Pre-Vanlife Shenanigans: Sleeping Arrangements

05 Nov, 2025

I've been looking into the concept of building a custom hammock stand inside of a utility van (hence the extruded aluminum calculator from last week). I've seen the "hooks" you can buy that claim 1000-lb capacity, but the low price and rep-less branding doesn't fill me with much confidence.

Now, I'm a far cry from an engineer (though I'm smart enough to muddle most of my way out of making stupid choices), but I've been playing with some designs and numbers, and I think this is quite doable.

I've already done the math on figuring out which vehicles are large enough for me to hang a hammock inside (not the Connect, but all other Ford Transits; not the City, but all other Ram Promasters). However, the cabinetry setup I'm looking at means I'd need to either hang the hammock from the roof or build a custom stand; neither of my free-standing hammock stands will do the job.

Using a hammock inside the van instead of a bed changes the approach to the living space.

space accommodation

A twin is 39" by 75" (3¼-ft by 6¼-ft), while a queen is 60" by 75" (5-ft by 6¼-ft). They're rectangular and hence take up a rectangular amount of space. And whether or not it's a fixed bed or needs assembling every night (and disassembling every morning) seems to be split pretty much down the middle of van-owning folks. (Don't bother me with murphy/elevator beds; they seem pretty rare even among professionally built vans.)

If I were sleeping on a mattress, it would probably be a fixed mattress.
If I built it to be dis/assembled, I might do it a few times and then not ever again.

As someone who sleeps on a hammock every night, I know that my minimum hang length is 8-ft while I'm most comfortable at 9½-ft. Good luck fitting that inside a van square, which is why I haven't even tried. Instead, I looked at the full array of vans and did the math on a diagonal hang.

The catch with a diagonal hang is the cabinetry needs to be adjusted to accommodate... namely, it also needs to be at an angle.
Fortunately, in a hammock, I only need a width of 24-inches (30 ideally) at the middle of the hang, which is only about 3- or 4-feet long.

I can work with that.

dis/re-assembly

I can partially "disassemble" my hammock simply by taking one end off the hook and hanging it with the other end. Thus the hammock takes up almost no space (half its length in height and whatever width my wadded-up bedding occupies, likely 1-2 feet). And my bedding can stay inside the folds, especially since I don't use sheets at all (aside from the hammock itself, which is kind of sheet-like).

weight

This isn't generally a problem that the dis/assembly-ers face, considering that they mostly seem to sleep on a tesselated array of couch-style cushions to make up the desired area of the bed, but for the fixed-bed-ers, I've seen some go a similar route with making their own custom mattresses to save on weight, or doing one of those gel-grid things...

My hammocks weigh about a pound each.
(Yes, I said "hammocks", plural. I have four of them. The cheapest one, a offbrand from the local hardware store is easily the heaviest of the lot, and probably clocks in around 2 pounds, but it's not in good shape and will probably be donated or disposed of before I convert to vanlife. I also have a BearButt and a pair of Kammoks, all three of which feel roughly the same in terms of weight and texture.)

As for bedding, well, I have several Rumpl blankets (three down, one synthetic down, one wool; two twin size, three queen-sized--good luck matching those up) and one Gravel blanket (twin-sized). Oh, and two small pillows, but they're for my knees, not my head. That's my year-round bedding for indoor hammocking.
I do have also have a down sleeping bag for outdoor hammocking.

balance

Hammocks are self-leveling.
They're hanging, literally.
As long as my mounting frame can handle a bit of a tilt in each direction, I'm good. Perhaps I'll lean a bit against one of the counters on either side of the aisle that I'm hanging down the middle of, but that's a very minor concern. Especially as I've slept just fine in my existing stand leaning up a bit against too-close furniture before with little-to-no issue.

Even in the direction of lengthwise, they tend to be self-leveling, as my body will slip down into a balanced centre of gravity in the middle of the hammock while I sleep. (It's actually fairly difficult to "prop myself up" when I'm ill to sleep with my head more elevated than usual.)

in summa

That's not to say that I haven't been able to take inspiration from other people's builds, but in the words of Cobb from Inception: "Only use details... Never entire areas."

Leave a comment or continue reading: various vanlife vacillations.

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