Tiny houses are one of the most important trends in the building industry right now. They have a strong appeal to those who seek a lifestyle that can be either simpler, or more nomadic and free. Are tiny homes really the best option for those kinds of people, though?
Many prospective tiny home owners could easily find themselves wondering, why they don’t just go for a traditional recreational vehicle, or RV? Don’t they provide the same basic experience? What, really, is the difference between a tiny home and an RV?
What is the Difference Between a Tiny House and an RV?
The difference between a tiny home and an RV is that tiny homes are usually meant to serve as a primary residence for their owners, whereas RVs are meant to be used as temporary, much more mobile housing for road trips and vacationing.
There are a lot of components to this, so we’re going to break it down a bit. There’s a little bit of overlap between these two categories of living space, but that means that there’s something for everyone to be found here.
Some tiny homes are constructed according to recreational vehicle standards, which makes them much easier to move and park legally. Others, however, are much more highly customized or focused on cost savings.
RVs are much more highly standardized than tiny homes, and each one is always, first and foremost, a vehicle. They are designed, built, and operated with frequent travel at highway speeds in mind. Almost no tiny homes are built with that factor as their first consideration, but some are built to handle it when necessary.
We’ll take a look now at the similarities between tiny houses and RVs, as well as the factors that distinguish them from each other. After that, we’ll discuss what differences in lifestyle will affect whether you’re more likely to prefer living in a tiny house or an RV.
How are Tiny Houses and RVs similar?
First of all, the factor that tiny houses and RVs have most in common with each other is their size. Their similar size also means that their internal layouts and their actual contents tend to be more or less the same. There are plenty of variations, but they tend to conform to the same general constraints.
The vast majority of tiny houses are constructed so that they are legal to transport on the road if they’re built on top of a trailer, and that’s often the case even if their ultimate destination is to be later set onto a permanent foundation.
RVs being vehicles, they also obviously need to conform to standard width and height requirements so that they are legal to take on the road without requiring oversize load permits.
The Legal Dimensions
Most recreational vehicles tend to be about 9 to 9 1/2 feet wide and about 10 feet tall. Your typical road-legal tiny home will also be 8 feet 4 inches wide or less, but they can be somewhat taller. Many tiny homes have a roof height of up to 13 feet 4 inches above the ground, including the trailer it sits on. This is about the same width and height as a typical semi trailer.
These standard dimensions allow both recreational vehicles and tiny homes to fit comfortably and safely in a typical road lane from side to side, and to fit beneath almost all major highway bridges vertically.
The reason tiny homes tend to be taller than RVs is because they have a different kind of roof, but we’ll get into that later.
How They’re Differently Sized… in the Same Way!
Another way that both tiny homes and RVs are sort of paradoxically similar to each other is that they each have considerable variation in length within their separate categories, despite their more or less standardized widths and heights.
Tiny home trailers come in many different length categories, meaning that the structure built on top of them can also be longer or shorter depending on the owner’s preference. They may be as compact and less than 20 feet long, or as extensive as 40 feet. RVs follow the same patterns.
These different length possibilities make it easy for the builders of both tiny homes and RVs to offer different internal configurations and additional amenities for the longer versions. Usually this means, at the minimum, adding an extra sleeping space, but there can be more to it than that.
In spite of the different variations in length, and therefore internal square footage, both tiny homes and RVs represent a very constrained living space compared to your typical house or apartment.
Same Maximum Size, Same Minimal Stuff Inside
Anything larger than 400 ft.² of internal floor space cannot be considered a tiny home. Those larger structures might qualify as accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, which you can learn more about here, but they would not be a tiny home. Keep in mind that this square footage does not include any sleeping loft space.
Likewise, the absolute legal maximum square footage for a recreational vehicle, as explained by the RVIA, is also 400 ft.²
That obviously means living in one of these spaces would require you to make do with a lot less, materially, than in an ordinary house in an ordinary neighborhood.
For both tiny houses and RVs, the top priorities for what to fill your living space with are a place to sleep, a place to cook your food, and bathroom facilities.
