Is a shower worth it in a camper van? Four bathroom layouts with exact dimensions

The shower question starts more arguments than any other layout decision, and both camps argue feelings. Let's argue square metres and kilograms instead — because a bathroom isn't a yes/no question, it's a space tax, and the tax rate depends on your van.

The space tax, measured

A minimal shower cubicle is 70 × 80 cm — smaller feels like showering in a locker. Add wall thickness and door swing and you're realistically claiming ~0.75 m² of floor, full height, that can be nothing else (a wet room kills its own storage: everything in it must survive spray). In a Ducato L3 (~3.71 m cargo floor) that's about 20% of the floor that isn't bed. In an L2 (~3.12 m), after a bed there is roughly 1.7 m of living length left — a cubicle takes nearly half of it. That's the honest reason “shower in a small van” builds get regretted: the tax rate is ~40% of living space in a short van and ~20% in a long one.

The weight tax nobody budgets

Showers drink water. A realistic shower uses 8–15 L; two people showering daily need a 100 L+ fresh tank plus a grey tank — that's 100+ kg of water, a pump, a water heater (5–15 kg plus power or gas), and the cubicle itself (~25–40 kg). Call it 150–180 kg of payload for the full daily-shower system — check what that does to your margin in our payload guide before you commit.

Four layouts, honestly ranked

1. No bathroom (portable toilet in a drawer)

The pro move for weekenders: a cassette or composting toilet slides under the bed or a bench seat; showers happen at campsites, gyms and swim halls. Costs ~0 m² and ~5–15 kg. The percentage of builders who report regretting not having a shower is far smaller than the percentage who regret the space their shower ate — the forums are remarkably consistent on this.

2. Toilet cabinet, no shower

A 60 × 60 cm cabinet for a fixed toilet with privacy. ~0.4 m², keeps dignity, skips the water system entirely. The best value-per-square-metre of the four.

3. The hidden/convertible shower

A shower tray under a removable floor panel, a curtain rail or fold-out walls, water heated on demand. Costs ~0.5 m² part-time and most of the weight tax. Clever when executed well; the failure mode is damp — every soft thing near it must tolerate splash, and ventilation stops being optional.

4. The full wet room

70 × 80 cm (or grander) fixed cubicle: toilet, shower, sink. The right answer for full-timers in L3/L4 vans who genuinely shower aboard — and the wrong answer squeezed into an L2, where it converts a home into a corridor. If this is you, put it against a wall between the axles: 100 kg of water sloshing behind the rear axle is exactly what your axle-load numbers don't want.

Decide with your floor, not your feelings

The pattern in a sentence: daily-shower full-timers in long vans build wet rooms and are happy; everyone else is happier taxing the space less. The way to know which you are: lay your van out twice — with and without the cubicle — and stand in what remains. In VanPlot that's ten minutes with real dimensions, the water tanks weighed, and the axle split updating live. Free, in your browser.