Now that you have decided to move forward with a tiny house, there is a lot that goes into designing and planning. There are many things to take into consideration before getting started. First, you'll need to figure out what your tiny house will need to have in it in and what size it should be in order for it to be functional for you.

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A Tiny House Floor Plan Mock-Up

Tiny houses are, of course, not all the same size and shape. Before you settle on a specific size you are looking for, you need to know how small or how big you are willing to go and what you will need to be able to fit into the amount of space. A good practice is to get some blue painters tape and a 30-foot tape measure and create a mock-up of the tiny house.

Simply measure out your desired length and width and place the tape on the floor according to those measurements. Pro Tip: if you do this outside in a driveway or parking lot, grab some sidewalk chalk to mark up the tiny house floor plan and label certain areas of the house.

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Arranging the Layout

There are many things that should influence the layout of your tiny home. Below are a few suggestions that should help in the decision-making process while designing your small house!

• Figure out what rooms you will spend the most time in. Where do you spend most of your time now in your current home?
• Your lifestyle should be strongly considered when room planning. What is your general lifestyle type?
• Your budget. Big kitchens cost a lot more than living rooms. Keep this in mind.
• Don’t only focus on what is right - avoiding designing your tiny home the wrong is just as important

Looking to go more in-depth on best practices for designing your tiny house? Read our guide here.

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What building materials are you going to use?

Having a smaller amount of space to work with will usually influence the kind of building materials that you use, especially for the interior. For example, since you only need a small amount of countertops, you may be able to get better quality products. Another thing to take into consideration when selecting building material is the overall weight of the tiny house. If you’re building a tiny home on wheels this is especially important so make sure to keep weight in balance in mind when designing.

With that in mind, you also need to remember that height is an important factor when designing a tiny house on wheels. Generally speaking, keeping it under 13’6” feet tall and you’ll be a-okay!

Creating a floor plan to scale

Once you have the basics down, you can now start to mock it up to scale on paper or digitally. Thanks to technology there are software programs that you can use to help you draw up a floor plan to scale. This will ensure it fits your lifestyle and that everything you need fits inside the size of a tiny house that you decided on.

The more in-depth you define what you really need/want the easier it will be for you to come up with a good working floor plan. Once you have your floor plan drawn to scale, you can take the next step and have a construction quality blueprint made by either a third party or by your builder.

After that, it’s time to get building!!