Dwell’s Top 10 Tiny Homes of 2019
Affordable and eco-friendly, these micro homes are memorable to the max.
This year, we saw a common thread pass through all of our favorite tiny homes—namely, the lesson that minimizing space does not mean sacrificing comfort or style. Patrons of the small-living movement can attest to its affordability and life-changing simplicity. In short, tiny homes allow for more mobility in life, giving you the option to hitch your dwelling and all its contents to your car and go. Less baggage, more sustainability, and the freedom to call almost anywhere home? That’s a win-win. Read on to see the top tiny homes readers loved this year.
10. A New Start-Up Wants to Build a Tiny House in Your Backyard For Free
Bay Area start-up Rent the Backyard is making new room in dense cities by collaborating with homeowners who've got a little extra acreage. The company will install a prefab studio apartment on unused land behind your home, handle all the permitting required to do so, find a worthy tenant to rent the unit, and pay you 50% of the profits for providing the space—all for zero up-front costs.
Photo: Wittman Estes
Shalina Kell is a graphic designer and a maker—and now she can add "tiny home builder" to her resume. The single mom lives with her teenage daughter in a lovely, light-filled, 350-square-foot tiny home in Sacramento that she built and designed herself.
Stay up to Date on the Latest in Tiny Homes
Discover small spaces filled with big ideas—from clever storage solutions to shape-shifting rooms.
The 500-square-foot home is designed for empty backyards in Silicon Valley. Abodu imagines the units serving as rentals, or housing for recent graduates or aging loved ones.
When artist Birgitta Burling and her husband Staffan decided to build a house on the idyllic Swedish island of Gotland, they set their ambitions high. "The brief was to make a house that can do several things…to create a house with very little boundaries and infinite possibilities," says French architecture and landscape firm Collectif Encore.
Michel Bonvin
Dark timber cladding gives way to airy interiors at this compact holiday home near the Lakes of Vinkeveen in the Netherlands.
Photo by Ewout Huibers
Want to build your own tiny house? Now you can purchase plans for this award-winning home from Minim. Designed with the belief that "humans can and must live more sustainably, but not without style," the Minim House integrates thoughtful, green design into all of its 264 square feet.
Minim Homes
Elsa is a 323-square-foot tiny house complete with a pergola-covered porch, a swing, and a greenhouse that’s sure to make plant lovers swoon.
Calvin Hanson
Perched quietly on the dunes of New Zealand’s Coromandel Peninsula, Hut on Sleds serves as a small, sustainable beach retreat for a family of five.
Photo by Simon Devitt
Custom-built from the ground up, a 360-square-foot tiny house on wheels is an affordable, off-grid paradise for a family of three in Hawaii.
In order to create a small yet comfortable vacation home for a young couple, the multidisciplinary workshop TACO, or Taller de Arquitectura Contextual, sited it in the corner of a two-acre lot, then employed built-in elements for an "intuitive" interior layout.
Leo Espinosa
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