The bed is one of the most important functional design aspects of your campervan. You will spend more time in your bed than any other part of the van. Why do I say this? The number one reason that people choose vanlife is freedom to travel and get outside. Whether it is hiking, biking, surfing, laying on beaches, touring around cities, or just reading a good book in the forest, vanlife allows you to get to the places where you can do all these things. As a result, during the day you will not spend much time in the van; you will be doing these activities that you built the van to do. But we all need sleep, roughly 7-9 hours of it every night, and you want your bed to be comfortable so you can recharge for the next day. 

Furthermore, the bed takes up a lot of space; in our 136” wheelbase ProMaster, our bed takes up half of the living space. With two people and a dog, things can get a little tight. Fortunately, there are clever ways to reduce the living space footprint of the bed. The overall size of our bed can be easily cut in half, so that it only takes up ¼ of the total living area when we are not using it. This additional space allowed us to design a dining area in our van where we can comfortably sit across from each other to eat our meals. As an added benefit of the design we chose, it can easily be converted in less than a minute without having to remake the bed every time. To learn more about this design read on. 

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Overview

The bed we designed for our Promaster Campervan uses a “queen short” foam mattress, and we sleep with our heads on the passenger side of the van and our feet on the driver side of the van. It is the same width as a queen bed, but is five inches shorter in length (75” vs. 80”). If you are taller than 6 feet, this bed design may not be the best option for you, and you might want to consider bed designs where the occupants lie along the length of the van rather than along the width of the van. The advantage of sleeping crosswise is that it gives you more space in the rest of the van. 

One of the reasons we chose the ProMaster (over the Transit or Sprinter) is that it has a max cargo width of 75.6 inches (6 feet, 3.6 inches) at the height of the window cutout panels (roughly waist height), which is two inches wider than the Transit and four inches wider than the Sprinter. A queen short mattress is 75” long by 60” wide; so, being able to orient the mattress crosswise allows us to gain 15” of length in the front section of the van. When you are dealing with small spaces, 15” is a pretty huge improvement. For perspective, our sink cabinet is 22.5” wide.

Our bed is designed to be collapsible; the bed can be pushed inward until the width is one half of the original width. See the short video below where we demonstrate the conversion. When the bed is collapsed, there is a dining area underneath with two bench seats and a movable table. To collapse the bed, there are two separate pieces that make up the bed slats and side walls. These slats slide into each other when the bed is collapsed. When the bed is fully extended, the slats are separated. In order to make the bed collapsible, we had to cut the foam mattress in half down the center. When we collapse the bed, the front half of the mattress is folded over on top of the rear half of the mattress.

Also, if you have any additional questions you can contact us, and we will answer as quickly as we can.

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🔊 We get more questions about our bed than any other part of our van. So we wanted to share this video demoing our bed to dining conversion. It takes us less than a minute to convert either way. Any questions?

A post shared by Dolly (Hillary & Andrew) (@dolly.the.rambler) on Apr 11, 2019 at 8:19am PDT

Bed Support

In a lot of van bed designs, there are support legs that come down to the floor, similar to legs on a normal bed. However, the walls of a cargo van are very strong, and can be used to accomplish the role of bed legs. This allows you to free up more space in the area underneath the bed. In our van design, this allowed us to store four bicycles crosswise underneath the bed on a slide-out bike tray, which would not have been possible with supports going to the floor.

Materials

Materials required for construction of the bed support are shown below. Most of the materials used in construction of the bed frame were purchased from McMaster-Carr, with the exception of the 1” thick trim boards and most hardware, which were all purchased from a home improvement store.

