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The Best Houseboat Design Ideas at HomeDesignFind

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I have covered some truly wonderful floating houseboat home ideas here at Homedesignfind. Here’s what made each of these floating homes so wonderful.

I love simple eco designs like the Swedish beauty in Old Pine Table With a View. This is an uncomplicated vacation retreat for a couple, larger inside than it looks on the outside.

And, memorably it includes an outdoor dish drying rack, one of the most casually inventive eco ideas I’ve seen.

The Simple Houseboat is designed with the inside knowledge of an old hand and it shows.

Ian Ugarte and his partner lived on the water for ten years before they approached designing a houseboat prefab for his Australian company Arkiboat.

An intriguingly narrow sliver on the water, at just 15 feet wide and 49 feet long, “The Last Resort” would create the delightful sensation of being on a giant surfboard, safely glassed-in from falling in to the water.

Seen at a distance on the Baltic Sea, the curved roofs on its solar-powered houseboats dip to the water in a way that is almost organic. This was the winning entry in Germany’s Internationale Bauausstellung design competition.

The solar powered self-sufficient flotilla of houseboats has the most innovative layout I’ve ever seen, perfect for sites with 360 degree views, which is what houseboats have (potentially).

All the core elements like sinks, stoves, closets, are centered in the middle. There is no storage around the walls, and they are glass from ceiling to floor. Only the back wall forms a privacy screen for the toilet and shower.

In this one, a family-oriented architectural design makes it possible to dock a boat right under a floating holiday home.

Designed on the ice in Canada’s Lake Huron, it was the only North American design to make my favorite list, oddly.

A sophisticated Bauhaus “Hausboot” is one of several curvy designs from a well-known German architectural firm.

Its curving walls are only on one plane, so the effect is more art deco than claustrophobic-ly boat-like.

What I loved about it was how airy even the beneath-water-level bedroom was – because of these windows right at the water line.

These sophisticated townhouses created an inspiring and futuristic architecture for communities.

Most appealingly, the floating townhouse neighborhoods seemed designed to spark old fashioned “street” friendships among children who could play safely in the water along the rows between the townhouses.

While all of these ideas are green and sustainable, one way or another, fostering neighborhood, solar powered, small, etc – the best is a Dutch idea from the master of sustainable floating design, Waterstudio designer Koen Olthius.

His floating town has the flavor of Holland, where living with rising sea level has centuries of innovation behind it.

But the really innovative aspect of his design is that cool water from the depths of the lake would be cycled up through pipes in the walls to cool the interior temperatures of the complex, saving up to 25% more energy than a comparable building on land. Very clever.