Over the past decade, the tiny house movement has taken the world by storm.
Tiny homes have captured the imagination of a generation, providing an affordable option for everyone to experience beautiful and intentional living.
For those of you who love the thought of tiny living, but don’t see yourselves as the kind of handy folk to DIY your own home, tiny house kits offer an affordable and super straightforward way to get started.
The following kits we picked are seriously amazing, and we know our time homes. I, for one, have built 2 of them in the past, and let me tell you, they are a joy to put together. There’s no cutting, no headache, just assembly, and voila!
It really can be that easy with a well-made kit.
Some of the following tiny house kits even take less than 2 days to assemble. Imagine that, your tiny house dreams could become a reality in less than 2 days.
For your pleasure, we proudly bring to you the best tiny house kits available on the market, with a focus on ease of assembly, and customizability of your finished space.
For those who want a quick overview, below is our comparison table:
- Our #1 Rated Tiny House Kit: Jamaica Cottages New Yorker B (Best Overall Option)
- Our #2 Rated Tiny House Kit: Jamaica Cottages Florida Room
- Our #3 Rated Tiny House Kit: Jamaica Cottage Gable
Our #1 Rated Tiny House Kit: Jamaica Cottages New Yorker B (Best Overall Option)
- Offers substantial square footage for a low price
- Design is easy to customize with added windows or styling touches
- The basic kit includes insulation and door
- Ceiling high enough to support a crawl in sleeping loft
- 34-hour assembly time with 2 people
The first kit on our list, and our overall #1 pick, is the Jamaica Cottages New Yorker B configuration. It’s a post and beam style design that provides you fully 112 square feet while still costing under $5k.
From the outside, it looks like a small barn, with a metal gable roof and natural wood exterior. Once you step through the insulated steel door you really start to see its rustic charm.
Post and beam supports are left exposed on the walls to give it a more traditional look. This also gives you some great places to hang things, attach shelves, or use as a stud for wiring.
The ceiling is comfortably high, with a 10’6” peak, and the floor offers a great subfloor for something like vinyl or plank flooring.
Putting it together takes just 34 hours, just about the fastest on our list. This despite the New Yorker being the largest of the tiny house kits we reviewed here.
We chose the New Yorker as our number one because of how very customizable it is. It lacks a porch area, windows, or other basic amenities, giving you a blank slate to add your own touches to it.
You can put out a comfortable patio area around it, add beautiful siding, custom weathervanes, and whatever type of interior styling you like. It gives you the most usable space at the best value per square foot of any tiny house kit we’ve found.
Here’s a really cool example of a modified Vermont style cottage, the design that the New Yorker is an improvement over:
Specifications:
- Dimensions: 10’6” H x 9’2” W x 9’2” D
- Total Interior Area: 64 sq. ft.
- Estimated Weight: 4,000 lbs
- Estimated Assembly Time: Two People: 34 hrs
Pros
- Comes with foil-backed rigid foam insulation
- By far fastest assembly time
- Plenty of customization options
Cons
- Simplistic design is the most underwhelming on our list
Our #2 Rated Tiny House Kit: Jamaica Cottages Florida Room
The Florida Room from Jamaica Cottages takes a different path than many other tiny house kits. They recognize that space definitely isn’t everything, and tried to build the most open and beautiful small space they could.
The Florida Room has fully nine windows plus a centrally located door. It offers panoramic views of your surroundings and lets in all the natural light possible.
The interior gives you 80 feet of usable space, about enough for one to two dedicated tiny enthusiasts. The windows are all double-pane insulated, making the Florida Room much more usable in colder climates than you’d first expect.
The slightly rectangular shape of the kit works really well for placing a bed across one wall and building out your living area in the center space. You can fit in a lot more than you would expect, especially given the 10’6” high ceilings for additional storage space.
For those looking for a more open and bright tiny experience, the Jamaica Cottages Florida Room is a really nice tiny house kit.
Specifications:
- Dimensions: 10’6” H x 11’8” W x 9’8” D
- Usable Square Footage: 80 square foot
- Number of Windows: Nine
- Estimated Assembly Time (Two People): 45 hours
Pros
- Offers some of the best natural lighting possible for a tiny house
- The exterior is really charming right out of the box
- Metal roof gives you a long working life
Cons
- All those windows add complexity to the build
Our #3 Rated Tiny House Kit: Jamaica Cottage Gable
- Basic rectangular shape gives you lots of options in building out the interior
- The pair of windows allow natural lighting to get in without letting the temps change much
- Board and batten siding is attractive, reducing your additional costs for exterior cosmetic changes
- 47-hour assembly time with 2 people
The Jamaica Cottage Gable is a traditional post and beam style structure. It was built to survive anything a New England winter could throw at it with reinforced supports and generous roof overhangs to protect against the snow.
