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All Photos/exterior/building type : tiny home/building type : cabin

Exterior Tiny Home Cabin Design Photos and Ideas

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.
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.
A family chose MyCabin to construct prefab structures in their home country of Latvia. The prefab structures have space for work, sleep, and relaxation.
Moss-covered boulders at the base of Colorado Camelot tree house helped to inspire the design for the compact structure.
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.
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.
The rollable wood-clad walls help the retreat further blend into the surrounding nature.
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 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.
Anna and Jakob Busch enlist the help of loved ones to construct a spruce-wrapped tiny home for $35,000.
At night, the large window in the dining area creates a lantern-like effect for the cabin.
An expansive wood deck on the front facade extends the living space and creates an indoor/outdoor experience.
The blackened timber–clad cabin that arba designed in Longueil, Normandy, France, is marked by large glass doors, layered with wood slats that slide open and connect the home to its lush landscape.
With its emphasis on the outdoors, the petite shelter in Normandy offers room to roam.
Winkelman Architecture delivers grown-up summer-camp vibes with this unassuming retreat on the coast of Maine.
On Bainbridge Island, Jim and Hannah Cutler created a cabin for reading and working. Sited just steps from the main house, it’s a welcoming retreat that the father and daughter share.
The Bracy Cottage — Front Facade
The Bracy Cottage — Front Facade
Fed up with modern-day society’s obsessive pursuit of things rather than lived experiences, Michael Lamprell, the designer of this cabin in Adelaide, Australia, set out to create an antidote to what he quips is a “craziness we’ve brought upon ourselves.” In 160 square feet, CABN Jude includes space for a king-size bed, toilet, shower, heater, two-burner kitchen stove, full-size sink, and fridge. The interior is clad with light-colored wood, which helps to enhance the sense of space. Large windows bring plenty of natural light, while the clever design means everything the resident needs is within easy reach.
The firm wanted the materiality of the cabin to be "in harmony with the site," says Shaw. "So, that over time, the building could weather gracefully and the site around it would change, and they would do so in tandem."
The materials were kept simple: a foundation of board-formed concrete that reveals the wood grain of the boards used to make it, Cor-Ten steel siding that will develop a characterful patina, and rafters made of hemlock, a local species. "In terms of materials, we wanted the full exterior of the building to be something that would weather gracefully, that required very little maintenance, and that had a long life cycle," says Shaw.
Sited on a rock ledge, the Far Cabin’s screened porch cantilevers over the forest floor for a tree house effect.
The Far Cabin by Winkelman Architecture is set on the forested coast of Maine.
A tiny outbuilding offers a cozy living space inside a simple shell.
The exterior of Site Shack is covered in steel panels that are bolted to the framing. Look closely and you won’t see any visible fasteners, as Powers Construction’s welder was fastidious, creating a seamless shell with just steel and glass.
Ryan McLaughlin watches the sunset from the deck of the 160-square-foot tiny home he built, with no prior experience, at his parents’ horse ranch in Georgetown, Texas. Soon, the trailer-mounted cabin will be moved to a vineyard, where it will operate grid-free and be available to rent for short stays.
Sustainability and forward-thinking architectural techniques merge in this experimental tiny cabin clad in 3D-printed tile.
Measuring only 180 square feet, this exquisite, off-grid tiny home features a big sense of style.
The Nook exterior features shiplap cypress siding, a reclaimed oak deck, and an entranceway of oak blackened in the traditional Japanese method.
Immerso Glamping, a 65-square-foot prefab structure designed by Italian architects Fabio Vignolo and Francesca Turnaturi, is located in the Piedmont region of Italy. With a simple palette of birch plywood and plexiglass, the cabin was inspired by the architects’ experience designing easy-to-assemble, flat-packed cabins for disaster relief. You can book it on Airbnb for around $90.
The cabin and back deck are cantilevered over a slope in the property.
