Bridging Art, Design, and Technology with a Maker's Mindset
I recently had a chat with Ethan at the Tiny House Lifestyle Podcast where we talked about the tiny house movement then and now, tiny house trends, some of my recent designs, and the second edition of Tiny House Floor Plans.
If you’d like to listen in, get to know me better, and where I’m coming from have a listen to the Tiny House Lifestyle Podcast.
Photo by Kent Griswold.
I just completed and published the second edition of my first book, Tiny House Floor Plans. You can order the book in print or as an ebook.
I published the first edition of Tiny House Floor Plans back in 2012. It was a top-rated book, averaged four out of five stars on Amazon, and had almost 450 reviews the day I retired it in 2021.
Tiny houses were still small and simple back then. Most tiny homes were owner-built, and there were only a few professional builders in the business. A typical tiny house was about 20-feet long, had a 5-gallon bucket sawdust toilet, minimal off-grid power, and you took a ladder to get into the loft. For example, the tiny house that made the movement famous was Jay Shafer’s original Tumbleweed. This house measured only 12-feet long, including the porch, and had less than 100 square feet of interior floor space.
Today, people expect more from a tiny house. A 20-foot tiny house is considered relatively small in size these days. Most tiny homes have stairs that take you to the loft, plus conventional toilets or commercially made composting toilets. The interiors are finished to high standards with modern appliances, laundry machines, full-size refrigerators, and lots of fine woodwork.
I suspect a combination of a demand for the finer things and the tiny house television shows drove these changes. Nevertheless, as the Tiny House Movement grew, it had to accommodate a more diverse group of people with different needs, so the houses naturally grew and changed with the times.
This is why it seemed about high time for me to redraw my book. You’ll find nothing from the original version is in these pages; all the drawings in this second edition are brand new. You’ll find over 350 tiny house floor plans of homes ranging from truly tiny 12-foot-long tiny houses to giant 36-foot long homes. Most designs have stairs, and some of the larger homes have two flights of stairs, each to their own loft. I’ve even tried to include a space for laundry machines in all the medium to large designs.
All designs show a utility closet with an external access door. Too often, I see mechanical systems stuffed into tiny houses as afterthoughts. I think it’s best to plan ahead and carve out a place for these items, so they are kept separate from the living space. It’s safer, more convenient to access and repair, and this approach doesn’t rob you of valuable interior storage space.
What I hope people will take away from this new edition is the inspiration to design and build your own tiny home. There are a million ways to layout a tiny house with all sorts of combinations still yet imagined. I hope my book gets you started on that path or at least feeds that creative flame that has already been sparked. I wish you well on your way to finding freedom in a tiny house.
I stopped at 36-foot tiny house designs even though one could probably go up to 40 feet because when you add up the length of a typical truck plus the full length of a 36-foot tiny house you are very close to the legal limit of 65-feet for the entire truck and trailer.
Large heavy duty pickup trucks with crew cabs are just under 22-feet, plus a 6 foot trailer tongue, plus the length of the 36-foot house and you’re at 64 feet.
You could build a tiny house larger in width, length, and height than the legal road limit and get a special move permit when you wanted to move it, but why would you build so big? At that point the house is so big and expensive it might make more sense to built it on a foundation.
In other words – and in my humble opinion – tiny houses that are larger than 8′ x 36′ are probably in another class of housing like maybe we could call them ‘Giant Tinies’ or just stick with Park Model RV like the manufactured home industry likes to call them.
Anyway… that’s the long-winded reason I stopped at 36-feet and didn’t include any houses wider than legal road limit of 8.5-feet.
The book is available now in print at Amazon. You can also order it as an ebook directly from me. Use the links provided here to find both the print version and downloadable ebook version.
I’ll be posting videos of how I draw the floor plans and how I would transform the designs into 3D drawings using SketchUp in the near future. I also setup a special website to focus on the book which you can find at TinyHouseFloorPlans.us.
Post your comments and questions below.
I’m really inspired by the global overland expedition rig built by Jason and Kara at the Everlanders YouTube Channel. Their rig is a relatively lightweight DIY camper made from a welded aluminum frame with riveted honeycomb structural panels. Honeycomb panels have a strong honeycomb core made from aluminum or polymer and layers of other materials laminated as skins. The whole assembly is strong, lightweight, self supporting, and provides some insulation.
What I like most is that Jason and Kara built their rig themselves on a realistic budget. Most professionally built expedition rigs like this cost a small fortune.