Line		Product	Ordered	Price	Total
1	3310T62	Strut Channel, Slotted Hole, White Powder-Coated Steel, 5 Feet Long	2 each	22.80 each	45.60
2	3310T62	Strut Channel, Slotted Hole, White Powder-Coated Steel, 6 Feet Long	1 each	25.92 each	25.92
3	33125T168	Strut Channel Connector, Tee, Powder-Coated, Steel, 5-3/8″ Height, White	2 each	12.14 each	24.28
4	3259T34	Strut Channel Nuts, Zinc-Plated Steel,, M8 Thread Size, packs of 5	2 packs	4.85 per pack	9.70
5	211685	5/4 x 3 x 10 Primed SPF S1S2E Trim Board	1 each	14.71 each	14.71
6	136867	Hillman 8mm x 50mm Stainless Steel Coarse Thread Hex Bolt (5-Count)	1 pack	4.46 per pack	4.46
7	136845	Hillman 8mm x 20mm Stainless Steel Coarse Thread Hex Bolt (5-Count)	2 packs	2.98 per pack	5.96
8	59406	Hillman 5 Count 8mm Metric Split Lock Washer	3 packs	2.20 per pack	6.60
9	44340	Hillman 5-Count 8-mm Zinc Plated Metric Flat Washer	3 packs	2.15 per pack	6.45

Steps

1. Cut primed pine board (line 5) to fit between the rear vertical pillar and the middle vertical pillar of the van on each side (2 pieces total). In our ProMaster, this came out to be 54 ⅝ in. 
2. Align primed pine boards in van with the top edge of the board flush with the M8 threaded holes. 
   1. Use a pencil to mark the center point of each threaded hole on the primed board. 
   2. Drill clearance holes (> 8 mm) 2 in. down from this mark. These holes should be large enough that the M8 bolts will pass through easily.
3. Paint the primed boards. 1-2 coats should be sufficient. 
4. Use the hole pattern from the boards to mark hole locations on the side walls of the 5 ft. unistrut pieces (line 1). The hole pattern on one side should be a mirror image of the hole pattern on the other side.
   1. The unistrut and boards should be aligned at the rear of the van, and the unistrut will extend beyond the board on the other end by 5 ⅜ in. 
   2. Drill clearance holes (> 8 mm) at ½ the height of the channel (channel height is 1 ⅝ in., so clearance hole should be drilled at a height of 13/16 in.). These holes should be large enough that the M8 bolts will pass through easily. 
   3. To be able to screw the hex bolts into the wall with a ratchet driver, I had to use a hole saw to drill a hole large enough to fit the ratchet bit on the opposite side of the unistrut channel. See photo.
   4. Optional: prime and paint the drilled holes if you are concerned about rust. 
5. Use the 50mm M8 bolts (line 6), lock washers (line 8), and flat washers (line 9) to screw the boards and unistrut channels into the existing M8 threaded holes in the van wall where there had originally been heavy-duty cargo D-rings installed. They are located at the midspan and rear of the van. There are 4 total, 2 on each side. 

6. The 6′ piece (line 2) spans between them at the middle of the bed. This piece must be cut to fit. 
   1. Measure between the two 5’ unistrut pieces (line 1) to get the total length. In the ProMaster this measurement is 68 ¼ in.
   2. Cut the unistrut to the length found in the previous step.
   3. Optional: sand the cut edge, prime and paint.
7. The piece you just cut attaches to the 5’ pieces with two heavy-duty Tee connectors (line 3), one on each side. 
   1. Use ten 20mm M8 bolts (line 7) with lock washers (line 8) and flat washers (line 9) screwed into strut channel nuts (line 4).
   2. Do not fully tighten the bolts. This crossbar should be left loose until the bed frame has been built.

Bed Frame

Materials

Materials required for construction of the bed frame are shown below. We constructed the bed frame in two halves which rest on top of the bed supports. The back section of the frame is attached to the unistrut with wood screws and washers. The frame is constructed of 1” x 3” nominal (0.75” x 2.5” actual) premium pine boards for the slats and side supports, 1” x 4” nominal (0.75” x 3.5” actual) premium pine boards for the faces, and a thin 1/16” thick aluminum support to keep the moving section of slats from falling down when sliding back and forth. Premium pine boards are more expensive than the non-premium boards, but are much straighter, which is very important for a sliding bed. The wood is finished with polyurethane on the slats and paint on the faces. In addition, we applied drawer lubricant at all sliding interfaces, which helps to keep it sliding smoothly. We also purchased a bag of plastic tile spacers from Lowe’s. We used these to keep a consistent gap between adjacent bed slats during construction of the two halves of the bed. You don’t want the slats right next to each other or it will be difficult to make them slide.

