Beach House Designs

Hamptons-Style Beach House Design with Silvered Hardwood Screens and Beach Access Path, Firepit Circle

Hamptons-Style Beach House Design with Silvered Hardwood Screens, Off-White Render and Bronze Fittings, Coastal Banksias, Spinifex Grasses and Windswept Dune. this image created by www.homedesign-photos.com — Hamptons-Style Beach House Design with Silvered Hardwood Screens, Off-White Render and Bronze Fittings, Coastal Banksias, Spinifex Grasses and Windswept Dune Planting, featuring a Beach Access Path, Firepit Circle and Evening Deck Lighting, finished with Sculptural Feature Planting and Inviting

Bh 14 is part of our Beach House Designs collection — one of 57 large-format widescreen concept visuals in this section. It is presented here at full size so you can study the layout, the planting, the surfaces and the way light falls across the design before you commit to building anything on your own block.

Classic and modern coastal homes, dune gardens, decks and ocean-front living. Use this concept as a starting point: note the proportions between built form and greenery, where shade and shelter sit, how paths and paved areas move people through the space, and which materials repeat to hold the whole scheme together.

Every visual on this site is a design idea created for Home Design Photos. Browse the rest of the Beach House Designs collection, or open the complete image catalogue to see every home, garden, pool, pergola, furniture, lighting and beach house concept in one place.

← Hamptons-Style Beach House Design with Silvered Hardwood Screens and Beach Access Path, Firepit Circle Relaxed Seaside Holiday Home Design with White Weatherboard Cladding and Verandah Lounge, BBQ Bench →

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Modern Ocean-Front Home Design with Limewashed Timber and Plunge Pool, Shaded Cabana and Boardwalk

Modern Ocean-Front Home Design with Limewashed Timber, Charcoal Roofing and Glass Balustrades, Frangipani, Agapanthus and Soft Silver Coastal Foliage, featuring a Plunge Pool, Shaded Cabana and Boardwalk Approach, with Considered Outdoor Zoning and Soft Layered Textures Throughout

Coastal Beach House Design with Shiplap Boarding, Sandy Stone Paving and Woven Cane Detailing, Sea Grasses, Pigface and Low Sculptural. this image created by www.homedesign-photos.com

Coastal Beach House Design with Shiplap Boarding and Sheltered Alfresco Dining Terrace and Sun

Coastal Beach House Design with Shiplap Boarding, Sandy Stone Paving and Woven Cane Detailing, Sea Grasses, Pigface and Low Sculptural Shrubs, featuring a Sheltered Alfresco Dining Terrace and Sun Lounge Zone, complemented by Durable Weatherproof Finishes and Low-Maintenance Detailing

Hamptons-Style Beach House Design with Silvered Hardwood Screens and Beach Access Path, Firepit Circle

Hamptons-Style Beach House Design with Silvered Hardwood Screens, Off-White Render and Bronze Fittings, Coastal Banksias, Spinifex Grasses and Windswept Dune Planting, featuring a Beach Access Path, Firepit Circle and Evening Deck Lighting, finished with Sculptural Feature Planting and Inviting

Hamptons-Style Beach House Design with Silvered Hardwood Screens and Beach Access Path, Firepit Circle

Dune-Side Beach House Design with Bleached Timber Battens, Pale Render and Black Framed Glazing, Clipped Hedging, Feature Palms and Pale. this image created by www.homedesign-photos.com

Dune-Side Beach House Design with Bleached Timber Battens and Wide Ocean-View Deck, Outdoor Shower

Dune-Side Beach House Design with Bleached Timber Battens, Pale Render and Black Framed Glazing, Clipped Hedging, Feature Palms and Pale Pebble Borders, featuring a Wide Ocean-View Deck, Outdoor Shower and Relaxed Lounge Setting, balanced by Clean Sightlines, Shaded Retreats

Coastal Beach House Design with Shiplap Boarding and Sheltered Alfresco Dining Terrace and Sun

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Full feature article · Beach Houses

44 Beach House Designs to Inspire the Ocean Lovers

Forty four classic and modern beach homes — weatherboard cottages, cantilevered oceanfront glass, linen and teak interiors, and homes built around life on the water.

Beach houses divide neatly into two families, and the best of them borrow from both. The first is the classic cottage: weatherboard cladding, a pitched metal roof, deep verandahs, timber floors that can take sand and salt water, and a plan small enough that the whole family ends up in the same room. The second is the modern oceanfront house: a low horizontal form, glass turned toward the horizon, cantilevered decks and a roofline designed to disappear so the view does all the talking.

What both share is a response to a genuinely hostile environment. Salt air destroys unprotected steel, wind drives rain under badly detailed eaves, and ultraviolet light bleaches anything left exposed. Successful coastal homes use marine grade stainless fixings, powder coated or anodised aluminium windows, hardwood or thermally modified timber decking, and generous overhangs that keep weather off the glass. These are not aesthetic decisions, but they define the look of coastal architecture more than any style choice.

The garden is the part most owners underestimate. Coastal planting must survive salt spray, sand and wind, which rules out most of what looks good in a suburban nursery. The palette that works is tough and beautiful: coastal rosemary, banksia, agave, pigface, dune grasses and hardy succulents, planted through gravel or sand mulch with timber sleeper edging. Windbreak planting on the seaward side makes the difference between a deck you use and a deck you look at.

Beach Houses design ideas photo from the 44 Beach House Designs to Inspire the Ocean Lovers feature. this image created by www.homedesign-photos.com

Interiors follow the same logic of durability made attractive. Heavy natural linen, teak and rattan furniture, pale timber floors, and walls kept light so the reflected sea light does the decorating. Outdoor showers, boot benches, board racks and a hose point near the door are what make a beach house actually function after a day in the water. A plunge pool courtyard on the sheltered side gives the family somewhere to swim when the surf is unusable.

The homes in this feature that stay in the memory are the ones designed around an activity rather than a floor plan. A surf house with a shaped rack wall and an outdoor change room. A fishing house with a stainless cleaning bench and a smoker under cover. A boating house with a hardstand and a wide clear path to the water. A long lunch house whose entire ground floor is a covered table and a kitchen that opens to it. In each case the architecture is simply the frame around how the family wants to spend a summer.

If you take one lesson from forty four coastal homes, take this: build small and build well. The coastal houses people fall in love with are rarely the largest on the street. They are the ones with the right orientation, the right shelter, honest materials that weather rather than fail, and a garden that looks as though it grew there before the house arrived.

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Hamptons-Style Beach House Design with Silvered Hardwood Screens and Beach Access Path, Firepit Circle

More Beach House Designs concepts

44 Beach House Designs to Inspire the Ocean Lovers