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Dwell's Favorite Home Design Ideas and Photos

Large sliding doors fully enable indoor/outdoor living.
Rather than opting for the schematic, open-plan design of the renovated Queensland worker's cottage, the formalized living, sitting, and dining areas are compartmentalized; each room is dedicated to their function.
Dusty built the half-pipe for their son Gram's first birthday. It's the cornerstone of the large back yard.
Firewood is neatly stacked in a built-in storage space on the south side of the home.
The sauna-like bathroom is made of cedar and features fixtures from VOLA.
Architecture firm NADAAA planned a striated addition to a brick neo-Georgian house in Boston with the owners’ primary goal in mind: to engage with the outdoors year-round. The walls of the rear kitchen and living space are virtually all glass, allowing sight lines to the existing gardens and new pool house through a series of framed vignettes onto the backyard landscape. The glass box is bookended by uniform “fins” that mark the edge of each picture window, as shown here. Photo by John Horner.
The bathroom includes a walk-in tub.
Child's bedroom with custom cabinetry and reading nook
Positioned for stellar outdoor views, the screened porch features concrete floors, a cedar ceiling, natural fir posts, and midcentury chairs.
The home is approached from the south with views of Hood Canal below.
The courtyard at the center of the house opens up to the sky.
The A45 is outfitted with a petite kitchen designed by Københavns Møbelsnedkeri.
A Whistler A-Frame | British Columbia, Canada Scott & Scott Architects design an outdoorsy Vancouver family’s dream cabin
A covered walkway provides a sheltered passage between the main house and studio. The fire pit is used during social gatherings.
The new kitchen borrowed space and light from the original courtyard. The spirit of the courtyard remains with the buffer between the kitchen and the exterior wall. The cabinets are from Ikea, the countertops are quartzite, and the grill top is from Bertazzoni.
The front door is tucked under a cantilevered terrace.
The original house opens completely to the repaved pool deck, which leads to the upstairs addition. "Working on the house had only increased our respect for Neutra, whom we had always admired greatly," says Grueneisen. "So we knew that any major additions would have to be respectful to his design."
Trout Lake | Olson Kundig
The family room is situated at the apex of the house, with picturesque views that extend up the meticulously landscaped north slope. The concrete floor sits just low enough that the main elements of the scene—the succulent garden and large limestone ledges—are at eye level. A bank of NanaWall folding windows breaks up the fourth wall.
The interiors of the main living area are furnished with top quality finishing.
“The home is quite small, but designed in such a way that you don’t feel it,” Herrin says. Lift-slide openings by Quantum Windows & Doors, which were fabricated fewer than 50 miles from the house, make the main living space seem larger.
Resident Peter Østergaard (with Maja, 6, and Carl, 20 months) and architect and photographer Jonas Bjerre-Poulsen have been best friends since they were 13, which makes for easy collaboration. Says Bjerre-Poulsen: “There are always a lot of challenges in a renovation, but Peter and Åsa trusted my judgment and gave me a completely free hand. Usually it’s hard to push people into unconventional solutions, but Peter has all these wild and crazy ideas.” One such idea was to embed a transparent glass-and-iron door in the floor, operated by a hydraulic pump, which allows access to the subterranean wine cellar. At night, the lit-up cellar glows, lending the compact living room an increased sense of verticality.
In the kitchen, a custom composite dining table is paired with bright plastic Ikea chairs. Crasset’s Evolute pendant lights for Danese Milano, with origami-esque folded shades in maple veneer, hang above.
The kitchen is outfitted with a built-in refrigerator by Norcool and an AEG cooktop and oven.
Entry Courtyard
The eating and sleeping quarters have settled easily onto the shores of Shoal Lake.
The living lounge, dining and kitchen are located within the larger of the two volumes.
The bathrooms are inspired by spa chambers and include Japanese-style soaking tubs.
In lieu of a checkerboard effect, Kovel kept his carpet squares all vibrantly verdant. With the bamboo cabinets and countertops the whole space has a pastoral feel. “I wanted it to be like the Bradys’ backyard,” he says.