Line		Product	Ordered	Price	Total
1	83708	(Common: 1-in x 3-in x 6-ft; Actual: 0.75-in x 2.5-in x 6-ft) Pine Board	16 each	7.12 each	113.92
2	83711	(Common: 1-in x 4-in x 6-ft; Actual: 0.75-in x 3.5-in x 6-ft) Pine Board	2 each	9.72 each	19.44
3	11325	Steelworks 0.0625-ft x 1.5-in Aluminum Metal Flat Bar	1 each	13.98 each	13.98
4	35051	Hillman #8 x 1/2-in Silver Zinc-Plated Flat Interior Wood Screws (100-Count)	1 pack	5.98 per pack	5.98
5	35054	Hillman #8 x 1-1/4-in Silver Zinc-Plated Flat Interior Wood Screws (100-Count)	1 pack	5.98 per pack	5.98
6	35058	Hillman #8 x 2-1/2-in Silver Zinc-Plated Flat Interior Wood Screws (50-Count)	1 pack	5.98 per pack	5.98
7	6205001	Gorilla Wood Glue, 18 ounce Bottle	1 each	4.57 each	4.57
8	E914	Elmer’s E914 Carpenter’s Color Change Wood Filler, 16-Ounce, Natural	1 each	12.58 each	12.58
9	622224444	Minwax Polycrylic 32-fl oz Matte Water-based Polyurethane	1 each	17.97 each	17.97
10	6405-12604	ProClassic Alkyd Interior Enamel Semi-Gloss Extra White	1 gallon	77.99 gallon	77.99
11	6510-29696	Extreme Block Interior/Exterior Stain Blocking Alkyd Primer	1 gallon	42.29 gallon	42.29
12	B750-1203	Slideez Lubricant	1 each	8.59 each	8.59
13	837777	TAVY 100-Pac 1-in W x 1-in L 1/16-in Green Plastic Tile Spacer	1 pack	5.18 per pack	5.18
14	796760	Top Choice SkyPly 3/4-in HPVA Maple Plywood, Application as 4 X 8	1 each	55.98 each	55.98

Okay, you might be looking at the materials list and balking at the cost of paint. We ordered the paint and primer in gallon sizes because it is much cheaper than buying it in the quart size. We used this paint for every painted surface of our van. It is designed for trim and doors, so it is very scratch resistant. We also went with semi-gloss over satin because it is easy to wipe clean. You do not need to order in this quantity unless you are planning to use this paint in other aspects of the van build. One gallon of paint and primer will go a long way in a van. 

Also, you will probably use lots of plywood in your van. The piece that we bought for the bed made multiple other pieces in our van build. Try to figure out the optimum cuts for each piece of plywood that you buy to create as little waste as possible. This will help you save money. You will still most likely end up with a large amount of scraps by the end of it all. Giving it away on Craigslist is a fast method to rid yourself of all the extra wood and plywood. Or you might be able to find a way to donate it all.

Cut List

Below is the list of cuts that we made for this project. These should work for a Ram ProMaster with 136” wheelbase, but you should double-check all measurements against the actual van measurements. If you are adapting this to a different van, these measurements will not be valid.

Part #	Part Description	Material	Quantity	Length (in.)
1	Side Supports	Line 1	2	71 ¼
2	Side Faces	Line 2	2	71 ¼
3	Aluminum Support	Line 3	1	71 ¼
4	Slats	Line 1	28	30

For a queen size bed the width of the mattress is 60″. However, we designed the bed frame with an overall width of 59”. Since we were cutting the mattress in half, we wanted it to fit snugly in the bed frame so that we would not notice the divide between the two halves of the mattress. When the bed is out, the slats have a little bit of overlap in the middle so that they all rest on the center support. We cut each 6′ board into two pieces, each with a length of 30″. This gives 1″ of overlap in the center of the bed, where all of the slats are resting on the center support unistrut.

