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Photo by Andy Liffner

The exuberant hot pink of the Magenta House reveals a calmer, plywood-clad interior.

With the average tiny home measuring under 500 square feet, these mini abodes often have to be designed radically different from larger traditional houses. We take a look at seven of the biggest lessons one can learn from tiny home design. No matter if you plan to call a tiny house "home" or not, these key tips are relevant to just about any space, large or small.

Tiny houses are spreading across the world—and probably because it really just makes sense. The tiny home lifestyle is the ultimate application of creative resourcefulness, and allows residents to reduce their environmental footprints without sacrificing good design.

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The cabin’s exterior walls and roof are clad in overlapping stone plates that mimic the look of traditional wood paneling found in Western Norway. “It provides an affinity with the cabins nearby,” partner and architect Nils Ole Bae Brandtzæg explains. Solar panels cover the chimney pipe, lighting LED lamps inside.

The cabin’s concept was simple: To create a cabin that is small and sparse yet spatially rich. The 55-square-meter (592-square-foot) cabin, commissioned by a private client and completed in 2016, comprises a large living room, bedroom, ski room, and small annex with a utility room. It functions off the water and electricity grids.

Architect Line Solgaard, founder of the eponymous Oslo- and Fredrikstad-based firm, designed a getaway for her family in the place where she grew up. Untreated, exposed concrete pairs with cedar cladding; custom, oak-paneled ceilings; and a glass roof in the center of the home that opens like a sunroof for natural ventilation.

Located about 3,280 feet above sea level, Thunder Top rises like a hill in a moorland of weather-beaten dwarf birches and heathers. Wild reindeer herds and grazing sheep can often be seen dotting the landscape.

This house has an exterior of black panels and clear-grain cedar tongue-and-groove siding, and a rooftop deck that lets its owners enjoy the outdoors.

The pitched roof upstairs is set back from the flat-roofed main floor, breaking up its mass. The detached rear garage became an office for Moshe and firm partner Wayne Erb.

This countryside residence favors simple, sustainable moves over square footage, and strategically captures views without walls of glass.

The sleeping cabin perches on a rocky rise near the Floating House; Meredith imagines these two as a start of a string of buildings that will wrap around the island.

Whether it’s cross-country skiing in the winter or trail running in the summer, the 330-foot home’s minimalist design encourages Catherine to be outside in the surrounding landscape throughout the year.

In the cobblestoned center of Andermatt, Switzerland, renowned for its skiing, locals Al and Francesca Breach scooped up a cottage dating from 1620 that they hoped to transform into an office with a ground-floor wine bar and guest accommodations. Although it was reimagined for contemporary living, it is graced with inviting old touches, like an original stone oven that still provides heat.