Top Tiny House Books to be Read

Looking for the best tiny house books for yourself or someone else?

Here’s a list of the most popular books on different aspects regarding Tiny Houses.

To make sure you’re getting the right book the list is divided into 5 categories :

1. Tiny living in general
2. Micro shelters / small living
3. Building guides and floorplans
4. Personal stories
5. Building with recycled materials
   
   
   

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1. Tiny Living in General 

‘The Small House Book’ by Jay Shafer’s 

From one of the starters of the Tiny House movement is Jay Shafer’s book ‘The Small House Book’ on most things important to know about building and living in a Tiny House

Review from ‘Great little Introduction :

” I guess this book covers all the things you need to know to work out if a tiny house could become your tiny home. Lots of inspiration and ideas with a healthy discussion of aesthetics. There is a US focus but it does not by any means stop this book working for readers outside the US. “

‘Living Big in a Tiny House’ by Bryce Langston

From the nr. 1 Youtube channel on Tiny Houses (Living Big in a Tiny House) the well known Bryce Langston has collected 40 innovative Tiny Houses from his travels all around the world and created a stunning book showcasing these beauties. 

Review by Jo Cookie :

Fantastic. Bigger(thicker) than I thought it would be, beautiful quality (the story and the images)! The edit and layout/design of the book is really well done.

Review by Unkown :
It’s everything that Bryce Langston puts into his videos

If your into magazines check also the post The Best Tiny House Magazines out there.

‘Tiny House Basics’ by Joshua Engberg 

Wondering how it is to live in a small space, two people? Is there more happiness in simplicity? How can the organisation of material items be such a thrill for the Tiny House movement? This book covers the basics and shows you how to join the downsizing trend. 

Review from M. Suzanne :

A thorough and personable approach guiding anyone through the initial steps and beyond in “going tiny.” It covered many topics and answered questions with truth and a decent sense of humour. Good reasoning with emphasis on the importance of decluttering and how to do it. Would recommend to anyone even considering building a tiny house or if you just want to experience a day in the life of a tiny house owner.

‘Idiot’s Guides: Tiny House’ by Ryan Mitchell 

Philosophy, transitioning, inspiration and important lessons on downsizing and living tiny. Worksheets, strategies and guidance. 

Review from ‘Bug’:

Whether you are looking for ideas, want to be informed or just want to save space, this is informative and interesting. The contents are well presented and little highlights are thrown in to keep you reading. Great value.

2. Tiny House Books About Small Living and Micro Shelters 

Inspiration for all types of tiny living. Cabins, tiny homes, shelters. So many impressive projects have already been made which you can use to design your own home. 

‘Tiny Houses’ by Mimi Zeiger

A beautiful collection of dwelling small spaces where Mimi hopes to start a thought process in the readers considering whether downsizing is for them. Green living, reusable energy and sustainable lifestyle in focus.

Review by ‘ R.I.M. Berry’ : 

What a great book, packed full of fantastic photographs of amazing tiny buildings, really inspiring. What a great buy, highly recommended if you like sheds and huts.

Read interviews with Europeans living in Tiny Houses in the Meet ‘N’ Greet Series. 

‘Tiny House, Live Small, Dream Big’ by Brent Heavener

250 beautiful innovative small homes along with their story, a word from the owners and tips to help guide you on a similar project! The author, Brent, is the worlds #1 Instagram feed featuring Tiny Houses (@tinyhouse).

Review from ‘Rachel Hutchinson’ :

After following the Tiny House Instagram page, I noticed that a book was being published. Naturally, I had to pre-order it! It’s such a lovely, aesthetically pleasing piece of heaven. I love sitting down with a cup of coffee flicking through the dreamy pages and being inspired by what I see! Currently doing up a VW van into a townhome of my own, this book has given me so many ideas for my van and hopefully other tiny houses of my own! Thank you for motivating me to dream big! 

‘Micro Living’ by Derek Diedricksen

Best-selling author Derek Diedricksen has in this book collected 40 different Tiny Houses, explaining features, floor plans, optimization of space and personal experiences from living in the specific houses. An all-round book for the inspiration-seeker and those wanting to start building right away !

