Tiny House Giant Journey loft with space saving Tuft & Needle Mattress I don’t know about you, but without proper sleep I morph into a zombie-turtle. That’s right, a hybrid of a zombie and a turtle. I slowly waddle and groan through my daily routine and occasionally retract my head into my mobile shell. It’s not a good look. Sleep is a necessary part of life and creating a healthy bedroom should be a priority in any tiny home. Space is valuable in a tiny house and sleep is something you can do in a compact area. This is why the majority of tiny housers choose to sleep in a loft. Lofts are space savers! They are also therapeutic. A compact loft can act like a cocoon for the human body. After all, homo sapiens have been sleeping in small dark caves for thousands of years! The effect is organically comforting. Gallery of Tiny House Lofts: I love my loft because it gives the bedroom a feeling of separation. If I need privacy, I simply tell Guillaume: “I’m going to read in the loft.”
He knows I need “me time” to remain sane and that little partition goes a long way. Sharing a tiny space is not always easy and while respecting your partner’s needs is important in any home, it is absolutely critical in 125 square feet. Climbing is not for everyone and, take it from me, making the bed in a loft requires some funky gymnastic moves. Some tiny housers prefer non-lofted bed options. In order to save space, this usually means incorporating convertible furniture. Take Lina Menard’s Lucky Penny (pictured above) for example: her comfy couch converts into a full size bed! Watch the full video tour to see how Lina can pull her bed out into a full size sleeping space. Zyl Vardos “Dewdrop” Tiny House Another non-lofted convertible bed is used in Abel Zyl’s “Dewdrop,” where a Japanese-style floor couch pulls out into a bed from underneath an elevated kitchen. Abel’s bedroom designs are always innovative and whimsical. His unique rooflines create inventive loft spaces as seen in the Pinafore, the Fortune Cookie and the Ark.
Taking cues from the RV and sailing industry, Derek’s tiny couch design converts into a full size bed. It’s one of my favorite folding bed designs, that I’ve seen in a tiny house, so far. Watch a full video tour of Derek’s tiny house in New Orleans. Andrew Odom from Tiny r(E)volution came up with a compact roll out bed design that will knock your socks off! Check out the above video to see it in action. Lastly, I want to show you this awesome electric lift-bed design from Tiny Idahomes. The downstairs bed actually lifts to the ceiling at the touch of a button, allowing for additional space when not in use! Out of sight, out of mind. I am curious how much electricity is required to power this bed – personally I’d prefer an old-fashioned pulley system. Perhaps this is not a great option for off-grid power, but it’s a cool design for those looking to stay on-the-grid. The shape of your tiny home is going to dictate possible bed options. For example: Music City Tiny Home (pictured below) has a shed roof, which is adequate enough space for not only one, but two lofts, while Russ’s Gypsy Wagon is far too short for a lofted bed.
Instead Russ keeps it simple with a ground floor twin bed. Music City Tiny House – 1 of 2 Identical lofts Russ’s Gypsy Wagon with Twin Bed Dormers expand a gable roofline and are becoming popular in tiny home construction even though they add weight, build complexity and create a blocky aesthetic. Curved rooflines, such as the Lilypad Tiny Home, allow for more headroom but are difficult to construct and add weight. A simple a-frame would make a gorgeous tiny home, but the loft would be teeny tiny. A gable roof, such as in Brittany’s Bayside Bungalow is a charming and easy to construct, but might be tight for two dreamers… unless you like to snuggle. Here are a few bedroom ideas I’d like to see functioning in future tiny homes: 1). Hammock Bed, 2). Murphy Bed, and 3). Bunk Beds. Or how about a water bed? That would be unique!Stairs In Small HouseTiny Houses With LoftTiny House Loft IdeasTiny House LoftsTiny House BedTiny House Storage IdeasHouse IdkTiny Home StaircaseTiny Houses PlansForwardTiny house.