I like their truck so much, I was inspired to draw my own using the same construction approach. Even if this kind of truck isn’t your thing, consider that honeycomb panels might also be an excellent option for an ultralight tiny house build.
To climb up into the camper I imagine using a custom fit Torklift brand extending RV stairs. These fold into very small packages and can be stored below the exterior door.
In my version I imagine using honeycomb panels with an aluminum skinned exterior, an insulated polymer honeycomb core, and wood veneer interior. The panels would provide much of the shear strength for the wall but the aluminum frame binds the panels all together. The panels would be glued and riveted to the frame like Jason and Kara’s rig. The floor and roof have more framing members to handle roof loads.
Typical RV windows and doors would be used for simplicity of construction and weight. The roof would have membrane roofing material on top of the panels for added weather proofing.
I also played with the idea of mounting an automated solar tracker to the roof. It’s simply a rack that’s hinged on one side with the whole thing sitting on a heavy duty turntable. Linear actuators lift and tilt the frame up and town. Some kind of computer controller with photosensitive sensors would be needed to direct the panels in the right direction. A wind sensor would be used to flatten the panels during windy days. It would also need a quick and easy way to lower and lock the panels for travel. Trackers that function like this are fairly common for ground mounted installations, but I’ve never seen one that folds flat and mounted to a truck or trailer. Shown here are four 425 watt panels for a total of 1,700 watts of power. This solar tracker is far from a fully sorted design, just an idea.
Inside there’s a tiny kitchen and wet bath. A small refrigerator is located below the cabinets.
In the bathroom, for simplicity sake, I’d use the highly recommended Nature’s Head composting toilet which separates the solids from the liquids and can be vented outside.
Over the truck’s cab is a split loft with two twin beds. A divider between them offers privacy, but sliding doors on each side can be opened if those sleeping in the loft want to chat. I designed it like this for my daughters; you may prefer to have a queen bed instead of a divider.
An overland truck like this would be fairly heavy even with the lightweight honeycomb panels and aluminum, so a heavy duty truck would be required. For this concept I chose to imagine using a diesel 4-wheel-drive Ram 5500 chassis crew cab with a super single dually conversion, a lift kit, and Continental MPT tires.
These trucks are built for commercial use. They are not very fast or very good at towing heavy loads but they are perfect for hauling large loads on their backs and are designed for a long life doing hard work at a low speed.
I’d also want to bring a Jeep along for the ride too, and would flat-tow it behind the rig so that when I got to my boondocking campsite, I could keep going deeper into the woods, mountains, or desert in my Jeep.
This was this week’s fun design exploration. It’s just another tiny living option that provides a lot more mobility than a tiny house and could still be built on a reasonable budget just like the folks at Everlanders.
I drew this for fun, and it’s not a tiny house. I wanted to explore designing an off-grid pyramid home in the desert. In many ways it’s a fairly normal American home. It has 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, two levels, and a patio with a pool, but the shape of a pyramid is dramatic and demands to be treated differently.
I didn’t want to poke a hole in the side of the pyramid for a front door. I wanted to make entering the pyramid a bit more of an adventure, so I chose to create a dramatic subterranean entrance that felt like a journey. To enter the pyramid you must first walk toward it, then around it, and view it from three sides. Once you’ve taken in it’s presence, you must descend through a glass hatch covered staircase.
From the bottom of the staircase you pass under the long narrow glass bottomed swimming pool where you’ll find the interior front door of the home.
Beyond this door you climb a short dark concrete staircase and finally find yourself on the lower level.
On the lower level there’s a kitchen, dining room, three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a laundry/utility room.
The lower living level is windowless except for glass blocks in the ceiling that also form part of the floor of the upper level. Natural light passes through these glass blocks as well as through the stairwell opening to the upper level.
Climbing the stairs to the upper level you turn 180-degrees and arrive in a glass and concrete pyramid shaped room with four giant pyramid windows. In the center of the room is the U-shaped staircase you just climbed. On each of the four walls is minimalist modern furniture and excellent views of the surrounding desert. An excellent place to host a guests.
Truth be told, entering this pyramid wouldn’t be easy or convenient, and may become an annoyance to the occupants. But for those who embrace the ritual value of the journey – passing into the pyramid may become a valued trade-off to the day-to-day convenience of a common door.
Mechanically speaking the pyramid itself would double as a rainwater collection surface catching runoff around its edge and channeling it into underground storage tanks that flank the pool. A photovoltaic solar array would need to be located nearby to power this desert home.
The wall construction should be a combination of concrete and foam, so that the thermal mass of the concrete keeps the interior consistent without the need for much mechanical intervention.
