Six-inch-square blue tiles cover the walls and floor of the girls’ upstairs bathroom. The towels and rug are also by H&M Home.

"How would a kid draw a house?" architect Per Franson asked himself when designing the Olivero-Reinius family home. The simple prefab structure’s unusual color comes from a traditional source: falu rödfärg, the historic mineral paint that gives the region’s famous barns their red color.

A Simple Plan A Marmol Radziner–designed prefab house, trucked onto a remote Northern California site, takes the pain out of the construction process.

kitHAUS prides itself on its stylish, modern prefabs that are built on-site by a team of company employees. Their patented aluminum system takes only a few days to construct, and the homes boast superior energy efficiency, owing to insulated floors, walls, and ceilings as well as glazed doors and windows.

Franson Wreland also designed the court-yard and a pair of 160-square-foot outbuildings—one is used as guest quarters and the other as storage space. While residents Julia and Fatima Olivero-Reinius chat outdoors, Chippie the dog approaches an Asplund desk and a chair by LucidiPevere.

Outside, Kartell Masters chairs surround a Tom Dixon Screw table.

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.

Michael Benjamin Lerner of the band Telekinesis collaborated with local prefab builder NODE to build a 392-square-foot DADU in Lerner’s Seattle backyard. The builder took care of design, permitting, site prep, and the foundation and framing. Michael tackled the finish work.

With little to no permitting required because of its small size, Sett Studio units can be used for an extra bedroom, a yoga studio, a hydroponics growing area or an office space, like this 96-square-foot one shown here.

Clad in Western red cedar siding and punctuated with floor-to-ceiling windows, this minimalist two-bedroom home boasts sunrise views over the Sonoma hills.

Heating for the unit is provided by a Spartherm fireplace, with electric heating integrated into the magnesite floor. Walls are insulated with fire-tested wool felt under plywood panels.

The L-shaped secondary building perches over a craggy escarpment. It offers the best vantage point for taking in the moss-planted roof, forest, and ocean.

It takes three to five days to install a Vipp Shelter onsite.

Architect Jesse Garlick’s rural Washington vacation home references its rugged surroundings. The steel cladding has developed a patina similar to the ochre-red color of bedrock found in the area.

NOEM, a Barcelona–based architecture firm, created a metal-clad house for a young client just outside Madrid. It’s raised 12 feet off the ground to offer better views of the landscape, lending it "the futuristic feeling that it just landed," says Pol Guiu, one of NOEM’s cofounders.

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.

Upstairs, each daughter’s bedroom was designed as a sanctuary, with cozy touches like Simon Key Bertman quilts and cushions. The bed and Pile bedside table by Jessica Signell Knutsson sit on top of a Carpet Honeycomb by designer Maria Löw.

Simpatico Homes founder Seth Krubiner has lived in the prefab company’s nearly net-zero prototype since it was customized and lifted onsite in 2011.

A narrow building next to the main structure houses storage and an outdoor kitchen.

Burnt cedar, Japanese cypress plywood, and mortar create a trio of contrasting yet simple surface textures that breathe a relaxed vibe into the Muji Hut.

In the dining area, Splügen Bräu pendant lamps for Flos hang over a Super-Elliptical table by Piet Hein and Bruno Mathsson for Fritz Hansen.

The Minimod by MAPA of Montevideo, Uruguay, is a primitive refuge with a modern twist.

In the master bedroom, a Hästens bed is atop a Mats Broberg & Johan Ridderstråle rug.

Floor-to-ceiling windows allow for an intimate connection with outdoor spaces.

Zebra-print cushion covers from H&M Home and a pair of tables by Patricia Urquiola for B&B Italia provide a colorful counterpoint to the neutral palette of the living area’s B&B Italia sofa and Pernilla 69 armchairs by Bruno Mathsson for Dux. A Lotta Döbling painting from Domeij Gallery hangs on the wall.

The second floor holds three bedrooms and a living area for the girls. Here, Paula, 11, and Sofia, 9, hang out near an IKEA PS 2012 sofa by Nike Karlsson. The slatted wall at left allows a view to the downstairs.

The exterior is wrapped in cement fiber boards with a Cembrit patina finish. Due to a lack of onshore infrastructure, a big challenge of the project was the addition of self-contained sewage and clear water tanks.

The Hammerfest Cabin is perched high atop a rocky slope.

The small cabin's cross-laminated timber (CLT) shell, composed of 72 unique wooden panels, is designed to withstand severe arctic storms and heavy wind conditions.

The interiors are lined with OSB Poplar wood, and insulated with 12cm of recycled cotton.

Estonian design collective Kodasema launched this 269-square-foot micro-home, which can be built in less than a day.

According to Remijnse, since the only direction they could build on the small site was up, they decided to add height with a gabled roof.

The new, semi-custom PreMade mobile units can be used in a variety of applications.

Red ALPOLIC aluminum composite panels have been used for the exterior cladding.

Photo by Patrick Barta

Christopher: Olalla, Washington, is a small rural community on the Kitsap Peninsula accessible to Seattle via ferry, or a long drive through Tacoma. We're about one mile from Puget Sound, one mile from a freshwater lake and a few miles from a popular sailing harbor. We're Olympic Peninsula adjacent, and, most importantly, we are less than 45 minutes from Amy's favorite oyster farm in the Hood Canal, Hama Hama. In addition to a family of deer, dozens of birds, and hundreds of frogs, our property is also home to occasional wandering coyotes and a very strange-looking creature that Amy has convinced herself is a chupacabra. There are cougars and black bears in the area as well, but thank God we haven't eyeballed them yet. Amy: For us, the primary driver for us to move from Los Angeles and abandon our urban existence was our love of the property.