Can you use a shipping container as a barn?
With a little imagination and the right resources and know-how, you can use a shipping container (or containers!) to build almost any structure you can think of. That includes car storage, workshops and salon spaces. Here, we’re looking at how you might create a place for your prized horse or pony to call home.
Read on to see five fab ideas for shipping container horse stables and barns made out of shipping containers.
1. This simple and economical container horse shed
Image credit: Pinterest
We’ll start with a simple yet elegant shipping container stable conversion we found on Pinterest. What we love about this is how straightforward the conversion is and how beautifully the designer has fitted it to the surroundings.
By cutting away around three-quarters of one side, giving it a lick of paint and adding some rustic support beams and a roof, what you have here is a portable horse shelter that can be moved with relative ease into any paddock.
2. This container horse corral and tack room
Image credit: Colorado Container Homes
This fine conversion from Canadian container specialists Colorado Container Homes shows how brilliant shipping container horse stalls can be when made with a little extra thought and love.
Created using an extra tall 9 foot 6 inch ‘high cube’ container that’s 20 feet long, the first three-quarters of the structure have been adapted into a horse stall with a front gate to let the horse out, a side window for ventilation, and a doorway where the animal’s owner can enter.
Image credit: Colorado Container Homes
The last 5 feet of the container meanwhile has been adapted into an air-and-water-tight tack room designed to protect anything stored inside. It’s even got peg boards inside the swing doors, plus saddle posts and storage shelves on the back wall. It’s a multi-functional shipping container stable you can take almost anywhere!
3. This rustic shipping container barn
Image credit: Container King
Shipping containers can make excellent foundations for a full-on barn – as the image above rightly shows! We especially like how the rustic finish of the barn trusses fits the surrounding woodland area, and the light brown colour of the containers themselves, which we think fits right in with the overall aesthetic.
Image credit: Container Addict
If you’re curious about adding a roof to a container barn design, this guide from Container Addict explains it all in-depth. You can use either wood or metal for the frame, and just need to fix the roof on top. Done right – and given enough space for the air to flow through – you can easily convert the containers on either side into shipping container horse stalls.
4. This free-standing container horse shelter
Image credit: Locbox Shipping Containers
This shipping container stable idea is about as bare-bones as it gets – but that’s largely why we love it! It’s a lot like our first example above, albeit without the slanted roof, indoor support beams or lick of paint. And yet we wouldn’t say it looks out of place at all in the scene above, would you?
This is proof that shipping container horse stalls sometimes don’t need to be big, bold and beautiful as long as they’re functional and have a low-key feel that suits their purpose. We think this one achieves that nicely.
5. This impressive-looking double-decker container barn
Image credit: Project Gridless
At the other end of the extreme from the low-key shipping container horse stall is this mightily impressive container barn design. Somewhat similar to our third example, where this one differs is that it has a much bigger roof space that can turn your shipping container horse stalls into something extra special. Think about it; if you were horse-mad, would you pay for an Airbnb space right above a farm’s horsie home?
That’s just one idea of how you could use such barns made out of shipping containers. What would you do with it?
Have a container barn design in mind? We can help
Here at Philspace, we can help with shipping container modifications of all kinds – including shipping containers for the equestrian industry.
Browse our full range of shipping containers, or get in touch with us to discuss your specific needs in detail.
Cover image credit: Shipped.com
