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All Photos/exterior/building type : tiny home

Exterior Tiny Home Design Photos and Ideas

This tiny Ontario cabin features a standing-seam metal roof and pine cladding that pays homage to the property’s main cottage, originally built in the early 1900s.
With a brand-new plan, vibrant decor, and a bright-yellow door, Ghislaine Viñas reinvigorated a 600-square-foot kit house for her family.
A view of the sauna building before the patio and seating were constructed on the other side. The log cabins were constructed by a specialist company, and another builder helped with the interior walls. Jussi-Pekka and his father did all the other building and landscaping work, apart from the electrical and plumbing—often working 12-hour days.
Looking back to the rear of the sauna and guest bedroom from the field. The large windows not only invite the view inside, but also reflect the landscape and allow the built forms to dissolve.
After renting in San Francisco for a decade, DIY couple Molly Fiffer and Jeff Waldman bought 10 acres in the Santa Cruz Mountains, where the pair and their friends built a cabin compound complete with sheds, tree decks, a pavilion, a wood-fired hot tub, an outhouse, and an outdoor shower. The cabin is made from locally sourced, rough-sawn redwood, which the couple stained with nontoxic Eco Wood Treatment to give the panels an aged appearance and a dark patina.
The façade unfolds to reveal the bedroom windows.
Liz and Matt had to drill a well to provide water for the property. Wastewater is captured and treated with a gravity-fed septic system that will also serve the main dwelling, when it’s completed.
A pop of red distinguishes the front door, paired with vertical cedar siding with an ebony stain, and Richlite panels and detailing.
The build team added 25,000 pounds of concrete and lead to ensure ballast, or that the house would be level on the waves. “It’s a tiny home, so you have all the same things you would worry about in a tiny home, but with this added challenge of having to be as stable as possible,” says David.
Completed in just six weeks by Australian practice Archiblox, this modest prefab home is perched atop cliffs with prime views of Avalon Beach, just a short drive away from Sydney. Oriented east to west to maximize cross ventilation, the house is clad in marine-grade Colorbond Ultra steel and Queensland blue gum to protect against the elements.
A Go-Box can be transported to different locations easily, making it an ideal alternative for "van life
Floor-to-ceiling glazing and a linear skylight help welcome the landscape within the cabin’s small footprint.
The exterior’s concrete walls pick up on the tones of the rocks that emerge from the surrounding hillside.
Escape made a splash by launching a property in Tampa Bay filled with its trailers. But you don’t have to live there to own one.
Vagabond Haven's most economical option, the Nature Pod sits on a glulam-beam platform and is framed with Thermowood: pine timber treated with heat to improve its longevity. Asphalt-coated fiberglass shingles are used to line the roof.
Apart from cabins, saunas, and outdoor showers, Iglucraft has also used their hallmark structure to make offices, bars, and detached bathrooms. If none of these quite fit your needs, Iglucraft invites inquiries about bespoke projects.
Norske Mikrohus tells us that demand is growing for their four turnkey tiny home models—but the company cautions against high international shipping costs.
The 275-square-foot LOVT prefab is a feast of crisp millwork, with a modular daybed stacked on drawers and kitchen cabinets with cutouts for pulls.
A family chose MyCabin to construct prefab structures in their home country of Latvia. The prefab structures have space for work, sleep, and relaxation.
The tiny house and eco resort are set on generations-old family land that's remote and completely private so guests are able to unplug immerse themselves in nature.
Madison points out that the pod concept would make it easy to add an extension if necessary. “We see it as a house that can grow with us—and that we can pay for as we go along.”
The wood-wrapped tiny home features a deck pierced by a tree trunk.
Moss-covered boulders at the base of Colorado Camelot tree house helped to inspire the design for the compact structure.
The Perch at sunset.
The steel structure is suspended two feet above the roof of the existing bungalow, supported by four steel columns, one of which screens utility lines running from the Perch to the house below.
Best Practice added a new roof but kept the existing siding. A fresh coat of paint helps the casita pop, and a new window opening next to the entrance frames a new kitchenette inside.
The two tiny homes were designed by CAST Architecture.
The goal was to be able to squeeze a full bathroom, kitchen, living room, storage, as well as a sleeping space that would accommodate a king-sized bed into the cabin's original tiny footprint.
Black-painted window and door frames contrast with the white-painted steel siding and offer a crisp, clean aesthetic for the exterior of the cottage.
