us stores roughly the following in our dressers: six pairs of pants, four pairs of shorts, ten shirts, undergarments, four sweaters, workout clothes, and two sweatshirts. Below our stairs, there’s enough room for several winter jackets, five dress shirts, and twenty-five pairs of shoes (the kids keep several of theirs in our house, too).

Consider creating storage in your loft floor. By cutting openings and creating lids in your loft floor between the floor joists, you can create a significant amount of room for various items.

In terms of general storage solutions, you can use pre-built cabinetry or create custom units. Always aim to incorporate dual-use furniture and cabinetry in your tiny house. For example, create a base cabinet and use the top as a seating area.

By cutting cubbies into your loft floor like the folks at TinyHouseBasics.com did, you can create a lot of extra storage. (Copyright Joshua Engberg.)

The Least You Need to Know

  • Tiny houses used to be just for singles or couples, but more families are creating happy lives in them now, too.
  • All furniture in a tiny house should serve more than just one function and incorporate a couple useful benefits.
  • How much head room you have available in a loft is a factor of your roof style, trailer type, and how tall the space under your loft is.
  • With good design, you can create a tiny house with seating for a party of six to eight people.
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