Materials can be upgraded and electronics swapped, but the layout is the van. After years of kit fitments and conversions, the regrets customers share with us cluster around the same five decisions — all of them made on paper, long before the build started.
1. Designing for the driveway, not the road
Standing in an empty van in your driveway, a fixed shower stall and a four-burner kitchen feel essential. Three weeks into a trip, most people cook simple meals, shower at gyms and campgrounds, and desperately wish the shower stall were a gear closet. Design for the trip you keep taking, not the showroom fantasy.
2. Oversizing the kitchen
The kitchen is the easiest place to burn floor length. An efficient galley — sink, one serious cooking surface, a proper fridge, and generous counter — fits in far less space than most first drafts allocate. Counter space beats burner count every single time.
3. Treating the garage as leftover space
Bikes, boards, tools, camp chairs, recovery gear: the stuff of the actual trips needs a home you can load in ten seconds. A well-planned rear garage under a fixed bed is the difference between a van you grab for a random Tuesday and one that takes an hour to pack.
4. Building everything fixed
The best layouts keep a few pieces honest and movable — a table that works inside and out, storage cubes that reconfigure, a bench that swallows gear. Vans are small; flexibility is worth more per square foot than any single-purpose furniture.
5. Skipping the cardboard week
Before committing, mock the layout up full-size: painter's tape on the floor, cardboard boxes for cabinets, a real mattress for the bed. Live around it for a week. Every awkward reach and blocked walkway you find with cardboard costs nothing; the same discovery in plywood costs a weekend and a cabinet.
A layout is finished when there is nothing left to remove — not when there is nothing left to add.
Our kit layouts encode what those hundreds of builds taught us, and they are modular enough to adapt when your trips inevitably change.