10 Vanlife Essential Items You Must-Have

Every campervan will feel like a real home with these 10 vanlife essential items. It’s awesome to pack so many creature comforts into your little home on wheels. You may never move back into a house.

Our campervan living vanlife in the mountains

Try to determine if you want to vanlife full-time or temporarily. Answering this question will help decide how much money to put into the van build. But whether you are living in your van full-time or short-time, these are 10 vanlife essential items.

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1. Stove/Oven

If you are living in a van, we find the top vanlife essential item is a stove/oven. Being able to cook your own food is pretty important for keeping the cost down.

Eating out all the time can get very expensive. If you plan to live in your van for more than a few months, we highly suggest investing in a propane or butane stove or oven.

We love our Camp Chef Everest Mountain Series. Our stove has tons of power, but also enough finesse to simmer food on low. We have cooked many delicious meals with this versatile camp stove.

But we’ve considered for our next van build to have this Camp Chef Oven.

But if you only plan to live in your van for a short time you could get away with having a small jetboil or make a DIY alcohol stove.

2. Fridge/cooler

Having a way to keep food cold is pretty essential in vanlife. You can get by with dry foods only, but your diet will go down the drain.

We have a Vitrifrigo fridge/freezer combo and love it! If you have 12 volt to power a fridge, we highly recommend it. Here are a few other great fridge options for camper vans.

Fridges can be expensive though, so if you only plan to do vanlife for a short time, I’d just invest in a decent cooler like the Yeti Cooler, Coleman Steel Belted Cooler or similar type. Therefore, you can keep the ice for a longer duration and can use the cooler after living in a van as well!

3. Insulation/reflectix

If you plan to live in your van full-time, you will want to consider insulating your van completely. We used a combination of Sheeps Wool, Polyiso, reflectix and Great Stuff Gaps and Cracks.

It keeps the van’s temperature controlled all day and night long! If you only plan to live in the van for a short time, you should consider investing in reflectix to at least help keep the van cool inside during the day and keep the heat in during the night. Reflectix really does work magically!

Learn more about insulating a van.

4. Ventilation

When sleeping in a vehicle, you need ventilation in your camper van. Sometimes this is a vanlife essential item that is overlooked. For full-time vanlifers, a ceiling vent fan is almost crucial. But if you only plan to live in a van for a short time, you could always crack your window or invest in a portable fan.

Having ventilation helps circulate air and helps prevent condensation, and can help you sleep comfortably. We installed the Maxx Fan and love it so far! (Read our MaxxFan Review).

5. Bed

Campervan with beautiful lights in the ceiling

Having a comfortable night’s sleep is important, especially if you are living in a van as a home! Therefore, we feel a bed is a pretty important vanlife essential item.

You don’t want to have that “tent camping” feeling where you wake up every few hours, and get terrible sleep. We suggest investing in some nice campervan mattress.

6. Storage

There is nothing more irritating than having a big pile of stuff and not knowing where something is. If you invest a little money into having nice storage, it’ll make living in a van so much more enjoyable.

If you are living in your van full time, then you will probably want something more permanent. Such as real wooden cabinets and drawers with custom DIY rope handle pulls. But if you are doing short time van life then you could either get by with plastic drawer or even just cardboard boxes.

Also, be sure to check out these camper van storage hacks to help save space.

7. Electricity/solar chargers

Having electricity is definitely a luxury to living full vanlife mode. But it allows you to live off grid. It is not a cheap investment, but if you plan to live in a van full-time, it will be so worth it to fork up a large amount of money for a decent solar set up. That way you won’t need to replace the batteries every year or so.

We used Northern Arizona Wind and Solar from Flagstaff, AZ for our solar set up and their customer service was absolutely amazing! We highly suggest getting your solar through them!

But don’t get me wrong, it is possible to live in a camper van without an elaborate solar set up.

If you are just living in your van for a short time, then investing in a portable solar charger will do just the trick!

Or you can go even more minimal and just have a small solar charging bank to keep the essentials charged up. We have had a Sunjack Solar Charger for when we just camped a few times a summer and it works great. We highly suggest it!

8. Lights

Having lights isn’t crucial, but being able to see at night is a huge perk. Having to use a headlamp or cell phone flashlight can get you by, but being able to turn on nice overhead lighting is super helpful. If you have a 12 volt battery in your van, than these acegoo puck lights work super well. But, if you are doing vanlife for a short time, you could get a lantern. We love this little solar-powered Luci Lantern.

How To Install 12-volt recessed Lights In A Campervan

Or check out our other post dedicated to all the great lighting options there are for campervans:

Campervan Lighting

9. Warm Sleeping Bag or Blankets

Staying warm at night is definitely a vanlife essential item. Even if you plan to do vanlife in the summer it can get chilly at night. So we suggest investing a decent sleeping bag (Marmot Ouray is what Emily has and she is obsessed) or a nice down comforter for night.

10. Water

Water is essential to life, we all know that. So make sure your campervan is well equipped with water. having a way to have more than just a water bottle is pretty important. So we suggest investing in a water jug or two. Depending on your storage, the more water the better! If living in a van full time, having a sink and running water is a huge perk, but not 100% essential.

Check out our step-by-step guide for installing:

Campervan Sink Plumbing With Water Filtration

Takeaway | Vanlife Essential Items

While living in a van, you will have to give up some comforts of a traditional home. But, if you have all 10 of these items, you can live a pretty comfortable lifestyle. You can enjoy the freedom to travel with your home to all kinds of new places. And if you have these 10 essential items, it’ll feel like you are right at home everyday! We hope you enjoy!