As such, that’s usually all that you’re going to find inside either type of structure. Both tiny homes and RVs feature limited kitchens that include a basic sink, and sometimes a built-in stove top, or at least a space to plug-in an electric cooking appliance. There may also be room for a small refrigerator and freezer, but there will definitely be some limited amount of shelving or cabinetry for storage.
Similarly, both tiny homes and RVs will have a very basic bathroom with a toilet, a shower, and a sink. In the smallest models, the bathroom can be very cleverly arranged so all three features share basically the same space. Some designs also feature composting toilets to cut down on the plumbing that’s necessary for the bathroom to operate.
And finally, the tiny homes and RVs have a tendency to get quite clever with the way they use the sleeping space.
While the smaller tiny homes tend to put the bed in a loft space above the kitchen and bathroom, longer models sometimes have an actual bedroom at the back. Many RVs are arranged in the same way. Some RV models also do include a small loft bed above the cabin.
Where they do have an actual bedroom, the bed usually sits on top of a clever storage system where it either lifts up to reveal a large space, or you can pull drawers out from underneath it.
With all of this in mind, it’s clear that tiny homes and RVs do have many factors and features in common, so… what’s the difference?
How are Tiny Houses and RVs Different?
The most obvious difference between a tiny home and an RV is easy to see from the outside. They look completely different. An RV looks like a streamlined vehicle, and a tiny home looks like, well, a home.
In other words, the fundamental difference is in their architecture. RVs are designed and built with lightweight materials and an aerodynamic design. This allows them to travel faster, more safely, and with greater fuel efficiency than tiny homes.
Tiny homes are designed, first and foremost, to reflect the specific architectural taste of their owner. They are meant to look like ordinary houses, just on a much smaller scale. They are comparable to bungalows on wheels.
The reason this difference is so important goes back to what we mentioned at the very beginning of this article. Although tiny homes are designed so that they can be moved, they’re not meant to be moved all the time.
A recreational vehicle, by contrast, is designed specifically with road trips in mind, so that its owners can travel from place to place constantly.
Both living spaces are designed to serve people with particular lifestyles, but there’s a little bit of a difference between the lifestyles each one represents.
Why would You Live in a Tiny House over an RV?
The key reason for living in a tiny house rather than in an RV is a desire to enjoy an aesthetically pleasing and more traditional living space.
Tiny homeowners come in all shapes and sizes and worldviews, but what they usually tend to have in common is the idea of doing more with less. Because a tiny home provides less living space, and uses less materials than a typical tract home or city apartment, it’s a way to cut back on materialism and consumerism.
Many tiny homeowners, especially those who first pioneered the movement, also put a lot of emphasis on building their home with their own hands. One of the main rationales for this was to save an enormous amount of money on their living space, Since they didn’t have to incur labor costs other than their own, and could often rely on found or recycled materials of good quality.
Why Would You Live in an RV over a Tiny House?
RV owners also come from all walks of life, and have many different philosophies about living, but your typical RV owner doesn’t usually use their RV as their primary living space. For them, an RV is just a comfortable way to travel between many places.
Only an RV means you don’t have to move all your stuff from your home to a variety of hotels or motels as you travel. You just have to move it from your home to your RV once per trip. It’s an easy way to bring food, clothing, family members, fishing gear, and other accessories along for the ride.
RVs are meant for vacationing without all the stress of airports, taxis, etc. And RV owners usually come back to the same home they left.
Considering the fact that many tiny homes are built to RV standards, it is possible to enjoy both lifestyles at once. But it’s very important to evaluate whether it matters to you that much to have the architecture of a tiny house while living an RV lifestyle.
Towing a tiny home behind a truck will cost a lot more in gasoline then driving an RV, because of the much greater weight and much lower aerodynamics.
On the flipside, tiny homes do tend to have much better insulation than RVs do, which makes them in some cases better suited for winter travel than a typical RV.
Deciding What Works Best for You
If you’re trying to work out whether it’ll be better for you to embark on the tiny home lifestyle or the RV lifestyle, consider carefully how much you’re willing to give up.
At the end of the day, though, there are great benefits to both types of living space!