Planning and buying for your tiny home must go beyond looking for small versions of typical household products. Each appliance and cabinet, along with every piece of furniture, affects the rest of the interior design and how you move around the home. So what seems like a great purchase at first can quickly become a problem by blocking a walkway or overloading the electrical system or your water supply.
To ensure you have enough space for everything, buy things in the right order. This can help spread the cost of designing and building a tiny home over time and ensure you design and build the most important aspects first.
Start With Utility Systems and Essential Infrastructure
You will need to determine how the major Utility Systems, such as electrical, plumbing, ventilation, and climate control, will function and be located throughout the home. These systems define where appliances will go and how much power and water the home can handle. Changing these systems can be very costly after interior finishes such as cabinets, flooring, and furniture are installed.
First, review the home’s electrical capacity and the location of all outlets and switches for lighting, as well as water connections for the kitchen, bathrooms, and water heater, and ventilation for moisture and cooking odors. Additionally, homes that will be moved frequently between climates will require special consideration for their heating and cooling systems.
Kitchen view of Cindy's Sunflower Home. Photo Credit: Acony Bell Tiny House Village
Choose Essential Appliances Based on Space and Energy Use
Once you select the utility systems, focus on the home's major appliances. Take precise measurements of the space available for each appliance, including the space needed to open doors, change filters, etc. for routine maintenance.
Beyond physical space, pay attention to an appliance's energy use. Compact appliances for a tiny home must fit within the home’s utility systems. Check the power consumption of, for example, a refrigerator, cooktop, or ventilation unit, to ensure that the home’s electrical system can handle it. Also check the water connections and the required clearances for installation.
While choosing the smallest appliance on the market may seem like the wisest choice for a tiny home, these objects have a certain “footprint.” Moreover, a multipurpose device often can be more effective than two separate products. Of course, it will be larger, but the residence will have more storage space, which is more valuable for tiny-home dwellers.
Use Financial Benefits for Planned Purchases
Many items in a tiny home cost as much as their full-size counterparts. Budgeting for all the items you need for a tiny home, and buying them in the right order, helps spread the cost of necessities over time. This also allows you to buy items on sale, since some things are discounted at certain times of the year.
This approach also creates opportunities to use seasonal discounts and other financial benefits strategically. When paying for necessary items already included in the budget, homeowners may earn rewards and get more value from planned spending. Any benefit should support the existing purchase plan rather than encourage additional or unnecessary expenses.
Many products, including appliances, home storage, and yard equipment, are on sale during specific times of the year. Waiting for these sales can save a homeowner a lot of money without delaying the home’s construction.
Install Built-In Storage Before Buying Furniture
Likewise, when buying storage and home organization products for your tiny home, consider how you'll use the space and design your storage and organization to fit within your home's limitations. By designing your tiny home's storage and organization before buying furniture, you'll better understand how much space you really have.
When space is at a premium, go up. Use areas above doors, alcoves, or even the tops of walls in corners. Use all available space, not just the room's floor area. If you have a loft space, then consider the stairs. You could have a drawer under the stairs or even a cabinet.
Base your storage decisions on your actual habits. Store the things you use regularly in easy-to-access places. Put things you use only seasonally in hard-to-reach locations. This will help you avoid buying oversized pieces of furniture with extra storage just because they have it.
backyard cottage tangletown
Select Furniture That Supports More Than One Purpose
First, list the essentials for sleeping, eating, working, and leisure. Then choose the furniture that best fits these categories. Try out as many different configurations as you like. In the end, however, be guided by the following principle: does it still have a purpose after it has been set up?
A sofa bed, for example, can be useful but only if it is easy to make up. A table that folds up against the wall or a bench with storage can serve more than one purpose. But pieces with lots of redundant features that need to be taken apart and reassembled can be a nuisance.
Measuring doorways, hallways, and turns, as well as the space where a piece of furniture will sit, ensures even large items will fit in your tiny home. For instance, a couch or mattress may fit in the living room, but it might not fit through the door.
Add Lighting and Everyday Household Items
Once you have established your furniture needs, consider what other lighting you need throughout your home. Add task lights near your cooking surfaces, your home office, and reading areas throughout the home; layering lighting will make your home feel bigger and more open.
Instead, buy a small quantity of functional cookware, bedding, towels, and household cleaning supplies. It takes a short time to test various household items and see what you need for your tiny home.
Leave Décor and Nonessential Upgrades Until the End
Keep Décor for last when adding décor to a tiny home. Reflect off walls with mirrors, utilizing colors found within décor. Add bedding, towels, and greenery within containers to bring in plants to complete your tiny home’s décor and personal style.
Wait for seasonal items to purchase optional technology, additional outdoor furniture or other specialty items to decorate your home as you see fit. With time, you’ll determine where you need extra items to enhance your living space.
Create a Tiny Home That Works in Practice
A well-designed tiny home is a home that develops in stages: first the necessary systems to allow the structure to be habitable, then the essential appliances to meet the basic needs of the occupants, then storage to organize and put order to the home, and finally the furniture and household items that fit in the home.
Then, only after you’ve lived in your tiny home for a short time and you have sorted out all of the issues needed to make your home work well for you, you can add any of the many personal touches, in the form of artwork, to make your home look nice and add some color to the spaces where you’ll be spending most of your time.
