Tiny homes have quickly gained a huge following within the last decade. They come in thousands of shapes and sizes to accommodate any tiny home lover. These styles can be vastly different, ranging from shipping container homes to real life Hobbit homes.
The Top 5 styles we see today in the tiny home market are
Skoolies (AKA converted school buses modified for living)
Shipping Containers
Tiny Homes on Wheels
The A-Frame
The Yurt
These styles are unique and there are options for the taste, budget, and needs of every potential tiny home owner.
The Skoolie makes a great tiny house option for the explorer type who loves a good road trip. They are made from retired school buses and converted into mobile tiny homes, making them perfect for the upcycling enthusiast. All you need to do is start the engine, and you and your home are off on your next great adventure. Skoolies are often compared to the look and feel of an RV but Skoolies can create more of an “at home” feel for their owners.
The size of the bus typically ranges from 245-300 square feet. If you want to make your Skoolie feel bigger, you can opt in for raising the roof and/or dropping the floor to give the interior more height and help improve airflow while on the road.
Sticking with the mobile (tiny) home theme, Tiny homes on wheels have taken the tiny home world by storm. They are built on trailers (the kind you can tow with just a pickup or an SUV). A tiny home on wheels is the option for you if you to have the freedom to easily move your house whenever, if you are willing to compromise a bit on the size. The downside to this style of tiny home is that they are restricted a little with height, width, and length to be considered a road-worthy trailer. These houses typically take up less than 500 square feet, but are customizable to give the potential home owner lots of storage space for all their essentials. When it comes to the exterior of these tiny homes on wheels, many people see similarities between them and outdoor sheds due to their size and shape. However, many homeowners are now starting to customize the outside of their tiny homes more and branch out into different design styles.
Shipping container homes have also become extremely popular among the tiny house community due to their low cost and environmental friendliness. These homes are made from upcycled steel shipping containers that once carried goods on trains, trucks, and cargo ships. With millions of these containers “out of service” and just sitting around, creative tiny home architects have found the proverbial treasure from someone else’s trash. These sturdy containers create an almost prefabricated home (or segments of a home) that helps reduce construction and maintenance cost. These containers are available in different sizes: 10ft-, 20ft-, and 40ft-long versions. With these containers, what you can build is limited only to your imagination (and budget). The tiniest possible house you could create is a space with 100 square feet, or you could create a 3-story house from multiple containers, or anything in between. The world is your shipping container.
For those looking for their tiny house to be slightly more permanent fixture, TheA-frame is a classic option. This style was originally created in 1934 by architect R.M. Schindler and is now mass-produced in prefabricated kits. Schindler created this style for clients’ vacation homes, and over time Americans fell in love with the ease of building this clean and simple structure. It features steeply angled sides that begin at or near the foundation line and meet up at the top creating a letter A shape. They have become especially popular for their vaulted ceilings, helping to give the home a more spacious feel, and the large panoramic windows that let in tons of natural light and afford great views.
The Yurt is also another popular high functionality, low cost tiny house style. Some say they are the original tiny house on wheels (minus the wheels of course!). The yurt tiny home was born from a desire to modernize traditional housing designs and started gaining popularity as early as the 1970s. The modern versions retain the round tent-like structure, but are built of more durable materials such as wood and metal. Compared to other tiny houses, yurts are much easier to build and can even provide you with more space! They can be anywhere from 12 to 50 feet in diameter, though the ones on the larger side are less common.
While there are many different varieties of tiny home, these five styles seem to be the most popular. There is something out there for everyone in the world of tiny homes. We hope this article at least helped you narrow your choices down!
Photo Credits
Skoolie photo https://pixabay.com/photos/inside-bus-facility-bus-modern-bus-2661145/
Tiny house on wheels https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sojourner-1-881x589.jpg
Shipping container homes https://pixabay.com/photos/container-retail-jewelry-display-2774638/
The yurt https://www.flickr.com/photos/sykes_cottages/25075052909
