Van flares and space pods: which to choose, not whether to buy

Here's a problem that ambushes almost everyone converting a mid-size van into a camper. You want a fixed bed, the kind you leave made up and just fall into, rather than one you build and unbuild every night. The obvious place for it is across the back of the van, crossways, because a crossways bed leaves the whole length of the floor free for living. And then you measure, and discover that your van is two or three inches too narrow for a grown adult to lie across it. So you're forced into a lengthways bed instead, which eats half your living space, or into a fold-away bed that's a chore every single day. It's one of the most common and most frustrating walls people hit in a conversion.

Flares are the clever answer to that exact problem, and this is where the framing matters. For the people who hit this wall, flares aren't really a "should I buy them" question at all. If you want a fixed crossways bed in a van that's too narrow for one, you fit flares; that's simply what they're for. The real, interesting questions are which ones, how deep, on which side, and on which van, because those choices decide whether you end up with a comfortable double or a compromise, and they come with genuine trade-offs around the doors, the aerodynamics and the cost. So this is the honest, fairly technical guide to choosing, written for someone who has already worked out that they need the width and now needs to get the decision right.

The problem flares solve

To understand the choices, you have to understand the measurements, because this whole subject is a battle over a few inches. An adult who's six foot needs roughly 72 to 75cm, no, let's be clear and use the bed dimension, needs a bed around 183 to 190cm long to lie straight. Lying across a van, that length has to fit between the two side walls. And most mid-size vans don't have it. A Mercedes Sprinter or a Ford Transit gives you roughly 70 inches, about 178cm, from bare wall to bare wall, and once you've added ribs, insulation and panelling, the usable width drops to something like 168 to 173cm. That's fine for someone short, and too short for most adults to lie flat. So the crossways bed, the one that frees up your floor, is off the table, and you're pushed into the space-hungry lengthways alternative.

Flares fix this by stealing the missing width from outside the van. They're moulded panels that replace the flat side panels of the van and bulge outward at bed height, adding a few inches of internal width on each side, exactly where the mattress needs it. Gain three inches a side and suddenly that 173cm becomes a shade under 190, and the crossways bed fits. It's a beautifully targeted solution: a small, localised bulge low down on the bodywork buys you the one dimension that unlocks the most efficient bed layout in the van. Where the bed sits among the other big layout decisions is something we cover in our guide to the types of campervan conversion, but if you've settled on a fixed crossways bed in a narrow van, flares are how you make it physically possible.

A quick clearing-up: "space pods" is a category, not a brand

Before we go further, a point that causes real confusion. People often talk about "Spacepods" as though it's a single company, the way you might say a particular brand of roof. It isn't. "Space pods", "side pods" and "sleeping pods" are loose, semi-generic terms for this whole category of widening panels, used by several different makers, and there is no one definitive UK company simply called "Spacepods". If a conversion firm offers you "space pods", ask whose they actually are, because the maker matters a great deal for the fit and finish.

The names genuinely worth knowing are these. In the United States, where the scene is biggest, Flarespace is the dominant maker, with the widest range of vehicles and depths. In the UK, there are several: SidePodz, which takes a clever, low-bulge approach by reclaiming the dead space behind the standard lining and the rear window aperture so the panel only protrudes a couple of inches; EVO Design, which sells panels it calls "Space Pods"; and Lamplas, a UK manufacturer whose panels are fitted by converters such as Mark1. In Germany, Oryx makes a "Space Pod" flare for the bigger European vans. One warning worth heeding: some products marketed as VW "fender flares" are nothing of the sort for this purpose, they're cosmetic ABS wheel-arch trims that add a few millimetres for looks and do nothing for your bed. The flares that buy you sleeping width are substantial moulded fibreglass panels, not styling trim, so make sure you're comparing the right thing.

What flares actually are, and how they go on

A proper bed flare is a moulded panel, almost always fibreglass or GRP on the quality products, that replaces a section of the van's flat side panel. The cheaper, thinner ABS plastic items are generally regarded as the lesser option for this job; fibreglass is stronger, more durable and holds its shape. You can get them solid, or glazed with a window built in, which trades a little security and quiet for daylight and a view from the bed.

