Five Hacks For A DIY Campervan With Contour Campers

Summer has a way of pulling everyone outdoors, and for a growing number of people, that feeling doesn't end when the season does. A DIY campervan build is fast becoming a popular way to hold onto that outdoor feeling all year round, giving you a home that goes wherever the weather, or your own curiosity, takes you next. Caitlin Green and Tom Lake know that better than most. The couple had already been touring Europe in their campervan for nine months when the COVID-19 pandemic changed everything, leaving them stuck in Greece for around six weeks during the first lockdown.

It was there, waiting it out with nowhere much to go, that the idea for a new business started to take shape. "When the first lockdown began, we were stuck in Greece," says Caitlin. They were there for around six weeks, and it was during that stretch that the idea for the business began to take proper shape. Caitlin and Tom launched Contour Campers in December 2020, not long after they made it home. It's a two-person operation: Tom handles the woodwork, and Caitlin takes care of the upholstery, and between them, they cover pretty much everything a DIY campervan build needs.

The pair built their own van back in January 2020, working to a tight budget while they saved for the trip. Tom had studied product design and design engineering at university and had gone on to work for two large manufacturing companies, so a lot of the tools and know-how needed for the furniture were already in place before they'd even started. Caitlin grew up in a small rural town in Northern California, where there wasn't much to do beyond making your own fun. No cinema, nothing much on the doorstep, just a lot of time to fill. Knitting, ceramics, sewing, a love of the outdoors: it's the kind of background that made a campervan upholstery business feel like a natural fit, combining two things she'd always loved into one job.

What started as a way to fund their own travels has grown into a business built entirely around other people's campervan builds too. Anyone who has priced up van conversion furniture from scratch will know how much time and cost is involved in getting the woodwork and upholstery right, and that's exactly the gap Contour Campers set out to fill.

Campervan Upholstery Ideas From Contour Campers

These days, Caitlin and Tom are based in the Yorkshire Dales, where they build furniture for other people taking on a DIY campervan build of their own, alongside three campervans available to rent for anyone who wants to try van life before committing to a build of their own.

Their range includes campervan box cushions and curtains, the Topo Sofa-bed, the Ranger and Heifer kitchens, and the Combi Panel, all designed to fit straight into a self-build van rather than needing to be adapted from standard household furniture. Each piece is built with the same brief in mind: strong enough for daily life on the road, compact enough for a small footprint, and finished in fabrics that can take the sort of wear a static sofa never sees. It's a setup that gives self-builders a shortcut past the trickiest parts of a conversion, the woodwork and the upholstery, without losing the satisfaction of having built the rest of the van themselves. For anyone weighing up campervan upholstery ideas of their own, seeing how a finished piece like the Topo Sofa-bed handles both daytime seating and a full night's sleep is a useful starting point before deciding what to build or commission.

Keep It Simple

Whether you're taking on a campervan overhaul or a caravan refurb, storage is the first thing to plan for, not an afterthought once the rest of the space is decided. It's one piece of advice Caitlin comes back to again and again. When you're living out of a van, you need somewhere for clothes, backpacks, food, bikes and climbing gear to go, which means every inch of space needs to earn its keep. Get the storage wrong and even a beautifully finished van can feel cramped and frustrating within a week on the road.

It's easy to get carried away with fittings that sound essential but add cost and complexity you don't always need. Hot water is a good example. Contour Campers manage without a fixed system, relying on a solar shower instead, with a kettle as a backup for washing up or a quick rinse. A fixed hob is another common request, and while it's nice to cook on, a removable hob running on gas cartridges or a small bottle keeps things simpler and cheaper, and it gives you the option to cook outside on a warm evening too, which is one of the small pleasures of van life in the first place.

If you're not sure whether you need something, it's usually worth going without at first and adding it later if you find you miss it. A van fitted out with every extra from day one tends to cost more and weigh more, without necessarily making the trip any better.

The cheapest way to build a campervan is to do the basics yourself. Insulation, running cables for lights, fitting wall cladding: there are plenty of YouTube tutorials covering each stage, and none of it is beyond what a patient first-timer can manage with a bit of research. It's the woodwork and the upholstery, the parts that need a trained eye and steady hands, where most self-builders eventually decide it's worth bringing in some help.

Choosing The Right Campervan Fabric

Most of the fabric Caitlin uses across her campervan builds comes from Yorkshire Fabric Shop. Good rub counts and fire retardant options make a real difference when you're upholstering furniture that has to survive daily life on the road rather than the occasional afternoon on a sofa. A campervan seat does everything a household sofa does and then some: it's a driving seat, a dining chair, and often a bed base too, all within the same square metre of fabric.

For one client with pets who wanted something easy to keep clean, Caitlin chose a navy blue flat weave chenille, which has held up well against everyday marks and pet hair alike. A tighter, flatter weave like this tends to shed less hair and wipe down more easily than a deeper pile fabric, which makes a real difference to anyone travelling with a dog.

If you'd rather tackle the upholstery yourself instead of commissioning it, it's worth learning how to reupholster furniture before you start on your van seating.

Her favourite, and the fabric she gets asked about most, is the Como Soft Wool Effect Plain Chenille in Green Grass. "It's a great, thick quality fabric with a lovely cosy look," says Caitlin, exactly what you want after a long day of driving.

When it comes to colour, Caitlin is careful. Unless you're a particularly jazzy person, she recommends keeping campervan upholstery ideas on the plainer side. A van holds a lot of things in a small space, and colours can clash far more easily than they would in a living room at home. Bikes leaning against the back doors, coats hanging by the entrance, cooking kit stacked on a worktop: it all adds visual noise before the upholstery even comes into it, so a calmer base colour gives the rest of the van somewhere to breathe.

It's also worth remembering that a van is lived in far more intensely than a house. You're rarely more than a couple of metres from your seating at any point in the day, so a colour or pattern that feels exciting in a showroom can start to feel a lot busier once you're parked up on a wet Tuesday with wet boots by the door. Plain, warm tones tend to age better against changing light, muddy floors and the general clutter of van life than anything too bold.

The Road Ahead

None of these five hacks are complicated on their own, but taken together they're the difference between a campervan that looks good for a weekend away and one that holds up to months of proper use. Storage, simple fittings and the right upholstery fabric all pull in the same direction: a van that's built for the life you're planning to live in it, rather than one built to impress on the drive before you've even left home.

The Tips To Remember

• Choose a campervan fabric that's easy to clean, or even waterproof.
• You can do the basics yourself with a bit of research.
• Ask whether you really need that fixed hob or hot water container.
• Storage is the top priority.
• Keep your upholstery fabrics on the plainer side.

These are the choices Caitlin and Tom have made on real builds. So you can be confident these tips come from experience and expertise, whether you're planning a weekend project or the van you're about to call home.

If you're at the fabric stage of your own build, browse our upholstery fabric collection or order a few samples first, so you can see how a colour sits against your van before you commit to metres.