Tiny Home

A typical Lake|Flato Porch House can be completed in approximately 12 months with construction costs running from $300 to $350 per square foot.

The 4.9-foot overhanging eaves shelter the walkway and shade the interiors in the summer.

The weeHouse exteriors are clad in corrugated Cor-Ten, but with a custom pattern of folds to create an organic randomness. The foundations were designed with a shallow recess around the top to make the modules look like they’re hovering. After they bought the property in early 2014, the Siegels camped there for two summers while they saved up money and planned a permanent structure. In his research, BJ came across this design, a customizable prefab house by Alchemy Architects. "Of all the things that I found, I was drawn to that one because it was absolutely the simplest and cleanest," he says.

The living room extends into the great outdoors with a spruce deck.

The fully autonomous haus.me is powered entirely by solar energy and features an air-to-water generator hooked up to a purification system, as well as a bioactive sewage system for treating black water.

The Rumspringa is clad with wood siding and a galvanized metal roof.

Fern the bus and Mande on the road in the Badlands.

Dubbed Small But Fine, a student-built 280-square-foot cabin in Finland connects with the outdoors and features a minimal footprint. Not pictured is a detached outhouse with a composting toilet.

The home was designed as much for outdoor living as it was for indoor living, with a large porch around the home.

You can buy just about anything on Amazon these days, from mundane household necessities to garish novelty items—and now, there are even DIY kits to help you construct your own tiny guest house, shed, office, or lounge. Take a look at the prefabricated units Amazon has to offer, and get ready to upgrade your backyard.

Perched quietly on the dunes of New Zealand’s Coromandel Peninsula, Hut on Sleds serves as a small, sustainable beach retreat for a family of five.

Topped with solar panels, the gabled prefab is equipped with 12-foot-tall aluminum security gates that keep the dwelling secure when not in use.

The Buster is a customizable home by Build Tiny, a family-owned business in Katikati, New Zealand. The compact dwelling features a lofty living space, plenty of natural light, and a surprising amount of storage. Sheathed in two-tone corrugated metal, the home can be ordered either finished or unfinished. The basic shell starts at around $35,382, while a turn-key version is priced at $65,228.

After two years at sea with their family of five, a couple continues their tiny house lifestyle by renovating a rundown Airstream.

Whether they downsized for financial freedom, more mobility, or a simpler lifestyle, all tiny home dwellers reduced their ecological footprint, the study showed.

Full-height sliding glass doors bring a sense of the outdoors into the home.