The fitting method is, in essence, the same as bonding in a large window, and it's worth understanding because it explains some of the cautions later. You cut out the van's original flat side panel along a marked line, treat the bare cut metal edge against rust, then glue and bond the flare to the outside of the bodywork with a structural adhesive, sealing it carefully, and leave it to cure for a day or two before exposing it to weather or driving. It's a permanent, irreversible modification that cuts into the body, so it's not something to undo on a whim, and the quality of the sealing is what stands between you and a leak. Many people have flares fitted professionally for exactly that reason, though a confident self-builder can do it. Flares can go on one side or both, and sometimes on the rear quarters too, and the panels are usually shaped differently on each side to clear things like the fuel filler, which brings us to the single most important technical point in the whole subject.

How much width you actually gain

The headline is that quality bed flares add roughly five to six inches, around 13 to 15cm, of internal width per side, so a pair gives you something like 10 to 12 inches, 25 to 30cm, in total. That's enough to take a too-narrow van and let someone up to about six foot four lie comfortably across it. The low-bulge UK approach, like SidePodz, adds less in raw external terms, only a couple of inches a side, but because it also reclaims the dead space behind the lining and the window aperture, it can still deliver a transverse bed long enough for someone around six foot five. Different routes to the same goal: enough crossways length for an adult.

The exact figures vary by van and by how deep you go. On a Sprinter, for instance, the standard-depth flares add a little over three inches a side, while the deeper option pushes past five inches, and on a Transit the regular flares add around two inches with a deeper option adding more. The number that matters for your build is the final internal width you end up with, and the rule of thumb across the quality brands is that a pair of flares gets a too-narrow van to roughly 80 inches, about 203cm, wall to wall, which is comfortably enough for an adult double laid crossways. That 80-inch figure is the one to hold in your head as the realistic target a good pair of flares is aiming for.

The sliding-door problem: depth, and whether the doors need adjusting

This is the crux of the whole subject, the thing the user-facing marketing tends to gloss over, and the answer to the very sensible question of how deep you can actually go. The catch is the sliding side door. On the door side of the van, the sliding door travels rearwards and slides past the very panel where the flare sits. So if the flare on that side sticks out too far, the door fouls it, it physically can't slide past. That puts a hard limit on how deep the flare can be on the sliding-door side.

The makers deal with this in a clear and consistent way: the deepest, "extended" flares are offered for the off side, the driver's side, only, because that side has no sliding door to get in the way. The door side gets the shallower, "regular" depth flare, engineered to just clear the door as it slides. So you end up with a deliberate asymmetry, a deeper flare on the fixed side, a shallower one on the door side, and your achievable symmetric bed width is effectively set by the shallower door-side flare unless you do something about the door. Flarespace, the big US maker, states it plainly: the sliding door will hit the flare if you fit the extended depth, which is why extended depth is a driver's-side-only option.

So do the doors have to be adjusted? It depends on the van and on how much width you're chasing. On an already-wide van like the Ram ProMaster, the stock sliding door opens fully over a regular flare with no modification at all. On a Sprinter or Transit, the regular-depth door-side flare clears the standard door, but if you want to go deeper on that side to even up the bed, you need to space the door's roller mechanism outward, or in some cases replace the roller arm, so the door tracks a little further out and clears the deeper panel. The UK SidePodz system leans on exactly this, using an extended or longer sliding-door roller arm to let the door clear the pod, often a quick swap on older vans. The rear barn doors are affected too: they'll usually still swing right round to 270 degrees, but they may need an extended door check or stopper so they clear the flare as they open. The practical upshot is that there isn't usually a special "flared door" component you buy; the fix is either to accept a shallower flare on the door side, or to adjust or replace the door roller so a deeper one clears. Decide early which you're doing, because it changes both the cost and the achievable bed.

Which van and flare combination gives the most sleeping width

If your goal is simply the widest possible crossways bed, the honest answer is a little counter-intuitive: the vans that give you the most width are often the ones that barely need flares at all. The Ram ProMaster, and its European cousins the Fiat Ducato and Peugeot Boxer, are unusually wide vans, around 73 to 76 inches internally, which is enough for most adults to sleep across without any flares fitted. Add a set of the shallow flares those vans take and you can reach around 80 inches, which is about the most absolute transverse width of any common combination.

