Who says size is everything?
We’ve assembled a great collection of the tiniest houses we could find on the internet. Despite their size, these homes are fully functional and often have enough space for an entire family. It takes some creative architecture to squeeze comfortable living spaces out of these small homes but I’m sure you’ll agree they are functional, modern and despite their size, cozy!
The Micro Compact Home
The micro compact home is a lightweight compact home for one or two people. Its compact 2.6 m3 dimensions adapt it well to a variety of sites and circumstances. It has functioning sleeping spaces, working/dining rooms, cooking as well as washroom make it suitable for everyday use.
Hit next to browse our gallery of the worlds smallest houses!
The Commdesign House
Satoshi Kurosaki/Apollo Architects & Associates
While many of Japan’s architects are only sporadically confronted with the country’s tight constraints, Satoshi Kurosaki thrives on them. This young architect has designed and built nearly 20 small homes since establishing Apollo Architects & Associates in 2000.
The Fresh Start House
The ‘Fresh Start’ home by Martin House-To-Go is a mobile that home fits on a standard trailer. The home has a kitchen, bathroom, bed room and lots of windows. The home was originally designed by Julie Martin, a New Orleans resident who lost her home in Hurricane Katrina. I’d live here!
The Tumblewwed Tiny House Company
After living in his own tiny house, Jay Shafer founded the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company to provide a range of tiny house options.
The company now sells homes and house plans that range in size from 65 sq. Ft. To over 700 sq. Ft. Shaffer tours the United States in his mobile tiny home advertising the tiny home lifestyle while showing off his own house. The majority of Tumbleweed’s homes are mobile, and fit on flat truck beds but they also offer three types, which are designed to be placed on a foundation. While most of the company’s homes are designed in an American cottage style they have also produced the minimalist ‘z glass style.
Blue Sky Mod Prefabricated Homes
Geared towards the vacation home market, Blue Sky Mod offers a variety of pre-fab home plans. The range of plans allows the consumer to pick the right size for them. All of the homes share a similar modernist aesthetic, with simple lines and lots of wood. The homes are designed by Todd Saunders to have the smallest impact on the environment by using local recycled materials and manufacturing.
The Eco Shed
The Eco-Shed is a sustainable design shed created in Bowen Island in British Columbia, Canada by James Alave.
The 280 sq. Ft. building serves as a hotel and features a fully functional, kitchen, bathroom as well as a large living area.
Sustain Design Studio’s Mini Home
The mini home is a concept created by Sustain Design Studio to bring the mobile home market to a higher level. The home is on wheels, but it’s perfectly suited for staying in one place for an extended period of time.
The pre-fab units come in a many sizes and configurations. Its modernist design and rich materials make it the perfect choice for a high end RV.
The Hermit’s Cabin
Arvesund is a Swedish company which manufactures and produces the hermit’s cabin. The dwelling is just one room with one single bed and a kitchen. The company has built multiple prototypes in Sweden where visitors can stay and they also ship the homes around the world. They also produce the special stove and water heating system in the house.
Williams Cabin
Architect Stephen Atkinson designed this minimalist cabin for a client living in Durango, Colorado.
The white house features a kitchen, bathroom and open concept living area that holds the home’s wood stove. The front of the Williams Cabin has a covered patio which is the same size as the home’s interior.
The Wee House
The Wee House is a tiny house concept by Alchemy Architects and comes in many iterations
The studio has built 11 Wee Houses in a variety of sizes, all of which are, well, wee. The plans are customized for the client and pre manufactured and shipped to the
location. The smallest wee house is only 341 sq. Ft. and comes with a wood stove and full kitchen.
Adding a bathroom and separate bedroom increases the size to 348 sq. Ft.
Yurts
Yurts are nomadic tent structures used in Asia and parts of the Middle East by nomadic tribes.
Yurts are now also being used in other parts of the world. Yurts are circular homes which completely disassemble and can be transported.
A wooden structure is used to hold up the tarp, which acts a roof and walls. Equipped with a small wood-burning stove, the Yurt is a great, but small, home.
Don’t they look happy?
The Sculpt[it] Headquarters
With a space just 2.4m wide, there is no choice other than going ups: four stories, stacked tightly between two buildings, each section with four different living/working spaces. On the ground floor, the office, on the second floor, the dining room, on the third floor, the living room and the fourth floor, the bedroom.
Modesty had to be taken into consideration as the entire front of the building is glazed and visible to the outside world. The building is a light art installation for passers by.
Port-A-Bach
Housed in a shipping container, the Port-A-Bach is a fold out home that expands when the container’s side and front are expanded and unfolded. Despite its size, the home has all the necessary amenities and still manages to keep it’s space as open as possible. Not only can the unit be shipped to its location, it can also be loaded back onto a truck with disassembling it.