Koto’s charred-timber workspace is an exercise in wabi-sabi design that embraces imperfection amid the natural world. The carbon-neutral structure is built from natural materials, and it can operate both on- and off-grid.
The cabin rests on the grounds of the New Art Centre in Salisbury, England, where it joins a multitude of sculptural artworks.
The cabin appears to shift shape when viewed from each new angle.
Generous glazing comprises an entire side of the cabin, providing uninterrupted views of the surrounding landscape.
“The distinctive geometric form took hours of meticulous detailing to create,” says Koto.
The angular, wood-paneled, "Dune" cabins are self-sufficient tiny houses that can comfortably sleep six guests. They come with a kitchenette, full bathroom, and an outdoor patio with a fire pit and picnic table.
The 1.5-kilometer road leading to the cabin is well maintained, although Dignard cautions against low-suspension vehicles, and recommends good winter tires for access.
On one side of the A-frame, an empty volume tucked beneath the sloping roofline creates a sheltered porch with a hammock. Homes in Le Maelström are intended to be eco-friendly. La Cabin is off-grid and powered with solar panels.
La Cabin Ride & Sleep sits on an 11-acre parcel in Le Maelström, a vacation community in the town of Lac-Beauport, in Quebec.
Both ÖÖD Iceland houses have a hot tub at the front overlooking the spectacular scenery. “This makes the experience even more surreal,” says CEO Andreas Tiik.
The glass front half of the cabin blurs boundaries between interior and exterior and completely immerses guests in the dramatic surroundings.
The cabins overlook the Hekla volcano, one of Iceland’s most active volcanoes. It is part of a 25-mile-long volcanic ridge, and during the Middle Ages it was referred to by Europeans as the "Gateway to Hell.”
The two cabins are named Freya and Alva, and feature the runes for “F” and “A” on the exterior timber wall. Signs from Nordic mythology are also found on the back of the houses. “The viking elements and the runes help the cabins fit into Icelandic history,” says CEO Andreas Tiik.
The harsh local climate—including strong winds and acid rain caused by the volcanic landscape—was a particular challenge. The cabin features a copper roof, which is one of the few materials that can cope with acid rain.
Two cabins sit in the vast, empty landscape overlooking the Hekla volcano, around three hours’ drive from Reykjavík. The front part of each cabin—for sleeping—is almost entirely glass, while the rear—where the living, kitchen and bathroom spaces are located—is clad in timber for privacy.
ÖÖD offers a range of “mirror houses”—tiny prefab cabins that are often used as guest houses, countryside getaways, and Airbnb accommodations. So far they’ve built projects in 12 different countries, including Estonia, Finland, and Norway. The ÖÖD Iceland home is a bespoke design, based on the clients’ wishes and strict local building requirements. These impacted everything from the dwelling’s structural properties and energy efficiency to the pitched roof.
The mirrored box disappears into the hillside, reflecting the dense foliage.
The roughly 160-square-foot modules, dubbed Mini House 2.0, were built in collaboration with Swedish manufacturer Sommarnöjen, and are delivered flat-packed. The homes are painted wood, and include a shaded deck space, plus full insulation and electricity, for a price of about $29,000. The modules come in various layouts, and can be configured and combined to include a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and living space.
In the woods of Malborghetto Valbruna in the Italian Dolomite commune of Tarvisio reside a pair of egg-shaped tree houses.
"I get my design inspiration from cabins of the past, from the world of fantasy both in movies and books, and in that childlike part of my imagination that I’m continually trying to preserve," says designer and builder Jacob Witzling, who crafts one-of-a-kind tiny homes, using salvaged scraps from local lumber mills and building sites, as well as materials found in nature. Witzling’s design for a 135-square-foot cabin with an octagonal base and an octagonal pyramid roof was built with plenty of help from his lifelong friend Wesley Daughenbaugh. Each of the designer’s creations are built off the electric grid, instead powered by a 12-volt D/C system using deep cycle batteries. Drinking, cooking, and bathing water is collected from a well, and a composting toilet is located in a separate outhouse structure.
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