Bed height & garage calculator
Raise the bed and you gain a garage but lose the room to sit up in it. Lower it and the bikes stop fitting. This solves the squeeze from both ends and tells you when your roof simply cannot do both.
Pick your van and the numbers below fill themselves from our database of 105 variants.
Top of the deck, above the floor.
Sitting on the floor, bum to crown. Leave the default if you don't know it.
Room to sit up in bed
780 mm
you need 875 mm
Clear height in the garage
930 mm
your load needs 950 mm
This roof cannot do both. Either the load goes elsewhere, the mattress gets thinner, or you need a taller van.
Sit as low as the load allows: headroom over the mattress is worth more day to day than empty air under the bed.
Planning figures, not certification. Standards are summarised for builders; your inspector, your van's plate and your own measurements always win.
How this is calculated
- Room to sit up = interior height − (platform + mattress). You need your sitting height plus about 25 mm.
- Garage clearance = platform height − 70 mm for the deck and its frame.
- The workable range is the gap between the lowest platform that clears your load and the highest that still lets you sit up. When they cross, no height works.
Sources
- Sprinter-Source bed-height polls and build threads (the 36–39 inch consensus)
- Build A Green RV — bed platform construction
- VanPlot's own headroom design check (85 cm to sit up straight)
Keep reading
Plan the whole van, not just this number
VanPlot is a 3D layout planner for camper conversions. Place real components in your real van and watch weight, axle loads, power and cost update live — this calculator is one panel of it.
Start planning — freeWho makes this
I'm Vladimir. I'm planning my own conversion, and none of the tools I tried could tell me whether a layout would fit or what it would do to the rear axle, so I made this one. I work on it alone. If something's wrong or missing, write to me — the address goes to my inbox.
Vladimir Šterjoski