The exterior of the pyramid must be as smooth as possible, almost polished like a mirror. The glass should be semi transparent but mostly reflective to help keep the interior cool on sunny days.
The bedrooms receive natural daylight though the glass blocks in the floor above. The master bedroom has its own bathroom.
The master bathroom has a shower, tub, toilet and sink. The bathroom also receive natural light from the glass blocks in the floor above.
The bedrooms are typical in size and each bedroom has a walk-in closet.
The second bathroom is just off the staircase landing.
This was a fun exploration for my imagination. It’s not a practical house, but then if that was the goal, something the shape of a box would be more effective. A pyramid requires some dramatic solutions and nothing that detracts from the statement it would make.
Call me crazy, but I really like the idea of a mirrored tiny house; but I have a lot of questions about the feasibility. What would it be like to have a mirrored tiny house? Would it blend into its surroundings or stand-out like a soar thumb? Would birds crash into it? Would it cost a fortune? Would the occupants get constantly photographed by curious onlookers?
This design is a simple box with a 3/12 gable roof and a slightly more aerodynamic nose than most tiny houses. The boxy shape would likely be easier to cover with mirrors. The nose and roof would be black metal roofing for durability. The roof would be covered in solar panels on mounts that tilt to the left and right.
As you can see in these renderings the mirrors reflect the surrounding scenery nicely – much like the real photos of mirrored houses we’ve seen on the Internet. I actually think the house might just blend into the natural surroundings once parked. On the road, I bet it would be quite the eye catcher – hopefully not a distraction or difficult to see. For sure it would be a huge conversation starter and photographer magnet.
This tiny house design is 36-feet long on a custom trailer design with tandem dual wheel axles. The rear section of the trailer is higher to provide more space for water tanks (fresh, black and grey) under the floors of the kitchen and bathroom.
The home’s shutters would be mounted on heavy duty self-opening spring hinges or normal hinges with gas struts for support. It would be super cool to have them on automatic opening gas struts like those found on the hatch of an SUV.
When on the road the house closes-up to keep things safe and aerodynamic. You could also close the house up when in camp to help secure it from would-be thieves. The nose of the house is angled and protrudes over the trailer tongue to provide space for utility gear and an aerodynamic nose into the wind.
A television, stereo, and minisplit A/C head are hidden away behind the folded-up table. The minisplit would not be functional with the table up, and is hidden above the stereo behind the wood slats. There are three other minisplit head location shown in the floor plan at the bottom of the story.
The sofas are on castor wheels and can be rolled together to form a bed. The bed can be centered off to one side. The sofas have three storage drawers each to provide clothing storage. The shutters or roll-up blinds could be closed for privacy at night.
The bunk bed length is over seven feet. Bed width is over three feet, so standard twin mattress could fit in each bunk. Simple sliding doors shut when privacy is needed. Opening windows in the bunks provide light, ventilation, and egress in an emergency. A small loveseat sized sofa and a fold-up desk provide more function to the bunk room.
The bathroom is accessed from a hall that separates the kitchen from the bunk room. A swinging door would be used for the bathroom so towels could be hung to dry on a towel bar on the door. Across the hallway from the bathroom is ample storage and full height closets for four people.
Pocket doors separate the bunk room from the hallway and bathroom, and the bathroom and hallway from the kitchen. The kitchen and living room stay open to each other. There is no loft in order to keep the ground clearance of the trailer high and the roofline under 13-feet so the house could be taken on an Alaskan or Canadian ferry adventure.
This is a tiny house designed to travel with a family of four. It’s off-grid setup could be configured to be large enough to keep it cool in Arizona or warm in Alaska. A backup propane powered generator could be mounted in the nose to provide extra power on dark says. There’s plenty of space for large RV water and grey & black tanks so that you can stay for a week or two at a time in off-grid boondocking campsites.
I think the best mirrored material for the exterior would be mirrored polycarbonate, but it is very expensive and I’m not sure about its durability. Polished stainless steel would be much more durable, but if it is not perfectly flat a funhouse mirror effect seems to occur. Glass probably provides the best mirror surface, but would likely be the most expensive and would be more susceptible to breakage than polycarbonate. One thing is for sure, the owner of a mirrored tiny house would be washing it all the time to keep it shiny and clean.
Mirroring aside… I really like this floor plan. I think it would be ideal for a traveling family. The parents would use the living room as their bedroom at night and the kids (even teenagers) could be comfortable in the bunk room at night.