Steps

1. Side supports (Part #1), side faces (Part #2), and aluminum support (Part #3):
   1. Measure the distance between the painted pine boards installed on both sides of the van in the previous section (step 5). In our van, this measurement was 71 ¼ in.
   2. Cut two 1-in. x 3-in. Boards (line 1), two 1-in. x 4-in. boards (line 2), and the aluminum flat bar (line 3) to the length measured in step 1a. The 1×3’s will be the side supports, the 1×4’s will be the faces, and the aluminum support will keep the slats from falling down while opening and closing the bed.
   3. Sand all rough edges and surfaces, especially on the cut piece of aluminum.
2. Slats (Part #4):
   1. From the 14 remaining 1-in. x 3-in. boards, cut each piece into two 30-in. pieces, for a total of 28 bed slats. 
   2. Sand all rough edges and surfaces
3. Attach side support to side face (only for one side; we will do the other side later in the build):
   1. Use the diagram below as a guide. Tip: use 2-3 scrap pieces of 1×3 boards placed underneath the side support to ensure a consistent ¾ in. gap along the entire length. 
   2. Apply wood glue (line 7) to the mating surfaces. 
   3. Clamp the side support to the side face using 2-3 wood clamps. Make sure the scrap pieces that you are using to ensure a consistent ¾ in. gap are appropriately positioned during the clamping process. Wipe up any excess wood glue with a damp rag. 
   4. With a 5/32-in. drill bit, drill five pilot holes evenly spaced along the length of the side face, drilling into the side support. Drill to a length of 2 ½ in. See diagram for placement. 
   5. Find a drill bit that is roughly the same diameter as the head of the wood screws (line 6). Drill over the same five pilot holes in step d. to a length of ¼ in. This will allow you to countersink the wood screws so that you can put wood filler (line 8) over them before painting.
   6. Screw the 2 ½ in. #8 screws (line 6) into the pilot holes until the head of the screw is countersunk below the wood surface. Apply wood filler (line 8) over the screw head. Once the wood filler has dried, sand surface with fine grit sandpaper until it is smooth (later this surface will be painted).

4. Place the side support + face from Step 3 and the other side support (Part #1) on the unistrut bars roughly 30 in. apart. The assembly of the slats to the side supports is done with the bed frame upside down. The side support + face from Step 3 should be placed upside down at the edge of the unistrut as shown in the photo below.
5. Place the slats (Part #4) across the two side supports with two tile spacers between each slat (see photo). Also, make sure tile spacers are placed between the end slats and the pine boards installed adjacent to the unistrut in Step 5 of the bed support construction. Note that the last slat to be installed will not fit. It will be too wide by roughly 9/16 in. You will need to cross-cut this last slat to fit. Measure the width of the gap that it must fit into and subtract the thickness of two tile spacers from this measurement (⅛ in.). The easiest method for making this cross-cut is with a table saw, but if you do not have a table saw it can also be done (carefully!) with a circular saw or jig saw.

6. In this step, you will wood glue and screw every other slat onto the side support + face that was assembled in Step 3. Tip: use a pencil to mark every other slat so that you don’t accidentally glue and screw the wrong slat to the wrong side. In a ProMaster, there should be a total of 14 slats that will be glued and screwed on this side of the bed. For other vans, that number might be different.
   1. In each of the marked slats, drill two 5/32-in. pilot holes to a depth of 1-¼ in. These pilot holes should go from the slats into the side support beneath it. Tip: use electrical tape wrapped around the drill bit as a marker to know how deep to drill.
   2. Find a drill bit that is roughly the same diameter as the head of the wood screws (line 5). Drill over the pilot holes in step a. to a length of ⅛ in. This will allow you to install the screws flush to the surface of the wood. This is important to aid in sliding so that the screws will not catch on any surfaces.
   3. For each slat (one slat at a time since you do not want the wood glue to dry prematurely): 
      1. Apply wood glue to all the mating surfaces between slat and side support + face. 
      2. Screw two #8 x 1 ¼ screws (line 5) into the pilot holes drilled in step 6a-b. 
      3. wipe up any excess wood glue with a damp rag.

7. Repeat step 3 for the other side support and side face.
8. Now repeat step 4, except that since both side faces are installed, you will not be able to place the side faces over the edges of the unistrut. Instead, stack several pieces of scrap wood on a few locations of the unistrut to keep the pieces from falling inward.
9. Repeat steps 5 and 6 to attach the remaining slats to the other side support + face. Note that you will not need to cross-cut a slat as instructed in step 5. 
10. Now is a good time to check the operation of the sliding of the slats. Take the bed frame and flip it over on the unistrut (see photos). slide the two halves apart from each other to insure that they move freely.