The first thing we noticed when looking at it was how nicely the design comes together. The basic package includes pine board and batten siding plus an Evergreen metal roof. It’s the picture-perfect example of a little northern cabin.
It comes with a pair of 2’x2’ windows and an insulated door. That’s not a bad place to start with, plus there are tons of ways you can customize the appearance inside and out.
The flooring is plenty sturdy and ready to take any kind of vinyl, hardwood, or even carpet you wanted to throw down. The high 10’6” ceiling gives you a lot of flexibility with how you layout storage and shelving. You can even put up a loft if you like, though you won’t have much headroom.
Overall we really liked the Gable kit. It looks good and provides a lot of usable space in the basic kit and isn’t too difficult to assemble, even for people who’ve never held a hammer.
Specifications:
- Dimensions: 10’6” H x 9’8” W x 9’8” D
- Square Footage: 64 square feet
- Number of Windows: Two
- Estimated Assembly Time (Two People): 47 hours
Pros
- Basic rectangular shape gives you lots of options in building out the interior
- The pair of windows allow natural lighting to get in without letting the temps change much
- Board and batten siding is attractive, reducing your additional costs for exterior cosmetic changes
Cons
- Pretty basic at the base price
What are Tiny House Kits?
Tiny house kits are ready to assemble kits that include everything you need to put together a tiny house. They come shipped with the wood, hardware, framing materials, siding, roofing material, insulation, and most importantly of all, instructions.
They owe their origins to the log cabin kits that have been around for decades. They’re an affordable alternative to buying a commercially made tiny house yet much, much easier for amateurs to put together than a true DIY job.
Benefits of a Tiny House Kit
Tiny house kits take all the guesswork out of the construction process and give you step by step instructions on where every individual board, screw, and nail goes.
There’s a lot of romanticism around the thought of building your own home.
Tiny house kits give you the perfect medium between paying someone else to do it and DIYing it. You get to build your house, but you know that it’s built using the right materials with structural plans that meet safety requirements.
Tiny house kits are also significantly less expensive than buying a similar tiny house that’s already been built.
Going this route saves you a ton of money.
When you buy a ready-made tiny home, you avoid having to go through the headache of figuring out how to plan, buy the materials, and build it.
Buying Guide
When comparing tiny house kits there are a few key metrics to look at. Design and material quality is definitely one, but unless you have experience in the construction trades it will be difficult to compare different grades of lumber, siding material, and the angle of a roof beam.
Suffice it to say that all the kits on this list are built to excellent standards and use high-quality materials.
Square Footage and Configuration
The square footage of a tiny house is understandably quite small. None of the kits on this list are much over 100 square feet, but they do offer a few basic configuration choices.
You can choose from square kits, rectangular structures, or kits with a mix of indoor and porch space. Depending on your personal preferences and how much space you need you may benefit from different designs.
You should also think about the number and placement of windows. In a small space such as a tiny home natural lighting and lots of windows can really open up the feel of a space.
Level of Completion
Level of completion refers to how move-in ready a kit leaves your tiny house. Different tiny house kits offer different levels of completion.
The most basic are frame only kits. They include the bare structure but don’t come with things like doors, windows, or interior fittings. From there you can move up to complete precut, weather tight, and fully insulated kits.
These types of kits provide you with a fully weather-tight structure that’s already been insulated and had the walls, flooring, and ceiling installed. You still have to run any plumbing and wiring you need plus pick out fixtures, but it gets you through the bulk of the really difficult construction.
Assembly Time
How long it takes to put together your tiny house kit is an important factor to consider. Nearly every kit will require at least two people to put together, but some need three or even four.
Smaller kits at or below 100 square feet usually take between 30 and 50 hours for two to assemble. This gets you to a weather tight stage where you can leave it safely outdoors without worrying about damage.
Important note: fittings, wiring, plumbing, and other steps add more time in.
Make sure you consider how much time you have to commit to that initial build to get it to that weathertight state.
Final Thoughts
Tiny house kits are affordable, reliable, and let you get that DIY tiny house experience with all the benefits of expert design and material selection.
Our #1 pick, the Jamaica Cottages New Yorker B, offers a lot of usable square footage for your money and is one of the fastest and easiest to assemble for a team of two.