The kids room is outfitted with built-in bunk beds.

The upper two levels of the home are set back from the street, increasing privacy and allowing light to flow uninhibited from the front clerestory window into the communal living spaces. On the top floor, the children's bedrooms are strategically veiled from the street by the slatted reflector screen.

The sliding doors to the deck are made by Dynamic Architectural Windows & Doors and the sofa, on which Chapoton and Buser sit is from Dellarobbia.

Debbi Gibbs’s son Blake had one primary design requirement: bunk beds. Specifically, he wanted "two sets of single bunks, one on each side, with a bridge over the top." Gibbs says the Venetian-style arched bridge connecting the two beds exceeded her expectations: "I was expecting a flat platform, but our builder decided to take Blake’s request (to connect them) and made him his very own Bridge of Sighs."

On the second floor, the sliding door to one of the kids’ bedrooms lies flush with a cork-wrapped wall. In the bedroom, a colorful custom Maharam window shade rests above a window seat with a Kvadrat cushion.

Architect Bruce Bolander made the most of a limited footprint in a house he designed in a Malibu canyon. With the small bedroom unable to accommodate any "normal" size desk, the architect designed a very thin custom steel desk where resident Heidi Wright works. The floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors from Metal Window Corporation open the entire corner of the room up to the outdoors. “The mountains across the way are almost like another wall—they contain the space to the point that you feel like you’re in a much bigger space, that you’re part of the overall landscape,” says Bolander. Photo by J Bennett Fitts.

Nate’s Bedroom Now three, Nate occupies coveted corner real estate in a third-floor room with a treetop-level view. “It’s a great space,” Casale says, “although it is the noisiest room in the house because of the street. But by now he’s so used to sleeping through all of the sounds, I don’t think it bothers him.” The brightness of the space is enhanced by an accent wall coated in fire engine–red chalkboard paint (Benjamin Moore Natura flat-finish paint in Vermillion mixed with unsanded grout) that Nate can scribble on—as soon as his parents get around to telling him that it’s allowed. A matching red pendant lamp from the Soho shop Kiosk hangs above a six-foot-tall teepee by Dexton Kids.

The Tower House is made up of tiny houses, clustered at the southern end of the property and clad in white steel panels and western red cedar shingles. Spinning off the living room on the north side of the main house, the children’s study sits separate from the other pavilions. On its upper level, Oxley netting forms a web on which the kids and their friends can sit and read with views of the leafy street and garden.

The top floor of the two-story, 1,614-square-foot abode barely pokes above the rocky hillside it’s built into. Sliding glass walls on two sides of the main living space open to expansive cantilevered decks showcasing the bucolic landscape.

“It’s a great house for a young family—playful, practical and different,” Tribe says. “You can sit on the windowsill in the sun and feed the baby, kids can climb in and out, often through the windows, and you can see everything that is going on.”

Now UC It In the kids’ rooms, the couple has made fine use of UC Santa Cruz dorm furniture—beds, armoires, and desks have gotten a second life off-campus, and Tershy and Zavaleta report that after enduring years of freshmen, the pieces ably stand up to their kids. Outside the upstairs office, an old couch holds court on a small balcony with great views to the south.

Salminen built the bunk beds out of birch, Finland’s most plentiful tree species, for the couple’s children.

A nine-foot-tall door covered with quarter-inch white oak slides along a ceiling rail and can be moved with just a finger to close off Don and Lisa’s kitchen or bedroom. Made of wood and metal, and welded onsite, the door moves along 400-pound-capacity rollers by McMaster-Carr. A matching sliding door opposite hides a storage area. “Because of their size, the doors had to be made inside,” says Don, who did the job himself. mcmaster.com

Henry and Emily share a bedroom and a bunkbed made by Ducduc, an American furniture company. Thanks to panel doors that slide into the walls, the bedrooms balance privacy with openness to the rest of the house. With a guestroom and trundle beds in the kids’ rooms, the 1,357-square-foot house can easily sleep four adults and five children—more if people crash on the couches.

The sliding doors to a deck are by the Canadian company Dynamic Architectural Windows & Doors.

“People should choose objects for their home with passion, love, and emotion. You must give your interior some time to grow with your experiences. Let it be a combination of important discoveries from your own life.” —Resident Veerle Wenes

“Creating efficient space is valuable, but for us, rooms that offer visual and spatial continuity with nature are also important,” architect Julie Dowling explains. “When the sliding doors are open, the living room and kitchen double in size.”

Overhead, a 102-square-foot skylight fills the interior with daylight that streams through the catamaran net, where Ulla lounges.

The kitchen opens to the elements thanks to sliding doors from C.R. Laurence. The anigre in the kitchen is the same employed in the master bedroom.

At a seaside New Zealand house, the simple kitchen has strandboard cabinetry and an MDF island that conceals a fireplace at one end. The bright green cabinetry of the island are a happy pop of color that references the native greenery outside.

Encourage your imaginative niece, nephew, neighbor, sibling, or child to grow their creativity and curiosity with these fun-filled gifts.

Eliminating the deck and the small rooms off the terrace created a unified living space that extends between inside and out. For continuity throughout, the flooring is irregular slabs of marble with an antiqued finish. A linear drainage system was installed with the embedded track for the glass doors.

Sliding doors cast shadows across the concrete floor.

Have your children help you go through their book collections and pick out what books they haven't read yet. If you are able to safely leave your home, you can coordinate curbside dropoff book exchanges with friends.

More custom bookshelves in an upstairs sitting room, cleverly inserted into the villa's extant niches.

The main feature of twins Merle and Anine’s shared bedroom is a massive modern dollhouse, built by their dad for their second birthday.

Canary yellow doors keep the house from feeling austere. The sliding function also saves space.

To further connect the indoor spaces with the New England landscape outside, glass walls in the living and dining areas slide open to eliminate the barriers between indoors and outdoors. Green slate tiles compose the flooring inside.

Suzanne and Brooks Kelley at the back of their 1,100-square-foot guest cottage.

While modern in style, Heva channels the beauty of nature.

This writer’s studio features ample lighting and carefully chosen windows and openings—essential elements of an uplifting she shed or other outbuildings.