2. Designing My Conversion Van Floor Plan
Crafting the Dream Van Floorplan for the Ultimate Adventure Vehicle
The van has been picked, its here, and the fun is starting! At this point it is a big beautiful clean canvas with a ton of possibilities.
The Importance of a Well-Designed Van Floorplan
A van's floorplan is the foundation upon which all elements of livability rest. Its the heart of any great van conversion and dictates how you move, interact, and live within your mobile space. A poorly designed layout can lead to unnecessary frustration and discomfort, while a thoughtful floorplan can enhance your van life experience.
The challenge lies in maximizing limited space while ensuring comfort and functionality. You need to consider how your layout will accommodate daily activities such as cooking, sleeping, and relaxing. Each decision, from bed orientation to kitchen placement, impacts overall livability.
A good floorplan also anticipates future needs. Will you be hosting guests? Do you plan to work remotely? Your layout should adapt to your lifestyle changes, ensuring your van remains a versatile and welcoming space.
Tools and Resources for Planning and Visualizing a Van's Floorplan
The planning phase a van build is super exciting. Who hasn’t fantasized about how they would build their dream van? It’s a thing, but when it starts to become reality it can get overwhelming and even stressful as some of the hurdles and complications start to jeopardize some of the fantasies. Fortunately, their is a ton of resources available to help lessen the burdens of planning out the perfect van build.
Van Blogs, Forums, Groups - Learning from those who have traveled the road before can save you time and headaches during your build process. Experienced van lifers and DIY enthusiasts have valuable insights into what works and what doesn’t. Van Bloggers (like how you ended up here!), Van forums, YouTube, or even Social Media Groups can be a treasure troves of information, providing tutorials and walkthroughs that demystify complex projects. Don't hesitate to reach out to the van life community for advice and inspiration.
Software - Technology offers powerful tools for designing your van floorplan with precision and creativity. These resources simplify the planning process and help bring your vision to life. Vanspace 3D, or CAD software like SketchUp allows for detailed 3D modeling, enabling you to experiment with layouts and visualize your design in real space. Many programs offer free versions or trials, making them accessible to beginners and experts alike. Additionally, van conversion apps and websites provide templates, checklists, and calculators tailored to van builds. These resources streamline project management and ensure you account for all critical elements.
Fiverr? - If you don’t want to mess with software yourself, you can find people on Fiverr to do it for you. Just search “3d van conversion design” and you should land on several options of artists for hire to model your build for you.
Draw it out Old School? - Old school pen and paper sketching can be a quick easy way to lay down a general concept of your design. The problem is it wont be dimensionally accurate, but its a solid way to get the party started and lay out the basic design idea. For a bit more accuracy, you can use digital tools such as Adobe to sketch your concepts out over a van diagram that is more dimensionally correct. Being that I am modeling my design after an existing and successful floorplan, I am not too worried about the dimensions being to far off so I spent most of my planning doing it this way.
My Adventure Van Plan!
DIY van conversions have become popular due to the personalization they offer. Building your own van allows you to tailor every aspect to your needs, preferences, and budget. The beauty of this lies in its flexibility. Your van can be your home, your office, your means of travel, or in my case, a comfortable toy hauler! However, crafting a livable space from the limited confines of a van does require careful planning and creativity.
My van is a completely blank canvas! I am building my project from a Mercedes Sprinter 144 High Roof 4x4 Diesel Cargo Van. Mine came with a fully loaded cab, and a completely empty cabin. So it has all the comfortable driving features and bells and whistles up front that can enhance road trip experiences, but a clean empty space in the back for me to build exactly what I want that will meet my needs.
My Van Build Priorities
The first step in a van build is to identify exactly what it is you want to build. Identify the goals of your dream van and your uncompromising needs. Then give a priority to each one. Every van design is based on different priorities, purposes, and values. My van is going to be an adventure van. I want road trip comfort with as much toy hauling capability as I can get! Here are the priorities I identified for my van design:
Travel & Road Trip Comfort - Whether its an Adventure van as in my case, or full time van living, travel comfort is a big need. Most van build niches intend to see themselves out on the open road exploring new and exciting places. My van came with just about every feature in the front end, so road trip comfort is just about maxed out from the factory! One of my big comfort requirements is heated swivel seats from the factory as this is near impossible to do well aftermarket.
Stealth Camping - As an adventure van, I obviously want the ability to sleep in the van and not just use it as a toy hauler. I actually want mine to be able to support a week or even longer of extended living if needed as adventures and road trip plans can greatly very! Once its decked out it will be a bit harder to pull off the stealth camper look, but it should still be less obvious than an standard RV and offer the ability to tuck into quiet locations from time to time to reduce the need or urgency to find hotels. For this, I require a comfortable sleep setup, the ability to bring along and prepare food and drinks (especially coffee!), and some type of option to wash up myself as well as gear.
Toy Hauling - Adventure is a broad term. I use it to blanket the many categories of hobbies and interests I have such as; Paragliding & Paramotoring, Skiing, Snowshoeing, Kayaking, Paddleboarding, SCUBA Diving, Biking, Backpacking, Prospecting, FPV Drones, and Ice Hockey. Every one of these fun activities comes with a pile of gear and gadgets. For my Adventure Van build to be effective, it needs to be capable of securely stowing along the necessary gear for each such adventure. This means it will need to be quickly customizable to meet different needs without compromising the aforementioned comfort and overnighting capabilities.
