With space at a premium, designing a tiny house bathroom that works well and suits your space can feel like a challenge. But there are numerous creative ways to include all of the essential elements in a fashion that marries form and function. A typical tiny house bathroom will include a small sink or vanity, toilet, and shower. (With the right layout, some may even have room for a tub.) You can choose to design your own or use a preset kit.
Regardless of which elements you include, plumbing will play an important part in determining your layout and fixture choice. Tiny house plumbing differs from traditional plumbing in that every element is more compact, leaving no space for a trap or hole. And there are even nuances between permanent and mobile tiny homes, with the latter needing to accommodate different hookups and hold up to movement.
Get inspired by these amazing tiny house bathrooms in a variety of homes from skoolies, to vans, to stationary tiny homes, to tiny houses on wheels and tips to get the look in your own home.
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Spa in a Skoolie
When Savannah King and Drew Richter designed their 23-foot bus build, they knew they wanted a bright and inviting bathroom space with a spa feel. They achieved it by combining a clear glass shower door and teal subway tiles. A teak shower floor adds warmth and sits flush in their custom shower pan. The shower build took only a few days to complete and cost around $1,000 to $1,500.
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Grotto-Inspired Spa Bath
Michael and Tawny McVay’s wet bathroom is a wine-lover's dream built inside of a 250-square-foot skoolie named Oliver. The bathroom is only 5 feet by 5 feet, but it has a sink, composting toilet, shower, and a portable bathtub made from an old wine barrel.
The walls and floors are covered with several layers of sealed concrete. Acacia tiles were added for aesthetics and functionality since concrete is slippery when wet. Copper fixtures add warmth to the “cozy grotto-like spa.”
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Tiny Bath, Big Amenities
Paula and Liam O'Neill’s 235-square-foot tiny house on wheels features a bright, airy bathroom. The room includes a spacious turquoise tiled shower, composting toilet, heated towel rail, and beechwood flooring with a matching vanity top. It was built by Shaye's Tiny Homes, and cabinetry was made by Variant Spaces in New Zealand. A big window lets in light while the mirror and glass shower door make the space seem much bigger.
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A Rolling Rainforest
Craig Gordnier and Katelyn LeTourneau’s skoolie, named Blue Bird, has an open-floor bathroom design with a 20-foot raised roof a glass skylight that connects to nature, and a shower enveloped in blue glass subway tile. A 3/8-inch-thick piece of tempered and laminated glass divides the bathroom from the rest of the house. Amenities include a 14-inch rainfall shower head, Carrera marble draped in green ivy, and a large 54-inch by 34-inch residential shower pan.
The entire bathroom cost under $1,700 and took roughly two weeks to complete. “My advice to anyone wanting to recreate this bathroom is to have fun, play with colors and textures, and push the limits,” Gordnier says.
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A Modern, Minimalist Shower
Mariah Hoffman designed and self-built her mobile studio atop a 20-foot-by-8-foot trailer. Her small bathroom design was informed by the triangular shape of the existing trailer frame hitch and the desire for the feeling of an indoor/outdoor shower. The conventional fiberglass wall paneling is a great move for an affordable tiny home, while the matte-black fixtures are cohesive with her modern tiny home design. The custom-built skylight brings in tons of light to make the tiny 2-foot-by-2-foot space. The stained, sealed wood floor adds to the spa-like feel.
Her advice for tiny home DIYers: work with the existing frame, make sure your shower products fit the space, and hire a professional to install a properly waterproofed skylight.
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An Earthy Orange Burst
Matt Rogne and Emilie Herbert’s bus conversion, ClaySanaBus, was inspired by the earth, sun, and air—they wanted their bathroom to have lots of airflow. It features a horse trough from a farm supply store used as a tub and surrounded by orange ceramic tiles. They used RedGard for waterproofing, Schluter tile trim, and finished with a Nebia water-saving showerhead and composting toilet.
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Tile Paradise in a Bus
Nicole and Charlie Jones’ bathroom is a beautiful compromise of all of the things that were important for them to have in their custom bus conversion: a vanity sink, privacy for the toilet, and a large functional shower. The bathroom fits in an L-shape design and features a skylight, fully-tiled floors, natural tones, and matte black fixtures. All ceramic tiles were set with flexible grout and the cedar ceiling was sealed to stay waterproof.
The bathroom took about one month to complete and cost about $5,000. Their advice: plan the layout, plumbing, and electric lines first. “Be patient because things take longer than expected, especially if it's a DIY," they said.
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Built-in Privacy
When it came to their van conversion, Megan and Chris of ActiVan Conversions wanted a private indoor shower that could be used in all seasons and locations. Their build features a stand-up shower with a shower door for privacy.