Small, simple, yet fully functional, La Casa Nueva is an off-grid timber camper designed by Ecuador-based architect Juan Alberto Andrade. He created the dwelling as a personal retreat for himself and his partner, Cuqui Rodríguez, to travel throughout the country photographing various forms of architecture.
After Ashley Trebitowski spotted a Craigslist ad for a 1999 Bluebird school bus being sold in Ennis, Texas, for $4,400, she and her husband, Brandon, hopped on a flight to check out the vehicle and drove it back to their home in New Mexico. Over the next few months, the couple overhauled the bus for their family of five with a $30,000 DIY renovation.
The rollable wood-clad walls help the retreat further blend into the surrounding nature.
Norske Mikrohus’s latest project, Rast, is a 174-square-foot-home that promises to get you closer to nature.
Phase Two, currently underway, will culminate with 310 additional homes built on another 24 acres.
Phase One of the Community First! Village began in 2014 and resulted in a 27-acre development with 235 homes for people who formerly lacked housing, including one for Jesse Brown, pictured here.
"The composite structure is extraordinarily durable,
The Futuro House is a spaceship-like tiny home originally conceived by Finnish designer Matti Suuronen in 1968 as a portable ski chalet. Today, there are less than 70 Futuros left in existence.
The design for Tind, the new tiny home by Norske Mikrohus, was inspired by the Norwegian mountains and woods and features slow-growing Norwegian spruce for the exterior cladding.
The cabin is available to rent all year long, and only accessible by foot, skis, and snowshoes. Transport carts or sleds are available to bring in gear.
Completed in 2020, this micro-refuge is located lakeside in Poisson Blanc Regional Park, in the Laurentides region of Quebec, Canada. “Is it a hut or a cabin? A tiny home or glamping?” Asks the park’s website, before providing their own cheeky answer: “All of the above.”
The teak front door of the existing house offsets the stone walls, lending warmth and texture.
A second tiny house is set within an existing structure and contains a kitchen, dining area, and bathroom.
This Beverly Hills kitHAUS is comprised of modernist prefab modules that can accommodate a variety of uses: from yoga studios to home offices, and from weekend retreats to pop-up kiosks and guest rooms.
Wild bush, sand dunes, and scrub surround the circular home on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. The Austin Maynard Architects team was careful to minimize the building’s impact on the fragile landscape.
Made of two 40-foot-long shipping containers that are offset from one another, the Model 6 by IndieDwell offers 640 square feet of living space.
The H4 is HONOMOBO’s most efficient shipping container home. At just over 700 square feet, the home has two bedrooms, a living room, a dining room, a full kitchen, and one bathroom.
1. Bigger Doesn't Necessarily Mean Better. This idea is essentially the core tenet of tiny home living—that a large home doesn't always mean it's better or more thoughtfully designed. With tiny homes, every decision has to be based on thoughtful consideration. More often than not, efficiency rules, leading to a well-designed home.
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.
This 195-square-foot, shingled studio includes a library, reading nook, and workstation—and it’s totally DIY. Creative couple Michael and Christina Hara built the retreat just steps away from their back door, in order to carve out "space for creativity and respite from our chaotic, toddler-filled house," as Michael explains. The project, called the Fish Scale Studio, took eight months to complete, with Haras doing all of the design and construction themselves—for just $18,275.
Michael specified that the corner window be mullion-free so sitting in the nook feels like you are outside. "By being immersed on two sides without any real obstructions, you get a sense like you are out there in the natural world, in the yard," he says. "This is a particularly wonderful feeling, especially during our long, snowy Minnesota winters, where we can enjoy the beauty and stillness of the snow but still enjoy the warmth and comfort of being inside."
The couple finished the exterior siding with shingles made of Hardie board and painted a deep purple. "We wanted an exterior cladding that was durable, low-maintenance, and relatively DIY-friendly," says Michael. "When looking at our options at the local hardware store, the fish-scale shape popped because it was unique, quirky, and not super serious—and yet could create a contemporary look through uniformly using it with woven corners and minimal detailing."
With its stucco facade and steel-framed, arched windows, Plaster Fun House is an architectural anomaly amidst the cottages and 1960s brick residences of Torrensville in South Australia.
The couple built the cabin in Poland and eventually moved it to near the shore of Packer Lake in Austria.
The Busches explore the wooded area that surrounds the cabin together. "We love hiking, climbing, and canoeing in nature," Anna says.
Datscha, the 194-square-foot cabin that Anna and Jakob Busch built with the help of family and friends, is clad with spruce siding and capped with a standing-seam metal roof.
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