What do you think about this design? What do you think of a mirrored tiny house?
This is a design idea I’ve been playing with a lot lately. Most tiny houses don’t travel well because they are heavy, brick-shaped, and built to maximize the building envelope defined by the size limitations of 8.5-feet wide and 13.5′-tall. So most tiny houses ride low, drag their butts on steep driveways, and are not usually very aerodynamic. This design is different.
I wanted to imagine a tiny house that was built to travel and explore, so I started with the trailer design. This trailer would have a 40-foot trailer bed, an 8-foot gooseneck, dual tandem wheels, 12,000-pound axles, trailer breaks, and hydraulic self-leveling jacks like a commercial fifth wheel trailer.
The trailer would have very good ground clearance and would be much nicer to tow on a regular basis than the typical tiny house. The sacrifice is limited ceiling height due to a floor so high in the air. The ceiling is 8 to 9-feet tall, just not tall enough for a true loft. The overall height of this design is just under 13-feet so you could take it on a Ferry to Alaska if that was in your budget (most ferries I researched have limits of 13-feet tall for trailers and RVs).
Due to it’s length, a tiny house like this would likely weigh a lot, like 16,000 to 20,000 pounds with the 4,000-pound Jeep loaded on the back. One drawback of this design would be that it would be tricky to balance the trailer for towing if you were missing the Jeep counterweight.
For sure it would take a heavy duty truck to tow this tiny house, like a RAM 3500, Ford F350/F450, Chevy or GMC 3500. Big trucks like that are built for highway towing, so it might be fun to travel with a Jeep for backwoods exploring, which is why I added a large porch out back that’s deep enough for a Jeep.
It would be driven up and down on ramps just like a flatbed car-hauler trailer. When you’ve setup camps, and the Jeep is parked nearby, the porch would be a nice place out of the mud for hanging out and cooking.
The shape of the home’s nose is meant to be aerodynamic, or at least more aerodynamic than the typical brick-shaped tiny house.
In the center of the house is the heaviest stuff: kitchen, bathroom, pantry, clothes storage, water tanks below the floor, etc. The utility items like batteries, solar power gear, generator, and water heater would be in the nose over the gooseneck.
The frame of the house should be steel for it’s light weight and strength. For sheathing I’d choose Huber ZIP R-Sheathing even though its a bit on the heavy side. It provides the shear strength, plus a thermal break, vapor and water barrier all-in-one. The siding and roofing should be lightweight aluminum or steel panels with furring strips behind the panels for the air gap.
Behind the furring strips, siding and roofing should be a continuous inch or two of foam insulation for maximum insulation performance. The wall cavities should also be insulated with lightweight foam.
I like the modern look of plywood for interior walls, so I think I’d sheath the interior with furniture grade plywood. I wouldn’t hide the seams with trim, I think that looks tacky. Instead I’d bevel the edges with a router to accentuate the joints and use nice looking fasteners. If you’re going to use plywood, be proud of it and show it off.
Since I’m just having fun imagining the perfect traveling tiny house (and apparently on a limitless budget), it should also have a huge solar system too. The roof is big enough for 12 425 watt solar panels for a whopping 5,100 watts of power. There should also be a lithium battery bank properly sized to store all that sunlight. I’m guessing we’re talking like $15,000 to $20,000 of solar power here.
Why so much solar? Well in that hallway between the kitchen and back room would be a full size stacked washer and dryer hidden behind cabinet doors. There should also be a two head mini-split to keep both ends of the house cool. All of that would require a huge solar system – especially if you wanted to stay cool while boondocking in the desert in your completely off-grid tiny house.
The 7-foot sofas in the front and back room are on castors and can be pushed together to form a bed big enough for two. The sofas have three large drawers each (total of 12) for clothing storage for the whole family. The hallway has full length closets for hanging dresses and other clothes. In the back room is a small 2-foot deep loft just big enough for a young child (or hanging out and chilling). The house could sleep a maximum 4 adults and 1 child comfortably.
The bathroom is small, but typical for a tiny house. The shower shown is 36-inches square. The bifold glass door would allow easy access to the shower even when standing inside this small space.
This design is actually #35 in a series of tiny houses I’ve been drawing quietly and privately. I’ve decided to take my hobby public again and will begin to share more designs here in the near future. It was drawn with SketchUp Pro 2021 and rendered with SU Podium V2.6.
Stay tuned for more and feel free to tell me what you think in the comments.
