Barndominium Floor Plans: Five Furnished Layouts to Make Your Own

The five plans at a glance

Barndominium sizes are usually given as width × length of the steel or post-frame shell, so a "30 × 40" is a 30 ft by 40 ft building. In the app each plan shows its outside size on the template card (the 30 × 40 reads 40′ × 30′, wide side first). Square footage below is the plan's living area; covered porches and the shops are extra.

30x40 barndominium: what fits in 1,200 sq ft

A 30 × 40 shell is 1,200 sq ft; Carport Central puts that at about as much floor as "a typical 2-3 bedroom ranch-style home". It's the classic starter size, and the shape suggests the plan: run the great room front to back through the middle of the 40 ft side and you get a bedroom wing at each end, about 11 ft wide inside and the full 30 ft deep.

The Starter template uses that split. The primary bedroom is 11 × 16 ft with a walk-in closet and a bath with a walk-in shower and double vanity; Bedroom 2 is about 11 × 14½ ft. The great room is 16 ft 7 in wide inside and runs the full 29 ft depth, so the kitchen, an island with three stools, a six-seat table and the living area all line up under one ridge.

• Want a third bedroom? Give up the dining area or narrow the great room: drag the wing wall and the room sizes update as you go.
• Need an office? The mudroom end of the east wing is the easiest place to borrow 5 ft.
• The cathedral ceiling rises from 10 ft at the walls to 15 ft at the ridge, so tall cabinets and a pantry sit fine along the back wall.

40x50 barndominium: the family size

Plan sellers keep pointing to the same range: Modern House Plan Ideas calls 1,200–2,000 square feet "the most common for primary residences", and BuildMax says a typical 3-bed, 2-bath barndominium "usually falls between 1,500 and 2,000 square feet". A 40 × 50 lands at the top of that range with 2,000 sq ft, which is room for three bedrooms, a primary retreat and the extras families ask for.

The Family template spends that space on the features that come up again and again in barndo plans: a walk-in pantry beside the kitchen, a mudroom with lockers at the side door, a split-bedroom layout (primary on one side, kids' rooms on the other), a powder room for guests and a porch that wraps two sides.

• Great room: 19 ft wide, cathedral ceiling from 10 ft to 16 ft 8 in, two skylights, a wood stove on the side wall.
• Kitchen: an 8 ft island and a table for eight.
• Primary: freestanding tub, walk-in shower, double vanity, walk-in closet and a tray ceiling; french doors to the porch.

40x60 shouse: splitting home and shop

A shouse (shop house) puts the home and a workshop or garage under one roof. A 40 × 60 is 2,400 sq ft, and My Barndo Plans calls it "the most common request we receive". Coast to Coast Carports' 40x60 planning guide says "the most common split we see is 40x30 living, 40x30 shop", which is exactly how the Shouse template divides it: 1,200 sq ft of house, a 30 × 40 ft shop.

Shops need height. The same guide lists 10, 12, 14 and 16 ft as common wall heights, and notes that two 12x14 roll-up doors fit side by side in a 40 ft bay. The template's shop has 14 ft walls up to a 20 ft 8 in ridge and two 12 × 12 overhead doors, the house side keeps 10 ft walls, and the two meet at the kitchen wall. Change a door's width and height in its inspector if you need 12 × 14 or a single wider door.

• House to shop: the mudroom / laundry door opens into the shop, so the dirty entrance never crosses the living room.
• Vehicles: a full-size pickup and an SUV are parked in the bays; there are also ATV and motorcycle models in the catalog.
• Shop gear: a large and a standard workbench, a cabinet table saw, a lumber rack, tool chests, shelving and an air compressor.

Barndominium with a loft: how tall the walls need to be

A loft only works if there is height above it. In the loft template the great-room walls are 19 ft, the loft floor sits 10 ft 10 in up, and the cathedral ceiling climbs to 25 ft 8 in, so the loft has 8 ft 2 in of headroom at its outside wall and nearly 15 ft at the peak. Under it, the kitchen, pantry and laundry keep a normal 10 ft ceiling.

That is why loft barndos are built on taller shells. Hansen Pole Buildings, for example, sells a 40x60x21 barndominium kit that includes a "40×36 lofted second floor". Modern House Plan Ideas notes a loft "is more common than a full second story" in barndos. Before you settle on a loft, check two numbers in the 3D view: the headroom at the loft's low side, and that the stairs land with room to step off.

• The loft is 12 × 40 ft (480 sq ft) with a 42 in railing along the great-room side and a gap where the stairs arrive.
• The straight stair has 17 steps, 36 in wide, along the back wall of the great room.
• Walk through on the Loft floor and look down: that view is the best test of whether the great room feels big enough.

Barndominium with an RV garage: door and wall height

An RV bay is mostly about the door and the wall it sits in. The Two-Story + RV Shop template gives the shop 16 ft walls and a 12 ft wide × 14 ft tall RV door, plus a 10 × 10 ft door for a truck, with the shop's ceiling rising to 22 ft 8 in. Plan sellers list RV-friendly bays on many barndo plans; Architectural Designs' plan 135086GRA, for example, pairs a 3-bed, 2.5-bath two-story with a 1,200 sq ft attached RV garage.

There is no motorhome or travel trailer model in the furniture catalog, so the RV bay opens empty. To check clearances, draw the coach's length and width as a rectangle (a rug or a custom-sized item works) and walk around it in 3D. Always check your own RV's height against the door before you settle on a size.

• Vehicles in the template: a pickup in the truck bay, an ATV, a motorcycle and a riding mower.
• The mudroom / laundry opens into the shop, next to the stairs.

2-story barndominium: what goes up and what stays down

In a two-story barndo, the usual choice is a main-floor primary suite with the other bedrooms upstairs. The Two-Story template does that: the primary bedroom, a walk-in closet and a bath with a freestanding tub and tray ceiling are on the ground floor; Bedrooms 2 and 3, a full bath and a 36 × 18 ft game room are upstairs under ceilings that slope from 8 ft at the walls to 14 ft 8 in.

The game room opens through a sliding glass door onto a 30 × 8 ft covered balcony that sits over the front porch. Upstairs floors in the app are separate plans that stack: switch between Ground floor and Upper floor in the floor picker, and the stairs connect them.

How to open a barndominium plan

On Home, tap Use Template (Pre-designed layouts), then the Barndominiums chip. Tap a plan to preview it, then Use This Template. The preview shows the ground floor only, and its item count is the ground floor's; the loft and two-story plans still open with both floors and the stairs. The help guide Start from a barndominium template (linked below) walks through every step with screenshots, including switching floors and the 3D walk-through.