Third Person - The van has two front seats which allows me to bring a friend along for the fun. This will probably be fine for most adventures, but in some cases I can see the value of having a third seat option. I don’t intend to try to sleep everyone in my van build, but as an epic road trip/ toy hauler, the 3rd seat option is a must have.
Charging Gadgets. I roll with a lot of cameras and gadgets spanning nearly all of my hobbies, that require charging abilities. I need my van to offer plenty of charging ports including some that can also be suitably utilized while on the move.
My Van Build Plan
In my early van research, I found myself drawn to the design plans of the Winnebago Revel and Storyteller Mode van models, both of which I had interest in getting at one point, but both were extremely backordered and unattainable. The freedom of pursuing my own adventure van build opened up the possibilities of not just customizing everything as I wish, but going a completely different direction with the floorplan. After a lot of research, deep thought, and some tinkering around, I ended up finding their floorplans (although customized to me of course) to fit my priorities the best.
My build plan in summary is to; have the kitchen galley up against the sliding door, add a third seat behind the drivers seat that can convert into a single bed, and put a folding queen size bed in the rear of the van that can allow the garage space to be extended as needed. The front swivel seats can be turned around to create a dining area.
Full Breakdown
Sleeping - This floorplan would allow for the sleeping of 3 people comfortably, and 4 if needed. The queen bed in the rear can sleep 2 (Note: Flarespace will be needed to create the necessary room for the bed). The third passenger seat will be convertible to a bed that can sleep 1. If needed, a mattress pad can be used in the isle between the third seat and the Kitchen galley for a 4th sleeping option.
Dining - The front seats swivel around to face the rear creating a lot more usable space. A folding or stowable table placed between them and the rear passenger seat will make a nice dining area or work center for 3 people.
Kitchen - The kitchen galley will have a sink, faucet, and just enough counter space to work with. Inside the galley will be a fridge/ freezer. I am planning to use a chest style dual zone 12v fridge inside the cabinet on drawer slides that can be pulled out the front of the cabinet toward the cab.
Storage - The biggest and most obvious storage area is the “garage space” in the rear of the van. My rear bed will be able to be folded up out of the way to expand this space for large gear such as my Paramotor. The area behind the rear seat will also be a great space for more storage. Upper Cabinets will run full length down the drivers side and passenger side stopping above the kitchen galley.
Boxouts - The rear bed will be supported by framed boxouts around the wheel wells. The drivers side boxout will house the cabins electrical system. The passenger side boxout will house the water tank and system. Both boxouts should offer some more storage options for additional gear as well.
Shower? - Yes, I definitely want the ability to clean myself and wash off some gear. The main shower will be available right inside the sliding door between the door and the third seat. I plan to have a stowable shower pan in the floor, and a 360° shower curtain that can attach to the ceiling with magnets. The shower head will be quick disconnect to a control unit built into the cabinet above the galley. This will allow me to stow the shower components in a much smaller space than a formal shower will take up but still have the capability of an indoor shower when desired.
There will also be a pull out shower wand in the passenger side boxout in the rear of the van to be used for outdoor showering and washing off gear.
What about the bathroom? - Bathroom options for this layout would most likely be suited for the space behind the rear seat. In a 177 wheel base model you can put a formal bathroom here. For the smaller 144, this is a good location to store portable setups. I may entertain this once I get rolling, but it is not a major priority for my intended use of the van.
Build Order & Phases of Construction
Planning out the order to do things can be tricky and sometimes overwhelming. I have thought this through about as much as possible to try and eliminate the possibility of having to undue or install something to install something else. Unless you do this all the time and have a lot of experience its still likely to happen a few times. So I decided to write out my complete intended order of installs and phases of construction to help as a baseline, and to compare back later.
Phase 1
Sound Proof
Side Steps (I’m going to be in and out of the van a lot so I might as well get these early)
3rd Seat Passenger Window
3rd Seat/ Bed (Needed before I can do the floor)
Espar Cabin Heater
Phase 2
Roof Rails (My van doesn’t have them)
Roof Rack (Needed so I can figure out exactly where to put my Maxx Fan)
Ladder (Install with Roof Rack, and nice to have for installation and maintenance of fan, solar, and lightbars)
Maxx Fan
Phase 3
Flooring (Raised and insulated the floor)
Rear Wheel Well Boxouts
Water Tank, Level Sensor, Water Heater, Water Pump, Connections, Plumbing
Phase 4
12v Electrical (Batteries, DC to DC Charger, Fuses, Breakers, Bus Bars, Panels, Lighting, Cell Booster, Lightbars)
AC Electrical (Shore Power, Inverter, Receptacles)
Solar (Panels, Controller)
Phase 5
Insulation
Wall Ceiling Panels
Galley
Cabinets
Phase 6
Rear Folding Bed
Suspension (Should have a pretty good idea of loaded weight at this point)
Interior Trim, Finishing Details
Phase 7
Extras
Final Thoughts
So that’s my plan! It will be fun to see how it comes along and what changes along the way. Especially the phases and order of my planned fabrications and installs. I will try to document every part of the journey and installs in individual articles here as well as on YouTube, so stay tuned!