A narrower van like a Sprinter or Transit, fitted with a good pair of flares, also reaches roughly that same 80-inch mark, but it needed the flares to get there, whereas the ProMaster started close and barely had to try. So if maximum sleeping width with the least fuss is your absolute priority, a wide van like a ProMaster, Ducato or Boxer is the easiest path, with flares as an optional finishing touch rather than a necessity. If you're set on a Sprinter, Transit, Transit Custom, Vito or VW Transporter for other reasons, which plenty of people sensibly are, flares are how you bring it up to the same width. The decision, then, often starts one level up: choosing a naturally wide van can save you from needing flares at all, while choosing a narrower one means budgeting flares into the build from the start. Neither is wrong; they're just different routes to the same comfortable crossways bed.

Extra space versus aerodynamics: the real trade-off

The trade-off everyone worries about is aerodynamics, and here honesty demands a careful answer rather than a confident one. Flares add width and a bulge to the bodywork, so in principle they add drag. But they sit low down, at bed height, and add only a small slice of frontal area to a vehicle that is already, aerodynamically, a brick. The reasoned expectation, and it is reasoning rather than a measured figure, is that the effect on fuel economy is small, the kind of thing most owners never actually notice against the much larger drag of the van's basic box shape. What there isn't, as far as we can find, is solid published data putting a number on it, so anyone who tells you flares will or won't cost you a specific amount of fuel is guessing. The honest position is: probably marginal, not robustly measured, don't make it the deciding factor.

Crosswind stability is the same story, plausibly negligible because the added area is low and to the sides rather than high up like a tall roof, but not something we've seen properly quantified. The trade-offs that are more concrete are practical ones. Flares increase the van's overall width, by something like six or seven inches in total on a deeper-flared Sprinter, which brings the bodywork out towards the wing-mirror line and shrinks your everyday clearance margin. That matters for width-restricted lanes, tight car-park spaces, automatic car washes and the hedge down a narrow Cornish lane more than it matters for fuel. It generally won't take a normal van over the legal width limit, and fitters report no significant effect on mirror visibility, but you do become a slightly wider vehicle, and you feel it in tight spots. So the real "space versus practicality" trade is less about miles per gallon and more about living with a wider van in tight places, in exchange for a bed that transforms your interior. For most people chasing a fixed crossways bed, that's a trade well worth making, but it's the honest shape of it.

So which should you choose?

This is the decision the whole piece has been building to, and it comes down to a sequence of honest questions.

First, do you even need flares? If your van is a wide one, a ProMaster, Ducato, Boxer, or often a Crafter or MAN TGE, you may be able to sleep crossways without them, in which case the cheapest, cleanest choice is to skip flares entirely and save yourself the cutting, the cost and the extra width. Flares are really the answer for the narrower vans, the Sprinter, Transit, Transit Custom, Vito and Transporter, where the width genuinely isn't there. Don't cut holes in a van that didn't need them.

Second, one flare or two, or two plus the rear? A single flare, usually on the off side away from the kerb, is the cheapest option and keeps the door side completely standard, which means the best door clearance and the least kerb-strike risk, but it only buys you about half the width, which usually isn't enough for two adults across. Two flares are the standard choice for a full crossways double, getting you to that 80-inch target. Adding the rear quarters too gives maximum width and a longer flat run, at the most cost and the most cutting. For most people building a fixed double, a matched pair is the answer.

Third, shallow or deep? Remember that the deep, extended flares are a driver's-side-only option, and that going deeper on the door side means modifying the door roller. So the cleanest build is often a sensible-depth pair that clears the doors without surgery; chase the maximum depth only if you genuinely need every last inch and you're willing to space or replace the sliding-door roller to get it. Fourth, glazed or solid? Glazed flares give you lovely low-level light and a view from the pillow, but they're a glass weak point for security, they're noisier on the road, and each window slightly shortens the usable bed length, so solid is the quieter, more secure, slightly roomier choice and glazed is the brighter, nicer-to-wake-up-in one.

And fifth, UK or US product? If you're in Britain, the UK and European makers, SidePodz, EVO, Lamplas and Oryx, avoid the import duty and shipping that come with the American Flarespace panels, and the low-bulge UK designs minimise the width and aerodynamic penalty, at the cost of a little less raw width. Flarespace offers more depth options and covers more vehicles, but you pay to import it. For a UK build, starting with the UK makers usually makes the most sense. If you're also weighing up an elevating roof for headroom, the same "which type suits you" thinking applies, and we cover it in our guide to pop-top roof conversions; flares and a pop-top together turn a plain panel van into a genuinely liveable little camper.

