Off Grid Tiny Home and Solar Cabin Design Ideas and Photos

Solar arrays, batteries, water tanks, composting systems and the sizing calculations behind a cabin that runs without any connection at all. Going off grid is an engineering exercise before it is a lifestyle. Every appliance in the cabin has a daily energy figure, every occupant has a daily water figure, and the system must cover both through the worst week of the year rather than the average one. Cabins that fail do so because they were sized on optimism: a small array, a small battery and a hope that winter would be sunny. Start with the load. Lighting, fridge, pumps, laptops, cooking and hot water, listed with hours of use, gives a daily kilowatt hour total. Size the array to generate that in mid winter, not mid summer, and size the battery for two to three days of autonomy so a cloudy stretch is uneventful. Choosing gas or wood for cooking and heating, and solar or heat pump for hot water, dramatically reduces the electrical system required. Water follows the same logic. Roof area times local rainfall gives annual harvest, and tank capacity should cover the longest dry spell rather than the average month. Add first flush diverters, a sediment...

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Home Designs

Low-Line Courtyard Home Design with Textured Off-White Render and Covered Alfresco Dining Terrace

Low-Line Courtyard Home Design with Textured Off-White Render, Travertine Paving and Smoked Glass Balustrades, Layered Native Planting and a Clipped. this image created by www.homedesign-photos.com — Low-Line Courtyard Home Design with Textured Off-White Render, Travertine Paving and Smoked Glass Balustrades, Layered Native Planting and a Clipped Buffalo Lawn, featuring a Covered Alfresco Dining Terrace and Built-In Outdoor Kitchen, finished with Sculptural Feature Planting and Inviting

Futuristic Backyard Concept 25 is part of our Home Designs collection — one of 512 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.

Front yards, backyards, side boundaries and complete house concepts, including the tiny home series. 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 Home Designs collection, or open the complete image catalogue to see every home, garden, pool, pergola, furniture, lighting and beach house concept in one place.

← Split-Level Modern Home Design with Recycled Brick and Spacious Rear Backyard and BBQ Grill Contemporary Family Home Design with Board-Formed Concrete and Wide Front Entry Court, Feature Water →

More Home Designs concepts

Contemporary Family Home Design with Board-Formed Concrete and Wide Front Entry Court, Feature Water

Contemporary Family Home Design with Board-Formed Concrete, Spotted Gum Battens and Matte Black Steel Detailing, Mass-Planted Hedging, Feature Palms and Deep Mulched Garden Beds, featuring a Wide Front Entry Court, Feature Water Bowl and Garage Screening

Low-Line Courtyard Home Design with Textured Off-White Render and Covered Alfresco Dining Terrace

Low-Line Courtyard Home Design with Textured Off-White Render, Travertine Paving and Smoked Glass Balustrades, Layered Native Planting and a Clipped Buffalo Lawn, featuring a Covered Alfresco Dining Terrace and Built-In Outdoor Kitchen, finished with Sculptural Feature Planting and Inviting

Contemporary Family Home Design with Board-Formed Concrete and Wide Front Entry Court, Feature Water

Split-Level Modern Home Design with Recycled Brick and Spacious Rear Backyard and BBQ Grill

Split-Level Modern Home Design with Recycled Brick, Vertical Cedar Screening and Zinc Roof Sheeting, Espaliered Trees, Box Hedging and Fine-Leaf Groundcover, featuring a Spacious Rear Backyard and BBQ Grill Entertaining Area, balanced by Clean Sightlines, Shaded Retreats and Relaxed

Contemporary Family Home Design with Board-Formed Concrete and Wide Front Entry Court, Feature Water

Architectural Home Design with Limestone Cladding and Poolside Cabana, Sun Deck and Evening Entertaining

Architectural Home Design with Limestone Cladding, Warm Oak Soffits and Slim Charcoal Aluminium Frames, Tropical Foliage, Frangipani and Screening Bamboo, featuring a Poolside Cabana, Sun Deck and Evening Entertaining Zone, balanced by Clean Sightlines, Shaded Retreats and Relaxed Family

Complete image catalogue

Japanese Inspired Courtyard and Zen Garden Design Photos

Stone, moss, raked gravel, water basins and pruned form — the restraint and asymmetry behind gardens designed to be looked at as much as used.

Japanese garden design is often copied through its objects — a lantern, a maple, a bamboo screen — when its real lessons are compositional. Asymmetry rather than symmetry, odd numbered groupings, borrowed views, controlled framing from inside the house, and an enormous amount of empty space so that each element has somewhere to be seen. Restraint is the technique, not a lack of ambition.

The materials list is short and used with intent. Stone as the permanent structure, in stepping paths, groupings of three, and edges that hold gravel. Raked gravel or fine granite as still ground representing water. Moss, ferns and clipped forms for texture in shade. Water in a single simple basin fed by a bamboo spout, positioned so its sound reaches a window. Timber for a low deck, a gate or a screen. Nothing shiny, nothing symmetrical, nothing repeated in a grid.

Pruning is where the garden is actually made. Japanese maples thinned so light passes through their layers, pines cleaned to reveal trunk and branch structure, azaleas clipped as soft mounds rather than balls, and everything opened up so the shape of each plant reads clearly. This is annual, deliberate work, and it is the difference between a garden that looks composed and a collection of the right plants growing into each other.

Japanese Gardens design ideas photo from the Japanese Inspired Courtyard and Zen Garden Design Photos feature. this image created by www.homedesign-photos.com

Framing ties it to the house. These gardens are designed from a specific viewpoint — a seated position at a window, a step onto a deck, a doorway — and every element is placed to compose in that frame. Choose the viewpoint first, place the stone, the tree and the basin against it, keep the rest of the garden almost empty, and light it very softly at night so only the trunk, the basin and the path edge are visible.

House Design Photos is a HUGE Library Gallery and Directory of Home Design Photos

Off Grid Tiny Home and Solar Cabin Design Ideas and Photos

Low-Line Courtyard Home Design with Textured Off-White Render and Covered Alfresco Dining Terrace

More Home Designs concepts

Japanese Inspired Courtyard and Zen Garden Design Photos