11. Sand the top edges of all of the slats as shown in the photos. This will help the pieces slide into each other more easily. 

12. The aluminum support is used to keep the slats from falling inward when the bed slides in and out. To install:
    1. With the bed frame in the fully closed position and the tile spacers still in, place the aluminum support adjacent to the rear side support (the side support that will be at the back of the van), as shown in the photos. 
    2. Note that the aluminum support will be attached to the moving portion of the bed frame, not the fixed rear part of the bed frame.
    3. Mark each location on the aluminum where the aluminum will be attached to the slats. Again, make sure these locations are coinciding with the moving portion of the bed frame.
    4. At each of the marked locations on the aluminum support, drill a 5/32-in. pilot hole to a depth of ½ in. through the aluminum and the slats. Tip: use electrical tape wrapped around the drill bit as a marker to know how deep to drill.
    5. Find a drill bit that is roughly the same diameter as the head of the wood screws (line 4). Drill over the pilot holes in step d. until you can flush mount the screws into the aluminum. This is important to aid in sliding so that the screws will not catch on any surfaces.
    6. Screw the ½ in. #8 screws (line 4) into the pilot holes until the head of the screw is flush to the aluminum.

13. Place the bed frame back into the van in the fully collapsed position, as shown in the first photo below. Align the back end of the bed frame with the back end of the unistrut at the back of the van. The crosswise piece of unistrut should still be loose, and now is when you will position it and finish tightening all ten of the M8 bolts. Because you will be making a divider wall between the garage and living area, the edge of the crosswise unistrut that is visible in the photo should be recessed back from the side face by ¾ in. This way when the plywood divider wall is installed it will end up being flush with the bed face when the bed is closed. See second photo below from the finished product to demonstrate what this will look like. Tighten all ten M8 bolts on the tee connectors. 

14. In order to separate the garage from the living space of the van, We installed a ¾” thick piece of maple plywood (cut to fit) with wood glue and pocket screws; this was installed in front of the spanwise piece of unistrut.
    1. Make templates using foam board, cardboard, or your template making material of choice. See our photo of one of the templates we made.
    2. Trace templates onto maple plywood. Make sure you double check some key dimensions so you don’t cut this piece wrong. 
    3. Cut the plywood to fit. Check that it fits properly in the van.
    4. Prime (one coat) and paint (2-3 coats). Allow to dry.

15. Install divider wall from step 14:
    1. We installed the divider wall using a Kreg pocket jig and pocket screws. Make sure to follow the instructions that came with your Kreg jig to set the collar depth and the placement of the jig. If you do not have these instructions, they are also available here.
    2. We purposefully did not include pocket screws in the material list. This is because the length you want to buy will depend on the thickness of the material that you are screwing into. We drilled pocket screws from the divider wall into the floor of our van, into the wheel well boxes, and into the side panels. Each of these items has a different thickness, so requires a different length of pocket screw. Choosing the appropriate length for your pocket screws is also covered in the instructions linked in 15a. 
    3. Drill your pocket holes. We did roughly 6-8 in. between each pocket hole. Try to drill into as many features as you can so that it is solidly installed. Tip: choose pocket hole locations where they can be hidden. In our van we have bench seats in front of the divider wall with storage inside. In the photo below you can see that we have positioned pocket holes inside of the bench seats. We also put a few pocket holes on the other side of the plywood (not shown in photo), which is rarely seen.
    4. Apply wood glue to all wood-on-wood mating surfaces and place the divider wall into its desired location. Screw all pocket screws into pocket holes to secure the divider wall. Wipe up any excess wood glue with a wet rag.

Mattress

Here is the specific foam mattress we are using: Zinus Deluxe Memory Foam 8 Inch Mattress, Short Queen. It is quite comfy! As mentioned earlier, we cut the mattress in half lengthwise so that the two halves can stack on top of each other when the bed is put away. To cut the mattress in half we used an electric knife.

We covered each half of the mattress with its own queen size fitted sheet. Another option would be to have custom sized mattress covers made by a seamstress. We chose this option because it was cheaper and quicker. 

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