Review by ‘Carmen Shenk’ : 

This great new book is packed with photos of ingenious dwellings – and good news! It’s NOT AT ALL like an overly perfect Instagram feed of black and white sterile luxury tiny house interiors! And thank goodness! The homes Deek has chosen to include in this book are personal, creative, colourful, and whimsical. Deek highlights what each designer/builder did that was particularly interesting, and there are “in retrospect” comments from the homeowners on things they would change if they had it to do again. I love it that many of the ideas are very creative, inexpensive, and there is a theme of upcycling and recycling that is refreshing. This delicious ADD book is a visual and intellectual feast!

‘Micro shelters’ by Derek Diedricksen 

59 unique micro shelters in all kinds of shapes and sizes. Commentary from the author and builders, tips on how to build your own and space optimization ideas. An inspirational book for Tiny Houses, cabins, shelters and guest rooms. 

Review by Kerstin Onyeagusi :

This book inspires everybody who is thinking out of living tiny. Deek shows 59 micro shelters and fills them with stories, drawing plans, material lists and photos your mind is building its own tiny home. Most shelters I saw before on YouTube but to look at them in such a great book is awesome. You get so many ideas of planning, creating and building your own. And there are so many tiny tiny places for kids even as treehouses or small houses on the ground. Thank you, Deek!

‘Cabin Porn’ by Zach Klein

With an audience of over 10 million builders sending their DIY projects in, this tiny house book featuring small buildings of all sorts is a collection of the creative, simple and beautifully built projects around the world. 

Review by ‘Jade Small’: 

Not sure about the title but this book is a great guide for people interested in living in the great outdoors and becoming self-sufficient. Includes different building techniques, materials and structures. Thoughtfully too some of the challenges to be aware of with the lifestyle are flagged up. All in all a fabulous book filled with timely advice and superb images.

‘Cabin Porn Inside’ also by Zach Klein

The sequel to the previous book released in Oct. 2019 is the stunning interior designs of worldwide DIY projects that probably will make your builders lust bubble. With an audience of many million this online community has been able to choose the best of the best and put them in this book. 

Review by Gregor Wilson :

I have followed the blog since the beginning and admittedly do not have any of the other books (so far), but ahead of a renovation an old country property, I decided to get the ‘Inside’ book for inspiration. Wow – just a beautiful and insightful book. I didn’t expect as much detail about each place, which I love. The range of cabins covered is just awesome as well. I cannot recommend this enough for cabin and / or interior enthusiasts.

‘The New Small House’ by Katie Hutchison

25 beautiful examples of how strategic planning of daylight, privacy, storage, material usage have been perfected and how you can use these principles to start your own Tiny House project based on your lifestyle and preferences. 

Review by Susan E. Middleton :

My copy of The New Small House is already filled with sticky notes–so many great ideas to tuck away for a (future) little house design. If you’re even remotely interested in the current trend towards building smaller with smarter designs, you will love architect-writer Katie Hutchison’s lucid and practical advice as well as the particular houses she chose to showcase. I love that many of the designs have a clean and contemporary feel, while many still incorporate traditional or regional architecture. I also love that each house not only has a design plan (floor plan drawing) with it but enough beautiful photographs to really get a sense of how the design plays out. Additionally, each of the photographs is tagged with an icon representing one of Hutchison’s 10 key small-house design strategies, so again, the beautiful and the practical come together to inform you without overwhelming you.

4. Building Guides and Floorplans

A little more hands-on books for the DIY handy Tiny House people providing construction ideas and experience for those getting started. These tiny house books vary in how detailed they are, so get a feel for which book fits your needs best in the descriptions and reviews. 

‘Tiny House Floor Plans by Michael Janzen’

230 interior designs allowing you to explore and collect inspiration needed for starting your own tiny house! This book gives a great overview of the possibilities in small spaces where after working out how to build your chosen interior is the next step. 

Review by ‘RosyK’ : This is an essential book if you are planning to build a tiny house, or even just fit a large shed out as a bit of a guest suite – yes this is possible! So fascinating to see how much you can fit into a really compact space. Page after page of possible layouts for your project.

‘Tiny House Design and Construction Guide’ by Dan Louche

Teaching many thousands through workshop and presentations, Dan Louche, explains in this book the road map to your entire Tiny House build process. 

