A Bedroom in a Bus! What We Considered for Design
The bedroom. A tricky space to design around for us. Everyone sleeps, so you can’t just eliminate it. Most of the time while it’s in use, you’re unconscious. Since we would be awake and “living” in most of the other rooms of the bus, we wanted to make sure that our bedroom had as small of a footprint as possible within our bus build without being uncomfortable.
The Bed
Prior to bus life, we had a king-size bed and we knew we would want to downsize for buslife. Not only did we not use the whole bed, but everything would be bigger. Bigger pillows, bigger sheets, bigger blankets. Everything that’s bigger requires more space, (even though one of our king-sized quilts still made it along). So that’s why we decided to opt for a queen-sized mattress.
When we started bus life, we kept all our original blankets and quilts. I had previously made a queen sized quilt that was just screaming to be used in our bedroom, except for the fact it was white. EEK! We used it anyways, but making the bed was always a challenge to get to the side by the windows. It would end up being quite a process to pull out mattress, tuck all the sheets and blankets while crawling around trying not to make wrinkles, and then push it back. Inevitably, there would always be wrinkles, so trying to smooth those out and have a presentable bed was always a challenge. Honestly, there was no way I was going through the hassle of making the bed every day, unless I knew we were going to be entertaining.
Then we discovered Beddy’s! Beddy’s is a zippable sheet and blanket set combined. It goes on like a fitted sheet, eliminates the top sheet, and you zip the blankets to the sheet base. Because it zips on every side, it makes it SO much easier to make the bed. Now, I am able to actually enjoy having a made bed because it is so easy to make!
Get your own Beddy’s here. If you use my link, it has a built in savings of 15%.
Below the Bed
Hidden from sight, we keep a 200 gallon water tank below our bed. For our water tank, there were limited dimensions to choose from, which means that the tank is quite tall. We love having this much water aboard, but it did mean that our bed can be tricky to get in and out of. For context, the distance from the floor to the top of our mattress is 36″ off the ground, but an average bed is usually about 25″ off the ground.
However, a plus side to the geometry of the water tank left about a foot of space between the water tank and where the hallway would go. This left just enough room for our “closet”! With out lifestyle in the bus, we are rarely dressing up in clothes that can’t be wrinkled. More often than not, we find ourselves reaching for hiking clothes to go and experience the beauty of the outdoors. Thinking of this, and the space we had available to us on the front of the water tank, we decided to make our closet be comprised of these storage cubes.
Wall Decorations
Since most of our wall space is in our bedroom, we decided to put our most sentimental decorations here! At our headboard we have a custom cursive metal piece that Josh’s brother made us to use as a wedding decoration. Since it says “Adventure Awaits” we knew it had to make the cut. Plus, it was right above our head table!
On the opposite wall, we pondered what to include here. We ended up deciding on the cork board that I (Emily) gifted Josh while we were dating. I had painted a map of the United States and have since been taping up photos of each state that we have an adventure in. That’s key for us, driving through doesn’t count. That also explains why we just have Florida hanging out with nothing in between. In the couple of years that we have been in the bus, the photos have started to curl, so I am pondering other wall hanging ideas for this wall. If you have any ideas, please drop them in the comments below!
The Bedroom Shelf
In your average bedroom (or hotel room for that matter), you have a bedside table to put all your jewelry, and reading glasses for when you’re done unwinding for the day. However, we didn’t have the space to have a specific bedside table. So we get all the same functionality of a bedside table from our shelf above the bed!
In addition to being where Juniper likes to sleep, we keep a lot of our travel books on this shelf. Some of our favorites are listed below.
The Runners Up
These books are great for inspiration, but because they’re trying to address so much, we found we use them as a guide line. We might take a few ideas from them every once in a while, but a lot of the content is very city focused, whereas our travels tend to take us to more national parks and backroads.
Our Favorites
Our favorite books are naturally travel books…BUT, these help guide us to fantastic adventures and plan lots of fun trips. This is especially true because we love to visit national parks, but also do some of the roads less traveled when we are just crusing in the jeep.
The National Parks guide is especially useful when we are going to parks that we haven’t been to before. For instance, Death Valley is one of the largest National Parks in the lower 48 and has limited services. Before we even got into the park, we were able to know where we could expect to find gas stations and have a park map because we brought this book!
The Guide to Scenic Highways & Byways is a family favorite of ours. I grew up taking road trips out of my mom’s copy of this book. When Josh and I would go on a trip, I would always steal her copy to borrow “just in case”. This book is grouped by region and then by state, highlighting highways that are particularly scenic. It’ll give you how long it’ll take to drive them, when the best time of the year is to drive them if there’s fall foliage, and a brief history of landmarks along the way. This is our favorite travel companion, if we had to choose just one.
Homey Touches
You don’t want to just fall into your bed at the end of the day and not be relaxed. That’s why the last few items that made our bedroom list are all related to unwinding.
Unwind
If we have a long day hiking, we will offer each other massages. We love this vibrating massage gun because it stays charged for a long time and has lots of different attachments for different muscle groups.
Relax
We have a few fake plants. I said it, it’s true. Some of the luscious green is plastic. But it looks so realistic and helps to give our bedroom a soothing mood to unwind at the end of the day.
Recharge
Our overhead lights can sometimes be a bit harsh when we are unwinding for bed, so I love these wall mounted lamps. They charge via USB, but are magnetically attached, so even kids could use them as a flashlight if they need a night light in the middle of the night.
If you’re interested in viewing more of our bus, be sure to check out our Gallery!
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