Truly a mobile home!
Holyoke Cabin
Built by joining two shipping containers (spot a trend?), this cabin can house up to 4 occupants. The designers salvaged the shipping containers and connected them together to increase the living area. One of the containers houses the home’s
living room and includes a wood burning stove.
The Mobile Dwelling Unit
With a shipping container as its heart, The Mobile Dwelling unit by Lot-Ek, uses a series of protrusions to add space to the home. The New York City based studio of Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano have designed the space so that the container remains open and the modules serve as its functions. One acts as an eating area while the kitchen and bathroom are in others. If the home needs to be moved, the modules can slide back into the container.
The Studiomama Beach Chalet
London, England based designer Nina Tolstrup designed this very small beach house
at a mere 388 sq. Ft.
The amazingly tiny structure manages to fit a living and dining area, two bedrooms, a bathroom and kitchen. It is built on a set of galvanized steel stilts to protect it from flooding. The exterior has cedar shingles and the interior used softwood. The rear end of the house is stepped down making room for a sleeping loft above. The front features a large window, which looks out onto the sea and a small sitting deck.
The World’s Narrowest House
Located in Madre De Deus in Brazil, this home is tiny!
Helenita Aueiroz Grave Minho is the owner and builder of the world’s narrowest house. The home is only 1m at the front and slowly expands out towards the back. The home has 2 living rooms, a kitchen, bathroom and 3 bedrooms.
I like minimal but this might be a tad too small for me.
Amsterdam’s Skinny Houses
I got to see some of these on a recent trip to Amsterdam (as well as some other things not suitable for this post).
You might not know that Amsterdam is known for its skinny homes. The reason why the city has so man of these narrow homes is because at one point in its history, the government charged builders based on the front width of their home. A few builders took things extremes by building homes only as wide as the front door. While the front may be small these homes are usually of normal Amsterdam size inside. And beautiful.
Toronto’s Tiny Home!
This tiny house sits on a street of regular sized homes. Built in 1912, this house has about 300 sq. ft of space and is about 6 ft. wide. Over the years the home has housed many families of various sizes. Despite it’s size, this Canadian home has all the necessary amenities and a basement too.
If you know anything about Toronto’s real estate market, this house is probably priced at several million dollars!
The Zero House
This completely self-sufficient home is able to supply it own electricity through solar panels. It also collects water from rainfall and manages its own waste. It does all of this automatically thanks to a special computer. Despite its high-tech machinery, the Zero Home is still pretty basic. The living area is combined with the kitchen and the bathroom is combined with the bedroom. The two stacked rooms also provide a small deck for outdoor living.
The Box Home
Designed by Sami Rintala, the Hoxhome is a 205 sq. Ft. home with a kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and living area.
The home is a modernist rectangular prism (whoa!) and is clad in metal on the exterior and natural wood on the inside.
While there are many windows, the home is interestingly dark thanks to it wood finish, which gives it a neat cave like feeling.
The Single Hauz
Designed by the Polish firm, Front Architects, the Single Hauz is a house created for the single person.
The design is inspired by billboards often seen near highways and freeways. This slim raised design makes these houses suitable for many locations where conventional building may be difficult, including near the water. Using steel, concrete and wood, these homes are sleek and modern rather than cramped.
The Colani Rotor House
Designed and built by the German pre-fabrication housing company Hanse Haus, the Colani Rotor House maximizes its interior space by combining the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom into one rotating column. The space-age style home is a prototype designed by none other than Luigi Colani.
The Free Spirit Sphere Tree House
A new crop of designs allow people to live out their childhood fantasies by literally living in the trees. The Free Spirit Sphere is one of the more unusual of these tree houses. The design is a sphere which is suspended in the trees and it’s accessible by a long set of stairs. Neato!
The Baumraum
Baumraum is a German architecture studio specializing in specialty tree houses. They’ve developed experience building tree homes in Austria, Hungary, Italy, Brazil and the United States. Clad in steel with geometrical shapes, these homes push the limits of what is possible in the tree house living.
The School Bus House
Maybe not the most original home in our list but still a neat place to live!
The home was built by its owner completely from scratch with materials from the hardware store. The bus was gutted and it was slowly transformed into a home. The bus house now sleeps four people has a kitchen, bathroom and a living area. True to its nature the home is also road worthy and can be moved anywhere at any time.
Brandon the 23 year old Google Employee’s Parking Lot Truck House
San Francisco rent is expensive, so Brandon, a Google software engineer, decided to save money by living out of a 128-square-foot truck instead.
The truck has a bed, dresser and a coat rack but not much else. His electronics are battery powered and Brandon is able to charge his phone and laptop during the day at work.
