What’s the best sized Shepherd’s Hut for Glamping?

We all know and understand what glamping is, right?

For those who are thinking “mmm yeah, I think so!”, let me quickly explain.

Glamping is a word given to accommodation that is more luxurious than traditional camping. So, if you are thinking of a nice bathroom, a lovely kitchen, a comfy bed, and a generally lovely space, well you’d be right. When you translate these, or some of these necessities into your glamping shepherd’s hut you start to get an idea of size, the more you want in it, the bigger it will need to be.

Now, some of you may have a B&B business and are thinking of a shepherd’s hut as an additional room to the property, essentially expanding your existing business or maybe a hut to start a B&B business. You may only require a hut that will accommodate a double bed, a traditional bathroom and a small seating area, which would allow you to have a little more choice on the size of your hut.

A 16ft shepherd’s hut would be quite snug with this specification but you could push right up to a 20ft hut or bigger if you so wished. Another way to look at this is having two smaller huts: one (maybe a 14ft hut) housing the double bed and the seating area and a second 10 or 12ft hut as the bathroom hut. Obviously, you would probably want them closely situated together for ease of use. There are many examples of this system on the old interweb.

If you are researching the best-sized shepherd’s hut for glamping what you will find is different hut companies will give you different answers to this with different designs and different styles. Some will say go large. Some will say go double as in two huts connected, which would fit a specification to sleep families of 4 or more in one hut. The upshot of this is there is no one answer for this question. What I am going to try and cover in this article is the different ideas that might resonate with your thoughts of what you want from your glamping hut. You may be restricted by budget or planning constraints or space as in land space or access or manoeuvrability on delivery, which will push your hand to a specific shepherd’s hut size.

There are innovative companies in the shepherd’s hut / tiny house world that can make amazing use of space.

You can have:

• fold-up beds,
• beds that turn into a seating arrangement,
• fold-away tables, all of which help to manage any space restrictions.

This allows you to get more from a smaller hut and may help keep costs down. We touched on the separate bathroom hut design earlier with this also being something that can equally be worked into the glamping scene as well, but I must add that this is a very marmite subject. Everyone has a different view on the bathroom and toilet in the hut or in a separate hut. What do you think?

The larger shepherd’s huts on the market qualify for the 5% VAT as opposed to the standard 20% VAT. Mmm yes, I know, some of the double huts that are connected together also qualify for this reduction in the VAT which let’s face it, is a big saving. There will be some of you out there with companies that are VAT registered that can claim the VAT back, so this won’t be as much a “can’t wait to tell the wife” moment as it is for everyone else. Now I have actuallytaken this next bit of information directly from the HMRC website, oh and a shepherd’s hut is seen as a caravan in their eyes, – A “small” caravan. The popular sized glamping shepherd’s hut ranges from 18ft to 23ft long and some companies even make them larger than this. 

Off Grid glamping is an ever growing area of the holidaying industry with the necessities within the shepherd’s hut generally less than what is required from a fully equipped glamping hut, with this in mind the size isn’t as crucial as maybe other designs.