The new volume houses the dining area, which includes stairs to the bedrooms. The table is from Blake Avenue and the walnut chairs are from Room & Board. “You don’t want bright colors to take away from that relationship between the interior and the exterior,” Walker says.

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.

Soheil steps into the music and screening room, which is concealed behind a masonry-veneered door. “We were able to hide a lot of the square footage below the main level, but not in a way that would hurt the design,” he says.

Designed by Jagoda, the door swings open to fit in front of a bookshelf.

The resident, a Tokyo transplant, commissioned architect Tadashi Murai to create a fully-equipped structure that comes with its own power, heating and cooling, water, and waste-disposal systems.

The more planning you do and the fewer changes you make, the higher chance you have of staying within your budget. Take the time to figure out what the scope of the project is and get a sense of how much work is needed so that you can make educated decisions when presented with options.

Cubic bookshelves do double duty as a dividing wall and as a sliding door opening up to a hidden bath.

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.

Oriented to absorb the afternoon sun, floor-to-ceiling doors comprise two-thirds of the home’s west-facing walls, which open to an elevated deck overlooking Island Bay. Combined with extra-thick building insulation, this passive element provides sufficient heating for the home, even during winter months—a true feat given the region’s cold seasonal winds.

The wood stove is the Rondo model by Rais.

Davor and August check out the yard from the living room. “The bifold Vistalite doors allow us to open the house up completely and enjoy the fresh, warm air,” Davor says.

The front door dissolves into the facade.

Gray-purple iron railings, a fuchsia and green wooden entry, and garage doors provide contrast to the white walls of this Santa Barbara home. Photo by Steven Holmes.

The house captures meadow views, thanks to three large sliding doors by Loewen that lead out to a big deck. “We wanted to hide the view from visitors until you get inside, so it would feel like a surprise when walking in,” Bronee says. “This also gives us the sense of being tucked in and cozy in the winter with a view of the meadow, and in the summer it feels like indoors and outdoors are connected. We live just as much on the deck as we do inside.”

The renovation, which focused on the living-dining-kitchen area, strikes a balance between intimate and inviting, hence the project's name, the Open/Private apartment.

A 13-foot-wide sliding door by Portes Unis St-Michel opens the rear exterior onto a terrace, where the owners spend much of their time. The Series Skyline fireplace by Marquis and movable furniture make the garden an extension of the living space in all seasons.

The Floating Farmhouse’s semitransparent addition has a roofline that matches the pitch of the original 1820s farmhouse. A porch, tucked under the side eaves, is cantilevered over a stream that runs through the property. Ikea loungers are illuminated from the interior by commercial gymnasium lights repurposed as pendant lamps.

The apartment's entryway features a hidden storage wall and media console.

In the newly built media room, lower ceilings and natural wood flooring make for a straightforward character shift. “We always liked John’s minimalism,” adds Dave, and even such slight differentiation ably signals the transition to the home’s more private spaces.

The ultimate luxury: a hot bath in the clawfoot tub, with the fiberglass door open wide to the woods.

Located on the ground floor, the family room has a large barn door that can be closed to create a guest suite for visitors.

The living room and dining room were originally separated by a central fireplace, which interior designer Nicole Hollis removed to create this great room. She installed a modern, custom eight-foot-long open gas fireplace in the living room, equipped with sensors that automatically turn it off when someone gets too near to the flames.

The subway tile-lined bathroom was kept as simple as possible, with Hansgrohe fixtures and cabinets made of vertical-grain Douglas fir above a top-mounted Duravit sink. Since installing a window was unfeasible given the bathroom's proximity to other properties, Storey added a skylight over the shower.

A beloved Japanese tradition is to char exterior cladding to make it fire resistant. Here, the effect on the front door is likely more aesthetic than preventative—though you can never be too careful.

Linda Taalman and Alan Koch, of Taalman Koch Architects, completed work on their glass iT House, a lovely, minimal home that tests the limits of living lightly on the land in the desert near Joshua Tree National Park. The bath and basin in the bathroom are by Duravit, and the orange wall is by Three Form.

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

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A double-height space encompasses the kitchen, dining and living area, and features 36-feet-wide glass doors that pocket into southern and northern walls.

In the sleek kitchen, the white Ikea cabinet uppers seem to disappear into the wall, while the bases get a distinctive custom walnut wrapping. Flanking the cabinets are open bookshelves, which provide secondary function as a spacial divider for the children’s play area. A Dornbracht faucet sits on a slab of Vermont Olympian White Danby marble, which is also used for the island and backsplash.

A calming vibe is immediately instilled at the entry.

The new kitchen opens out completely and magnificently into a sloping garden. There is no wall, no door, no windows, nothing: just straight out into the yard.

A palette of stone, concrete, and greenery greets guests at the home’s front entrance.

In order to maximize light, even the upper section of the bathroom walls are transparent, meaning anyone taking a shower can be seen from the living room, but only from the neck up.

The door to Eoghan Mahony’s office is set on a caster and has a hinge that runs the entire ten-foot height.