What flares cost

Prices vary by maker and country, but the shape is clear. In the UK, supply-only flares run from around £450 to £950 a pair, with SidePodz around £950, EVO panels from roughly £320 a side, and budget options on the auction sites cheaper still, though with fit and quality you can't verify. The dominant US maker, Flarespace, sells pairs for roughly 1,600 to 1,800 dollars depending on the van, before you add shipping and import costs to bring them to Britain. On top of the panels themselves, budget for paint and fitting: having flares colour-matched and professionally bonded in typically doubles to triples the supply price, and a fully finished, painted, fitted pair can run to several thousand pounds, with high-end turnkey jobs more again. The rule of thumb is that the panels are the smaller part of the cost once you factor in cutting, bonding, sealing and painting them properly, so get a complete fitted-and-painted quote rather than judging on the panel price alone.

The honest cautions

A few things to go in with your eyes open about. Because flares are bonded to the outside of the van and rely on good sealing, a poor installation can leak, so fitting quality genuinely matters; done well they shouldn't, done badly they will. Glazed flares are noisier than solid ones. And it's worth knowing that fit and finish aren't guaranteed even from the market leader: the big US maker has a documented history of quality-control complaints, oversized window cut-outs, wrong parts, and wavy castings among them, so inspect what arrives before it goes anywhere near your van, whoever you buy from.

On the legal and money side, flares are a body modification, and in the UK you must declare them to your insurer, because an undeclared modification can invalidate a claim; a specialist campervan insurer will expect them and usually won't make a fuss. Where flares, like any change that makes a van look more like a motor caravan, could touch on the vehicle's DVLA body-type classification, flares alone are usually fine, but declaring everything is the safe path. And as with any conversion, the width and weight you add count towards the van's limits and its saleability, the kind of thing our guide to what to check when buying a used van walks through. None of these cautions is a reason not to fit flares if you need the width. They're simply the homework that turns a good idea into a good outcome.

The reachable bit

Flares are a small, clever fix for a real problem, and they're part of a bigger truth about van life: that turning a bare panel van into something you can genuinely live in is a long series of these considered, costly decisions, and the finished article, by the time you've added the bed, the roof, the kitchen and the rest, runs well past £60,000. That gap between the camper you could build in your head and the one you can afford is the whole reason Campervan.win exists: capped entries so the odds stay honest, every cost published down to the line, £500 to a UK charity from every full draw, the winner picked by a public randomness beacon anyone can check, and one person driving away in a real campervan. Getting the details right, like which flares and how deep, should be the satisfying part. Affording the whole thing shouldn't be the impossible part.

Frequently asked questions

What are van flares or space pods for?

They widen a van's body by a few inches at bed height so you can sleep crossways, across the van, in a vehicle that would otherwise be too narrow for an adult to lie flat. That unlocks a fixed crossways bed, which frees up the whole length of the floor for living space, instead of a lengthways bed that eats into it. "Space pods" is a general term for these panels, not a single brand.

How much width do flares add?

Quality flares add roughly five to six inches (13 to 15cm) of internal width per side, so about 10 to 12 inches (25 to 30cm) for a pair, enough to let an adult up to around six foot four sleep crossways. The realistic target a good pair aims for is about 80 inches (203cm) wall to wall, which comfortably fits an adult double laid across the van.

Do the doors have to be adjusted to fit flares?

Sometimes. On the sliding-door side, the door slides past the flare, so the flare there must be shallower, and the deepest flares are offered for the driver's side only. On a wide van like a ProMaster the stock door clears without changes; on a Sprinter or Transit a regular-depth door-side flare clears the standard door, but going deeper means spacing out or replacing the sliding-door roller so it tracks clear. Rear doors may need an extended check arm to swing past the flare.

Which van gives the most sleeping width with flares?

The widest vans need flares least: a Ram ProMaster, Fiat Ducato or Peugeot Boxer is wide enough (around 73 to 76 inches) for most adults to sleep across unmodified, and reaches about 80 inches with shallow flares. A narrower Sprinter or Transit with a good pair of flares also reaches roughly 80 inches, but it needed the flares to get there. So a naturally wide van is the easiest path to maximum crossways width.

Do flares hurt fuel economy or handling?

Probably only marginally, though there's little hard data. Flares sit low and add only a small slice of frontal area to an already-boxy van, so the fuel and crosswind effects are expected to be small and are rarely noticed. The more concrete trade-off is practical width: the van becomes six or seven inches wider, which shrinks your clearance in tight lanes, car parks and car washes, even though it usually stays within the legal width limit.