“We showered in a Yosemite Valley parking lot after a long hike and no one had any idea,” they said.
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Little Luxuries for a Large Family
Glaucio and Morgan Araujo designed their bathroom to accommodate their family of six in a converted 40-foot school bus. A skylight and ample storage make the space practical, while the white penny and marble hexagonal tiles, cedar wood accents, and navy blue shiplap bring an elegant touch.
They custom-built their composting toilet to fit the space and installed an instant hot-water heater above it. It took about one month to complete and cost approximately $2,300.
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A Pocket Farmhouse Bathroom
Carole Robin designed this fresh white farm-style bathroom for her tiny house. Every detail fits the style, including the stock tank tub, custom built-in shelving, and distressed barn board and wall panels. The total estimate of her bathroom, including appliances, was approximately $3,200.
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Modern, Moody, and Rustic
Amber and Tyler Woodruff’s tiny modern, rustic, and Nordic bathroom design features a two-person shower and is made with all local lumber. Iron handles and hooks, live edge wood, wood tile, black metal, and glass create a moody color palette. The bathroom took about a month and cost about $4,000. Their biggest tip: “Hire out the shower,” Amber says. “It's worth the money to hire a professional to get it done right."
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An Aqua Oasis
Brother-and-sister team Ellie K Madsen and Dan Madsen of Paradise Tiny Homes, LLC, design tiny homes with beautiful bathrooms, like this Oasis model home in Hawaii. It features a skylight, built-in shelves, and textured aqua subway tile.
The shower head was plumbed to come out of the center of the wall opening, and a standard curved corner shower pan was used with a sliding curved glass shower door to let natural light pass through. Plants on the shower ledge create an outdoor shower feel. It bumps out over the trailer tongue and adds space to the entire bathroom.
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A Bath That's Just So Fresh
The bathroom in Talia and Andy Kingston’s self-converted bus is an homage to Atlanta, one of their favorite cities: “There is no Atlanta without OutKast, hence the ‘so fresh and so clean clean' tiled floor," Talia says. They used black-and-white hexagon penny tiles for the floors and 4-inch by 4-inch black-and-white tiles throughout the room.
The handcrafted vanity is topped by a full-size sink from Concretti Designs. They installed a low-flow showerhead from Nebia and built a skylight for amazing nighttime views. The total cost was $3,000 and their advice to DIYers? Hire a professional so you don't waste time fixing your own errors.
Tips for Designing a Tiny House Bathroom
Now that you’ve gotten some design inspiration, it’s time to talk nuts and bolts. Here are a few helpful pointers to consider before you break ground on your tiny house bathroom—from space-saving ideas to important considerations.
- Use the common rule of thumb that a bathroom should take up no more than 25 percent of the living space in a tiny house. Most tiny house bathrooms will be roughly 5x8 feet, since many tiny houses on wheels are around eight feet wide, though some might be as small as 4x3 feet.
- Consider size and weight if you’re adding a tub. Some of the smallest tiny house tub options stand at just under 45 inches long and 23 inches wide (for reference, a standard tub is 60 inches long and 32 inches wide). You would likely need a bathroom at least five feet in length and width to accommodate one semi comfortably.
- Prioritize ventilation, since the excess moisture held in by the home’s weatherproofing and petite square footage can cause mold damage. Installing a compact, energy-efficient exhaust fan to flick on after showering should help mitigate any issues, especially if your bathroom is windowless.
- Sneak tiny house storage solutions into your bathroom. If you can’t fit a vanity under your sink, wall-mounted storage is your friend. Floating shelves, a medicine cabinet, thoughtfully placed hooks, and—in some cases—slim-profile storage cabinets will help you carve out some storage space.
- Save square footage with a wet bathroom design. The idea is that you can keep the footprint of what would have been the shower as usable space by making the entire room waterproof with a central drain in the floor.
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Can you put a bathroom in a tiny house?
There are countless examples of beautiful, functional bathrooms with showers built into tiny homes that are both off-grid and on-grid.
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How much does it cost to put a bathroom in a tiny house?
Though your cost will depend on your tiny house’s size, construction (prefab elements or not), and chosen materials and fixtures, a typical tiny house bathroom will cost from $1,000 to $7,300, with an additional $500-$3000 for plumbing for the entire house.
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How does a toilet system work in a tiny house?
If a tiny house has access to plumbing, a toilet system will work like it does in a standard home. If there is no plumbing access, a composting toilet, which breaks down waste matter into compost naturally without water or septic, is a popular choice. Incinerating toilets are also often used. These electric models burn waste at high temperatures, leaving behind a small amount of sterile ash and also don’t require any plumbing hookups.