What is a Barndominium?

Barndominiums continue to be a popular option for a home, cabin, or permanent residence. These versatile and cost-effective buildings offer a spacious interior that you can customize to your liking, offering more options than a traditional stick-built home.

What is a Barndominium

In the beginning, barndominiums combined the comfort of a traditional home with the unique style and outward appearance of a barn. These days, however, the term ‘barndominium’ often refers to homes built with a post-frame or pole barn design.

Often called a Barndo or a pole barn home, barndominiums have a flexible interior design. Using the post-frame construction process, barndominiums use trusses and laminated columns to support the load of the building. This design means there is little to no need for interior, load-bearing walls. This gives you a spacious inside area that you can customize however you like!

What is the Difference Between a Barndominium and a Shouse?

Barndominiums are living spaces that may or may not include a workspace, storage area, or shop in the floor plan. The shop may be included in the same area with little to separate it from the living quarters.

A shed-house or shop house, also called a shouse, includes living quarters with an attached shop, garage, or storage area. This shop is typically separated by a wall or door and serves as its own space.

Benefits of a Post-Frame Home

When it comes to designing your dream home, or building a vacation cabin in the woods, you can’t go wrong with a post-frame building. Here are a few benefits to building a barndominium:

Design Flexibility – Depending on the size of your building, many post-frame buildings do not require interior load-bearing walls. The larger you get, the more likely it is you will need some interior walls, but not as many as a traditional home. Barndominiums allow you to design the layout of your home exactly as you envision it without being restricted by interior walls.
Easy Future Expansion – Adding on to an existing pole barn or post-frame building is easy, which makes any future plans to expand on to your barndominium a breeze.
Efficient – Traditional stick-frame buildings have insulation installed about 1-24 inches apart while post-frame buildings can space it as far as 8 feet. This wider distance allows the builder to install the insulation evenly, which means there are less areas for the heat to transfer either in to or out of the building. This keeps your building well insulated and helps to lower heating and cooling costs.
No Foundation Required – Post-frame buildings do not require a foundation. All you need is a level building site to begin construction! While post-frame buildings don’t require one, many choose to have a foundation such as a concrete slab or traditional foundation poured.

Are Barndominiums More Cost-Effective Than Stick-Built Homes?

Stick built homes are the traditional way to build a home or garage. They use more material than a post-frame building because they require additional framework including load-bearing interior walls. They also require a foundation which can drive up both the cost of your building and the amount of time it takes to build. But, when it comes to a Cleary building, a level building site is all that is required to begin construction.

Post-frame buildings require much less material and framework than traditional stick-built homes. The basic post-frame building design relies on simplified building geometry and uses the minimum amount of materials needed to put a given clear span under cover. Additionally, most post-frame buildings use steel roofing and siding. Due to its light weight per unit area, this allows you to save on material when compared to heavier, non-metal roofing and siding options.

Cleary buildings also provide an opportunity to fill 8-foot-wide wall cavities with 6 inch fiberglass batt insulation to help keep your home comfortable all year round. This not only applies to barndominiums, but the Cleary Energy Miser and Commercial buildings as well!

Start Your Dream Barndominium Today

If you’re considering a building project, start by having a conversation. Schedule a free consultation with your local Cleary Building Specialist to translate your needs into a customized solution.