How to plan a camper van layout (before you cut a single board)

Every van build makes its expensive mistakes in the same place: the gap between the layout in your head and the layout that physically works. The bed that's 100 mm too short once the wall cladding goes in. The shower cubicle that fits the floor plan but not the wheel arch. The battery bank that ends up over the rear axle because it was the only space left. All of these are cheap to fix in a plan and brutal to fix in plywood.

Here is the planning method that avoids them, in the order that actually matters.

1. Start from the real interior, not a rectangle

A Ducato L3H2 gives you roughly 3.71 × 1.87 × 1.93 m of cargo space — but the usable space is smaller: wheel arches eat into the floor, walls taper toward the roof, and cladding plus insulation takes 25–50 mm off every surface. If your plan starts as a rectangle on graph paper, every one of those losses is a surprise later. Start from the true interior shape of your exact van and length.

2. Place the bed first — everything else negotiates around it

The bed is the largest single object and the least compressible: you are the size you are. Decide fixed vs. convertible and transverse vs. longitudinal first. A transverse bed needs roughly 1.85 m of clear width — in most panel vans that means sleeping between the wheel arches or flaring the walls. If you (or your partner) are taller than the van is wide, you're building a longitudinal bed, and that decision cascades into everything else.

3. Zone the wet and the hot

Water and heat dictate more of the layout than comfort does. Group the kitchen, water tanks and (if you have one) shower on one side of the van and as low as possible — shared plumbing runs, shared drainage, and heavy tanks near the floor where they barely affect the centre of mass. Keep the gas bottle in its own sealed, drop-out-vented locker, and keep the fridge out of direct sun and away from the heater outlet.

4. Check the weight while you plan, not at the weighbridge

This is the step almost everyone skips, and it's the one with legal consequences. A 3.5t van has a payload of roughly 1,200–1,500 kg depending on trim — and a full conversion (framing, cladding, furniture, water, batteries, people, gear) eats it faster than anyone expects. Track three numbers as the layout evolves: total payload used, front/rear axle split, and where the centre of mass sits. Heavy items — batteries, water, tools — belong low and between the axles.

5. Budget every item as you place it

A layout is also a shopping list. If each placed item carries its cost — the fridge, the ply, the framing timber — your budget builds itself and the “it somehow became €12,000” surprise never happens. Do the same for power: add up appliance draw against battery and solar capacity while the layout is still cheap to change.

6. Walk the plan before you build it

Two checks catch most livability mistakes: standing points (where can you actually stand upright, and is the kitchen one of those places?) and door swings and drawers (does everything open with the bed in night mode?). In 3D these take seconds; masking tape on the garage floor is the analog fallback and still better than nothing.

7. Only then: cut

The finished plan should hand you a cut list — every stud and panel with dimensions — a priced materials list, and a power plan. If your planning tool can't produce those, you don't have a plan, you have a picture.

VanPlot does all seven steps in the browser: real van interiors, live payload and axle split, a budget that builds itself, and a Build Sheet you can take to the saw. The free plan is enough to plan your whole layout — no download, no card.