Designing the layout of our Ford Transit campervan conversion.

If, like us, you’ve been dreaming of converting a van for some time, then it’s likely you already have a layout planned out - we sure did, but it did change slightly.

For almost two years, we’d been watching conversion videos on YouTube and looking at inspiration images online, which made planning the basic layout pretty easy - the hard part came when we got the van and had to squeeze what we’d imagined into a non-symmetrical and very much not square shell.

So, how did we do it?

1. We planned it on paper.

The first thing we did was plan our build on literal paper. Then, once we were happy with the concept, we transferred the sketches into Google Drawings - which is like a free version of the way more technical software most people use.

These are the actual drawings we ended up with, and while we did change quite a lot, they helped us tremendously to get our head around the space and what we wanted in it.

It may be crude, but these drawings helped us to get an idea of the space we had to work with. We found measurements for our van online so these were drawn up before we got it.

2. We taped it out on the floor of our van.

The next thing we did was start taping out and measuring the actual layout onto the floor of our empty van - now, this is where things got interesting. An 80cm shower tray seems pretty manageable on paper, but have you tried standing and showering in an 80cm2 box? We also found that some of our measurements were just too big, we didn’t need as much counter space as we thought, and using our bulkhead as a spice rack wasn’t going to be practical.

Wheel arches were in the way of vital pipes and electricals, natural joists weren’t in the right place for fixings and all in all, this ended up being one of the most frustrating parts of the build because we had to come to terms with the fact that some of our ideas weren’t going to work.

Taping out the layout

We used electrical tape and it stayed stuck for the duration of the build.

3. We framed it out.

Once we were happy with our new layout in theory, we began framing it out - which essentially meant putting the walls in place and then building a skeleton of the main living space.

This was so much fun and was the moment that the van build really came to life for us. It was also a chance to feel how high we wanted our counters and if we could trim a few extra inches off any off of our fixtures to save on space.

Framing out.

We have a bed!

4. We got to building it!

Last but not least, we worked from our skeleton and built out the rest of the van. From here, things didn’t change all that much but have ended up changing a few things over the years (more on those in a separate post).

Building out the final layout was when things really came to life!

So there you have it! That’s how we designed the layout of our camper van conversion. It wasn’t overly complex, we didn’t buy any special software, and overall, we’re super happy with how the van turned out.

Good luck with your own build!