How to Design a Tiny House on Wheels — The Tuttle Shuttle (2024)

Designing my tiny house was nearly a 2 year process. I still remember Christmas of 2016, lying on the sofa not being able to move because of a back injury, and first coming across tiny houses online. The search actually started with prefab houses, but naturally evolved to tiny houses on wheels, and I became obsessed. From then on, I started gathering ideas and drawing up floor plans. Initially it was a bit of a day dream, but then I realized I might actually be able to do this. It was a total blast for me, because designing my own house was always something I dreamed of doing. It was the perfect way to feasibly design something completely custom made with quality materials on a smaller budget.

You spend a lot of face time with your items when you live in such a small space, so see this as an opportunity to really make everything count. Put a lot of time into your design decisions, because you will see and interact with them every day. Splurge on items that really mean alot to you if you’re able to. Remember, really nice countertops aren’t as expensive when you have a tiny kitchen! Every little item is important and an opportunity to bring something into your space that you love and appreciate. This is the fun part and also arguably the most important. Let’s dive in!

Start to get a solid understanding of your daily flow of living. Really think about the spots you actually inhabit in your current living situation - most likely it is a small fraction of your actual square footage. Where are the places in your current home where you feel confined? Do you actually use your dining room table? Do you thrive on natural light? My flow centered around a comfortable live-work space, as I work from home when I am not out photographing or traveling. So, I make my coffee in the morning and I head to my work space. I move to the kitchen frequently, so now it’s just conveniently closer to my desk. When I’m relaxing, I love a good couch to watch TV or play guitar. I like playing drums. I knew changing clothes in a loft would bother me, so I created a landing platform beside my bed with a full closet that I can stand at without sitting or ducking. I knew having a 32”x32” box shower would feel claustrophobic to me, so I went bigger with a 48” long stall. I also have a lot of photo gear and outdoor equipment, so I created an elevated living room with 7 ft drawers to accommodate for it. Not to over simplify, but when I’m at home this is where I spend my time. I made sure that I had dedicated zones for all of it. Even though everything is obviously much more condensed, each of these activities has a place and there is no overlap.

In conjunction with this, think hard about your most used items and make sure they are easily accessible. It’s easy to think during the design process where you may store things but not quite as easy to know how you’ll interact with said storage. Multi functional spaces, or having to move items to get to other items that you use everyday may seem like no big deal, but these small annoyances of not having your items right where you need them can add up and will contribute to your overall living experience. Make sure your most used items have a home and make it accessible. For example, think about where your clothes will be stored - you want this to be a no brainer. A standing closet and drawers are familiar and make sense - storage bins and cubes that you have to sift through up in a loft maybe not so much. This is obviously all subjective and different for everybody, but it is something to consider as you design.

If you have a hobby that takes up space and it is an important part of your life that makes you happy, having a tiny house doesn't mean you have to get rid of it. Quite the opposite - It means you get to celebrate it. Very often I hear of people saying they can’t live in a tiny house because of such and such hobby, but if you design your house yourself, you can make room and prioritize certain things over others.

This is probably the biggest benefit of designing your house yourself - no one knows you better. You’ll know if you need that full size sofa, or that clawfoot bathtub, or if you can forego a large kitchen, or if you need a staircase vs a ladder. Make room for the things that matter and let the other parts of the house fall into place. I fit a drum set into my design, you can do anything.

Pinterest is by far the best place to gather your inspirations. I used Pinterest and Instagram as a way to get ideas and see how other people are living in their tiny houses. Search keywords and hashtags, not just related to tiny houses, but design elements in general. This is a really fun way to go crazy and curate your style preferences. The more you search, the more you’ll figure out what you like.

Sometimes design inspiration can be overwhelming because of the endless decision possibilities- my advice would be to save a bunch of pins and look at all of them together as a unit. You’ll start to notice how you gravitate towards certain things over others and you can then curate down your choices from there. Create a new board of your very favorite things and you’ll then be able to see how everything is working together. Sit with it for a while, make sure you still like your choices in a week :)

There are also many great books on tiny houses that can serve as great inspirations. I read one on Micro Shelters that offers a good mix between inspiration and useful information, one from Country Living that has a lot of good interior design tips, and this one which is a very nice coffee table book with pretty pictures.

After you’ve settled on your ideas, I think it’s a really good idea to send some of it to your builder. The inspirations don’t need to be exact things you’d like your builder to replicate, but instead will serve a visual guide to help them understand you better.

Pinterest is also a great place to really hone in your color preferences. As you pin more and more inspirations, you’ll start to notice that you lean towards things of a certain color/tone. This plays a major part in how your home feels overall, so pay attention to the color schemes and tones of wood you are choosing for your house. For example, my house was designed with muted colors in mind, with the intention of bringing in color through my decoration. The wood used inside is quite warm in tone, so most other things are cooler to offset. This gives the house a nice color “foundation,” without being too overpowering. Color preferences may change over time, and by keeping the actual structure and materials of the house muted, it allows me to switch it up through my decoration if I choose to do so.

Check out this color wheel by Adobe. It allows you to easily find complementary colors, triads, etc. to give you a better sense of which colors work well together.

I drew my first floor plan in December 2016. I started my build in September 2018. My first floorplan was 36 ft long and my tiny house ended up being 30ft long (28ft plus bump out over hitch). I think this is where an easy to use online floorplan builder can be very useful. Spend time moving furniture around and understand how things fit together. Start with what you know you need or want, and continue adding things from there. The more time you spend with your floorplan, the quicker you'll realize whether or not the space will work for you. Spend a day in your future tiny house in your head, imagine where you’ll put things. Where will you put your cereal? The dog food? Your laundry? Your extra kitchen appliances? Where will you plug things in? Don’t forget about your outlet placements! Oftentimes doing this virtual trial run will lead to many discoveries you didn’t initially think about.

When I finally moved into my house, it all felt very familiar and natural. I think a major reason for this was due to the amount of time I spent living with the design in my head before it came to fruition. I knew every.single.inch of the place before ever seeing it in person. I knew where things would go because I planned for it. I think this really eases the transition and makes it that much more seamless.

Consider how your life may change, but design based on how you are living now. You can’t predict everything, and you can quickly fall into a trap of designed too much for the future and forgetting what you actually need right now. A nice way to future proof is to think about not filling every single available space in your home with built in furniture. I kept my living room fairly open without much in the way of cabinetry, so that I could potentially accommodate for another arrangement down the line.

I learned while designing my house that it will soon be a requirement for all new homes in California to have solar panels. Tiny house laws are changing and some day (hopefully soon!), my tiny house may be considered a real home in the eyes of the law (what a concept). It was important to me to keep up to date and future proof my house, so I had Minimaliste pre wire for solar. That way, I can easily hookup solar panels should I choose to do so down the line.

Also in line with this idea, consider the very real possibility that you will someday sell it to someone else. I know that Minimaliste builds all of their houses as 4 season houses, ready for any climate because you never know where it may end up. For example, in my house they installed a secondary heating system that switches on when the house gets below a certain temperature. This is not something I use or asked for, but something they include so that if the house ever lived in a cold climate, there wouldn’t be any major obstacles.

NEXT: TIPS ON HOW TO WORK WITH YOUR BUILDER