My journey with the tiny house movement began in 2007 when I caught Jay Shafer’s segment on Oprah. At the time, I was watching my California home’s value evaporate and coming to terms with the reality of traditional mortgages. What started as casual curiosity became a decade-long exploration that taught me specific lessons about managing space, possessions, and costs.
Here are nine key insights that anyone can apply, whether or not tiny living is their goal:
After documenting countless tiny house success stories over eleven years, one pattern stands out: the square footage required for comfort is consistently lower than expected. The challenge isn’t adapting to smaller spaces—it’s confronting our relationship with possessions.
I’ve come to believe that fewer possessions can lead to greater happiness. Every item we own demands attention, space, and often money. When we store things in paid units (yes, I’ve been guilty of this, too), we’re not just paying financial costs—we’re carrying the mental burden of eventually dealing with those items.
The tiny house movement pushed me toward skills I had no prior reason to develop. I had to learn new skills to bring my ideas to life—from concrete pipe houses to nine-square-foot dwellings. Teaching myself SketchUp, a 3D modeling tool, opened doors to designing countless tiny house plans and created new income streams.
This pattern repeats throughout the community: tiny housebuilders often become carpenters, metalworkers, videographers, and entrepreneurs. Each project becomes a catalyst for personal and professional growth.
Choosing simplicity in a consumption-driven world requires constant mindfulness. It’s like maintaining a healthy diet in a world of endless temptations. The conventional path—taking on a mortgage and accumulating possessions—often seems like the path of least resistance.
Sustaining that simplicity tends to involve returning to the same decision repeatedly, not making it once, especially when surrounded by different choices. The battle isn’t just external; it’s primarily in our minds.
The tiny house movement demonstrates that alternatives to traditional housing and lifestyle choices exist. Each success story proves that what seems radical at first can become not just possible but desirable.
While building a conventional home often requires professional expertise, tiny homes have made construction accessible to everyday people. The scale makes learning possible as you build, creating something personal and practical within months rather than years.
Not everyone can—or should—live in 120 square feet. While tiny homes work beautifully for singles and minimalist couples, they can challenge larger families or those working from home. The key is finding the right balance for your specific needs while incorporating the principles of intentional living.
Converted buses often make more practical sense for those seeking travel than tiny houses. Their steel construction, aerodynamic design, and proven mechanical systems offer advantages over traditional tiny homes. While they might not win beauty contests, buses provide reliable, functional living spaces for nomadic lifestyles.
Vans reduce living space further than most tiny houses while increasing location flexibility. While space is premium, vans offer unparalleled freedom and stealth camping possibilities. It’s a lifestyle that demands extreme minimalism but rewards with maximum flexibility.
Interestingly, tiny houses have grown more luxurious over time. Early builds often cost under $25,000, while today’s models range from $75,000 to over $100,000. This trend reflects a broader truth: most people seek to balance simplicity with comfort rather than embrace extreme minimalism.
The tiny house movement has evolved beyond size considerations into a broader conversation about intentional living. Whether in 100 or 1,000 square feet, the core principles—mindful consumption, financial freedom, and environmental consciousness—remain relevant.
These insights have shaped my perspective on housing and lifestyle choices. As we move forward, the focus has shifted toward how living spaces reflect spending priorities and daily habits that support our values and aspirations.
Image generated with the help of AI (ChatGPT & DALL·E).
I’m restarting my personal blog, and in the spirit of downsizing I think I might shut down some of my other websites and focus my attention here.
Back in 2008 I started blogging about the Tiny House Movement – mostly as therapy as I watched the real estate market tank. Until then I never thought a home’s value could plummet so far, so fast. The whole experience really changed the way I thought about housing.
I’m a designer, so it was natural for me to start dreaming up tiny house plans. Soon I had a lot of people following my blog who were also interested in tiny house design. My tiny house blogs became a business and I began to rely on it – but like most businesses you either adapt to the changing marketplace or you fail.
At about the time tiny houses began showing up on television shows I noticed a major change in the Tiny House Movement. Everyone was writing about it, shooting video, and more and more professionals started their own tiny house businesses.
Today tiny houses are big business and those of who chose to remain small have not been able to keep up.
So today is a new day when I’m going to sell off my tiny house websites and go back to blogging from my heart and not as a business. So far this decision feels incredibly freeing and I hope it reignites my creativity. I figure sometimes you have to burn something down to begin a new.
I will keep this one blog, michaeljanzen.com to record and share my current thinking, designs, and thoughts. If you’re curious to see what I have in mind, I hope you’ll stick around and subscribe to my new email newsletter – see subscription form at the bottom of the page.