The facade will go gray and silver natural, so its verticality, texture and colors will blend in with the vertical tree trunks of the forest.
The Opdahl House, designed by Edward Killingsworth for Richard and Joyce Opdahl, is located on the island of Naples, in Long Beach, California, and the design responds to the constraints imposed by the compact site.Unlike the neighbors, whose homes unflinchingly abut their property lines, Killingsworth set the Opdahl House 42 feet back from the street, dedicating half of the lot to a dramatic entryway that includes a carport, garden, and reflecting pool. The effect is one of entering a private sanctuary.
Colourful furnishings animate the space. Thonet armchair, Jardan Nook lounge and Hay side tables provide a comfortable, deliberately low key setting.
Exterior of Pink House from the street. The entryway is recessed to enhance the spatial notion of soild and void.
The design allows each volume to assert its independence while interacting with the other buildings in a rhythmic sequence.
The exterior of the house consists of sandblasted masonry and Ferrari shade sails stretched on a steel frame.
The house comprises a series of modules, with the main living areas occupying the center and the master bedroom on the right. A large deck juts off the living room.
The low windows in the master bedroom focus the view on the backyard, not the neighbors. Christopher designed the solid poplar platform bed.
Located off of the kitchen, Vivi’s office disappears behind sliding walls covered in black chalkboard paint from Behr.
Front view of the FlatPak House in Minneapolis, Minnesota. When the architect first told his wife about his idea, she said, “It’s about time you focus on a house for me!” He continues, “It’s like the old story about the cobbler whose kids have no shoes.”
Front facade
Windows transcend floor levels to discretely frame views of the surrounding neighborhood, offering slices of the vistas beyond.
Tosdevin says Miele has always been an easy fit for him and his clients, and sites the appliances’ longevity as a big factor. “Dealing with companies you trust and that stand behind their product make business more pleasurable.”
Architect Lorcan O’Herlihy created a residence for himself and his wife, Cornelia, in Venice, California.
In the outdoor dining room, wire chairs by Harry Bertoia for Knoll surround a mango wood table made by a local carpenter, Diego Madrazo.
The courtyard is just one of many open spaces that will be highly utilized—in the non-winter months anyway. Concrete worked well with developing the language of FlatPak. The second level is a wood panel that can be clad in corrugated metal or cedar—different layers that can be plugged in like covers on your cellphone.
Marco V. Morelli says his Studio Shed is the perfect refuge. “It’s changed my life for the better,” he says. “I’ve gotten so much more work done, and I think my marital relations are much better because I have a place of my own.”
A departure from the mod-meets-baroque dining room, Turin’s breakfast area is far more sedate. She and her daughter, Helena, have a chat at a Progetto 1 table by Monica Armani for B&B Italia surrounded by four Lia chairs by Roberto Barbieri for Zanotta. The painting behind Helena is by Ricci Albenda.
A vintage stool, a design that once was a staple of Greek classrooms, is tucked under the office desk on a landing leading to a balcony. The visual theme of the vertical wooden slats repeats itself here, including on a closet door. “They have no handles,” Ritenour says of the closet doors. “The lines are the door handles; you have to know to grab them.”
In the dining room, a Smoke chair by Marten Baas for Moooi keeps company with a glass-and-ceramic vase by Hella Jongerius and a mirrored steel painting by artist Michelangelo Pistoletto.
"My dogma is inspired by a Japanese saying that an object gets its energy from three different elements: the material it is made out of, the person who made it, and the people who cared for it," says Mette. The cabins have been built of wood carried through the forest.
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Dwell's favorite photos of modern homes and design ideas. From midcentury gems, prefabricated units, and eye-opening renovations, to shipping container construction and custom trailers and campers, these projects display the best from Dwell Magazine and submitted by the Dwell community. Here, you'll find ideas for every room in the house, whether it be kitchen, bath, bedroom, living, or dining—and beyond.