Review from ‘Blood Maelstrom’: 

I have bought several titles on this topic, and this is certainly one of the better ones.
Also, it has a good ratio of photographs, diagrams and copy. This is thorough and contains a lot of “Best Practises”

‘Backyard Sheds and Tiny Houses’ by Jay Shafer

Jay Shafer, a tiny house expert has collected a vast group of small buildings differing in purpose and goals. Offices, houses, sheds, guest rooms and many more. A detailed guide on how to build 6 of the buildings for those wanting to build one for themselves. Jay’s expertise in the field has been featured on Oprah and CNN. Incredible!

Review from ‘Susie Q’ :

Step away from the ticky tacky! These tiny homes are excellent. If you are going to build a structure anyway, why not go an extra step beyond OSB covered studs and build something worth keeping. The construction details are not exactly engineered drawings, but the pictures are awesome and will provide inspiration for your own plans. Using this book will assume you can already build a structure but the spectrum of ideas served me well and I do recommend the purchase.

4. Personal Tiny House Stories

How better a way of learning more than from people who have built and spend many years in a Tiny House? 

Here are a few personal Tiny House books following individuals and their experiences. 

‘The Big Tiny’ by Dee Williams

After a near-death experience, Dee Williams saw meaning in creating a more valuable and meaningful life where and more freedom was needed. She built a Tiny House and has now very low monthly expenses and heaps of time to spend with friends and family. 

Review from ‘GG’ : If you are interested in the tiny house movement, minimalism and simplicity, you’ll very likely enjoy this read. I am very fond of the deep human connection element in the book and the simple storytelling aspect. There is nothing miraculous here if not for a story that touches your heart and makes you want to stop a minute and smile. The hardback version is a very nice object too if you choose it as a gift!

5. Building with Recycled Materials

Have a dream of building your tiny house more sustainably by using recycled materials?
It is highly likely there are many opportunities in your neighbourhood to salvage materials or purchased reused parts for building your Tiny House. Which could reduce your building costs quite significantly while at the same time being more climate friendly. 

Luckily there are specific tiny house books to help and guide you in this area of building focus.

‘Tiny Houses Built with Recycled Materials’ by Ryan Mitchell

Living more sustainable is a hot topic these days and downsizing plus being able to build a tiny how with recycled materials is one way of doing it ! Ryan Michell from The Tiny Life has written this book to inspire and show the many possibilities! 

Review from ‘Clarisse’ : 

I bought this book for my grandson who loves all things old and wants to build his own tiny house -it gave him lots of ideas about recycled materials incorporated into his design He LOVED this book !!!!.

‘Small Eco Houses’ by Fransesc Zamora Mola

Downsizing and living more simplistically also can be sparked by an interest of living or building sustainably and ecologically. ‘Small eco-houses’ features over 50 architecturally designed small houses that have been built with an environmental plan in mind. 

Review by ‘Pink loves Purple’ : Great book about eco-houses and anyone interested in the ecological approach to housing will like it! BUT the title “small” probably refers to people who are used to having a “normal” sized house of over 250 square metres (2,700 square feet), because here the author presents houses of 150 sq. metres (1,620 sq. ft) as small! There are only 13 houses of under 100 sq metres (approx. 1,100 sq ft) out of the 40 presented in this book, so if you’re like me in thinking that a small house is considered to be in the size of 60 square metres and under then you’ll be a little disappointed.
Overall, this is a great book with beautiful pictures which explains in general what makes each of the buildings ‘green’ and eco-friendly. And even though the houses are a little bigger than I expected I am still happy I bought this book! 🙂

‘Off the Grid, Houses for Escape’ by Dominic Bradbury

Looking to explore options and possibilities of living off-grid? This book presents the most innovative and architechturally beautiful ‘small houses’ for living alternatively and off-grid compared to traditional living norms. 

Review by ‘Robin’ :

The houses in this book are a good test of an architect’s ability to work outside the normal commercial constraints and concentrate more on the environment and supplying non-commercial utilities. Looking through the book’s 310 photos it’s clear that lots of clever solutions have been created to provide a simple living experience or in some cases minimal luxury ones.

Hope you enjoyed the list of Tiny House books.

I can’t help but read them and this is probably one of the reasons I started this crazy journey. Watch out! 

If your looking for more personal stories specifically in Europe check out the Meet ‘n’ Greet Series where I’ve interviewed individuals living tiny! 

And for more general information on Living tiny in Europe check this main page on Tiny Houses in Europe.