7 Excellent Ways to Add RV Beds to Your Home-On-Wheels

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RVing with kids is a ton of fun, and it’s a great way to give your little ones an amazing education. Unfortunately, a lot of RVs aren’t made with families in mind. This means a good number of rigs on the market don’t have enough RV beds for the whole family. This is something we’ve come across a lot lately as we search for a new RV of our own.

The good news? We can fix this problem by adding RV beds to pretty much any motorhome or trailer. This means we should be able to make a good number of the RVs out there work for us. It also means you can convert an RV to work for you, no matter the size of your family.

Not sure where to begin? Here are some of the best ideas I’ve had for adding RV beds to a home-on-wheels.

Convert Other Furniture

My first idea (and the one we will probably end up using) is super simple: using a piece of furniture that is made to convert to a bed and making it a permanent sleeping space. This is ideal because it doesn’t require pulling any furniture out of the rig, something that could potentially hurt the resale value. It can also be a super inexpensive option.

That said, you will probably want to do more than just convert the couch or dinette to bed mode and call it a day. You see, those couch and dinette beds are notoriously uncomfortable, and sleeping on one full-time is probably not the best plan.

Instead, I recommend finding a mattress (or at least a good, thick mattress topper) that fits the space and placing that on top of the couch or dinette bed. If you can’t find one that is the right size and shape, a memory foam mattress can be cut down using an electric bread knife.

To make the space a bit more private, consider hanging a curtain around the bed. If the bed happens to be in a slide-out, you might be able to use a tension rod. Otherwise, you might have to use a U-shaped shower curtain rod.

Invest in a Disc-O-Bed

Of course, there’s also the option of pulling a piece of furniture out and replacing it with a dedicated bed for the kids, or even setting up a bed in an unused nook in the RV. The Disc-O-Bed is great for this!

These are portable bunk beds that fold up like a camping chair or cot, but they stack so you can sleep two kids in a space that would normally only sleep one. They are surprisingly comfortable and come in both kid and adult sizes, so even your teenagers can use this solution.

Grab a Rollaway Bed

I love the idea of using a folding rollaway guest bed in an RV. With one of these, you could remove a couch or dinette and put a bed in that space, except the bed would be foldable and rollable, making it easy to move out of the way anytime you need a large amount of floor space. I’m particularly fond of the single bed, which is narrower than a traditional twin, meaning it fits nicely in a slide-out.

This would be ideal if you have kids with you only some of the time, or if you need a good chunk of space to work with only some of the time. Personally, I would use the extra floor space to teach my weekly online dance lessons and then put the bed back down for my daughter after I finished classes.

Check Out Cabbunk

If you have a campervan (or possibly even a class C RV), the Cabbunk is an excellent way to add RV beds to your setup. This ingenious invention uses the seats in the cab area of a van to create a set of bunk beds that are perfect for younger kids.

The beds are more like cots or hammocks than actual beds, but we’ve yet to hear someone say they are uncomfortable. That said, you might add a sleeping mat to the setup if you plan to have your kids use these beds for long periods of time.

Set Up a Luno Bed

Another great way to use the cab area of a class B (or, again, maybe a class C) is the Luno Bed. This is an inflatable bed that is made to sit in the cab area of a van. It is made so it doesn’t sag between the seats, and it lays flat to prevent the sleeper from rolling into a corner. It also fits nicely around the steering wheel.

The bed does require a bit of time to set up and take down, so if you use your van or RV as a daily driver, this might not be an ideal solution. That said, if you tend to park the van once you arrive at the campsite and use a second vehicle to get around, this could work for you.

Expand a Current Bed

Some families choose to put the kids in the master bedroom and have the parents sleep on a nice futon or hide-a-bed in the living area. This works well if you only have one or two kids, but what if you want to sleep a few kids in the master bedroom?

In this case, you could of course create a custom bed setup—something we will discuss more below—but you could also expand upon the queen bed that is already in the bedroom. Many RV beds have some room on both sides of the master bed. By building boxes that sit flush with the current bed frame, you can expand the bed to accommodate a king size mattress, making room for an extra kid or two.

Build a Custom Setup

Last but definitely not least, there is the option of building your own custom bed setup that perfectly suits your situation. I’ve seen several different iterations of this idea. These include a small bunk above the master bed, custom-sized bunk beds in the living room slide, a trundle bed that fits under an existing bed when not in use, double bunks converted to triple bunks, and more.

Get creative and play with your space. You likely already have an idea of what you need and what will work in your space, and I’m betting you can come up with something fantastic!

As you can see, there are a number of options for adding RV beds to your setup. Pick one of the options above and get started. Your kids are sure to appreciate having their own dedicated sleeping spaces, and you’ll be able to get out on the road and have some amazing experiences even without that “perfect” bunkhouse RV that can be so impossibly difficult to find.

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