RV & Van Layout Designer

How to use the van layout designer

1. Pick your van, or choose “Another rig” and type the inside length, width and height of your RV, trailer, bus or box truck, the payload from the door sticker and the side door.
2. Pick the bed and the mattress: across the back, lengthwise at the back, a fold-out bench bed, or none. Enter the tallest person’s height.
3. Tick what has to fit: the galley and its fridge, the toilet, a wet bath or an outdoor shower, a closet, a bench or a dinette, and the water tank. The designer tries every arrangement and draws the best one to scale. If something does not fit, it says what to drop first.
4. Read the shopping list: each part sized to the space it got. Copy link keeps the layout.

The rules the designer uses

• The aisle: at least 24″ (60 cm) between the things on the two walls, and 24–28″ to be comfortable, as The Van Conversion’s layout guide puts it. The designer keeps 24″ everywhere and prefers a layout with 28″.
• The bed: the RV mattress sizes on the Sleep Foundation’s chart, from the 30 × 75″ bunk to the 72 × 75″ RV short king. A mattress should be at least 6″ longer than the person on it. Across the van, the mattress’s length has to fit inside your finished walls.
• Sitting up in bed: sitting height, seat to the top of the head, is about 0.52 of standing height (Pheasant’s Bodyspace tables). A person 5′ 10″ tall needs about 36½″ above the mattress. The designer takes that and the mattress off the height inside your ceiling and floor: what is left is the highest the bed platform can go, and the space under it is the “garage”.
• Standing up: the tallest person against the height inside, less the floor and ceiling you build.
• The bathroom: the house building code’s minimums (IRC) as the floor: a toilet’s centre 15″ from a wall on each side, 21″ of clear floor in front, a shower at least 30 × 30″. A wet bath with the toilet inside is therefore 30″ wide and the toilet’s depth plus 21″ deep. RV wet baths are often tighter; below 21″ your knees touch the door.
• The galley: a counter 20″ deep, or 16″ for a compact one (Roost Vans’ two cabinet depths). An upright 12V fridge takes at most half the counter and wants about 2″ of air behind it (Dometic’s installation manual).
• The van itself: the wheel wells and the sliding door stay where the maker put them. A fixed bed goes over the wells; nothing stands in the door, so you can step in.
• The weight: water weighs 8.34 lb a gallon (USGS), a person 185 lb (the CDC’s average US adult), and the build itself about 1,034 lb, what one ProMaster conversion weighed on a scale (Build A Green RV). Change any of them under “Your build’s own numbers”.

Camper van sizes inside

The makers’ figures for the bare van (Mercedes-Benz Vans, Ford, Ram), with 1″ of wall on each side for the last three columns:

Payloads are for the base 2500 rear-wheel-drive van (the ProMaster 159″ extended comes only as a 3500). Yours is on the sticker in the driver’s door jamb, and every option you ordered comes off it. With the 6″ rule, sleeping across a Sprinter or Transit suits people up to about 5′ 2″, and a ProMaster up to 5′ 7″. Builders gain the rest with flares, bump-outs fitted into the side windows.

Three worked examples

A Sprinter 170″ high roof for two. An RV short queen lengthwise across the back, a 48″ galley with an upright fridge, a cassette toilet and a tall closet. Everything fits: the galley and the closet on the driver side, the toilet cabinet across from the galley, with a 28″ aisle and 31″ of open floor behind the cab seats. The bed platform can go 34″ high and still let a 5′ 9″ person sit up, which leaves a garage over the 12″ wheel wells. Two people, 20 gallons of water and the build weigh 1,771 lb: 2,043 lb of the payload is left.

A ProMaster 159″ with the bed across. The RV short queen is 75″ long; with 1″ walls the van is 73″ wide inside, so the designer turns it lengthwise. The galley and the toilet cabinet fit on the driver side; the closet does not, because the sliding door takes 49″ of the passenger wall. With bare walls (0″) the bed fits across and so does everything else, which is why ProMaster builders sleep across and insulate thinly behind the bed.

A Transit 148″ extended with a wet bath and a dinette. The wet bath is 32″ along the wall and 40″ deep (a cassette toilet with 21″ in front). The galley and the wet bath go on the driver side and the closet across from the galley. The dinette does not fit: the swivel cab seats around a pedestal table are the usual answer.

Common van layout mistakes

• Measuring the bare van. The makers’ widths are sheet metal. Insulation and wall panels take 1–2″ a side, and that is often what stops a bed going across.
• A bed too high to sit up in. A tall garage is tempting; a bed you cannot sit up in is not. Work the platform height down from the ceiling, not up from the floor.
• Blocking the sliding door. A cabinet in the door makes every entry a climb. Keep the step-in space clear, or build only a low counter there on purpose.
• A galley too shallow for the fridge. Upright 12V fridges run 19½–21″ deep plus air behind them. In a 20″ galley the door stands proud; in a 16″ one, use a chest fridge on a slide.
• Forgetting the payload. Water is 8.34 lb a gallon: a 30-gallon tank is 250 lb before anyone gets in. Weigh the finished van on a truck scale.

Your shopping list, sized to the space

The designer sizes each part to the space the layout gave it: the mattress the bed takes, the widest upright fridge the galley holds (or a chest fridge on a slide), the toilet footprint with its clear floor, and a roof fan for the standard 14 × 14″ opening (a MaxxAir MaxxFan Deluxe fits it). Under the tool, “Shop this size” shows products for the parts your layout named. Check each listing’s measurements against yours before you buy.

Read next

• RV interior remodel ideas: finishes and furniture once the layout is set.
• RV bathroom remodel ideas, and the Bathroom Layout Planner for a bathroom in a house.
• Organizing an RV kitchen: a small galley holds more than you think.
• Small camper interior ideas for a cozy build.
• Tiny house living: the same rules on a bigger floor. For a tiny house or a room, the free 2D room planner draws it to scale.