Like the idea of having the loft over the door so the kitchen could have a high ceiling...Most tiny houses builders make the most of the space they have available to them by incorporating a loft into their build. The loft area is then used as a bedroom, and it’s accessed via a ladder. This all makes space-saving sense. But I receive a lot of questions from people who don’t want to use a ladder in their tiny house. For some people, in particular older people and those with limited mobility, using a ladder would be impossible. For others, it’s simply a case of preference. If you’re going to put time and money into building your own home, you want it to be as close to perfect as possible. If you’re not comfortable climbing ladders, you’re not going to enjoy living in your tiny house, and the whole experience will be a waste of time. So, what alternatives are there to the loft and ladder combination? I’ve scoured the internet, looking for clever, efficient, and quirky solutions to this dilemma, and it would seem that the range of designs out there is pretty impressive.
If you’re anti-ladders, take a look and see if any of these designs could work for you! Stairs are the obvious replacement for ladders, since they’re much easier to climb. However, they do come with a number of limitations. If you go for stairs, remember to take headroom, dormers, and extra weight into account when you designing your house. Now let’s get to the inspiration! Gradual Steps to the Side This gorgeous Airbnb tiny house has two lofts and provides a ladder to get to one and a gradual staircase to get to the other. The staircase isn’t at all steep, it’s out of the way at the side of the house, and it even includes a bit of storage space. This Cape Cod Molecule tiny house includes a staircase that doesn’t quite reach all the way up to the loft area. It doesn’t take up much space at all, though it does look slightly steeper than the staircase in the previous picture. This McG Loft by Humble Homes includes a staircase that twists to the side as it reaches the loft.
The steps also double up as bookshelves. This tiny house staircase takes up much less volume than most of the other tiny house staircases you’ll come across. It may be slightly harder to climb than a bigger staircase, but if space is important to you, this option could be a good compromise. The Kitchen Under the Stairs If you don’t mind having some funky-shaped cupboards, why not integrate a staircase into another part of your tiny house, such as the kitchen? A Full Staircase with Carpet If you’re tempted to install a staircase, why not go all the way and get it carpeted too? You could position it at the side of your house or even in the middle. If you’re really tight on space and mobility isn’t a problem, this winding staircase might be for you. It hardly takes up any space and it almost looks like a sculpture! Tiny House, Charlton (photo by Paul Connors) If you have two lofts, you could go all out and include two staircases in your tiny house!
If mobility is an issue for you and you do need that extra loft space, this could be the solution for you. Lilypad Tiny House (photo by Shawn Linehan) Tansu steps are basically storage box stairs. Storage space can be hard to fit into tiny houses, so if you can use your stairs as storage space, you’ll be killing two birds with one stone. You might also be able to hide your water tank using this approach. For more information on how to build box stairs, see this tutorial by Tiny House Living or this one by DIY House Building. Alternatively, you can even buy some pull-out box stairs from Four Lights. Alternatively, if you don’t like the idea of having a loft in your tiny house, you could forgo both the ladder and the stairs, and instead find another place to put your bed. Here are a few ideas. A Murphy bed (otherwise known as a pull-down bed, a wall bed, or a fold-down bed) is one that hides in a cupboard in the wall during the daytime, and that you pull out at bedtime.
This option is perfect if you want to sleep downstairs but aren’t willing to lose the space needed for a bed. A Bed Under a Loft If you want to be able to roll into bed without climbing a ladder or some stairs, but you don’t mind going upstairs for other activities, consider installing a bed under a loft. Although this example is of a bed in a converted bus, it might give you some ideas. Mira Thompson’s School Bus Conversion Again, if you want a downstairs bed but you don’t want it taking up room, build a raised platform into one end of your house, and hide a pull-out bed underneath it. The stairs to the platform can double up as storage space, as in this example. Continuing with the fold-out theme, you could also install some fold-out bunk beds. Of course, whoever takes the top bunk will need to climb up a ladder to get there, but at least one of you will get a rest! If you build your tiny house on a gooseneck trailer, you could build your bedroom into the space above the hitch.