18 Alternative Housing Ideas To Fit Your Lifestyle

Our personal style, needs and interests make each of us unique. So it’s only natural that our homes would reflect our individuality.

Many would-be homeowners love conventional homes, but what if a traditional single-family home doesn’t appeal to you? Why try to pigeonhole yourself into a mortgage on a standard-issue ranch or colonial home?

Whether you’re looking for an eco-friendly home or want to buy a more affordable home, check out our list of unique housing ideas to find a home that caters to your lifestyle.

What Is Alternative Housing?

Alternative housing is a wide-ranging category of homes that don’t fit into the standard single-family home mold we’re all so used to. The idea behind alternative housing is that almost any structure can be converted into a living space, including renovated buses or vans, shipping containers and sheds.

Many home buyers feel alternative homes offer a compelling alternative to traditional homes for various reasons.

Appreciation and concern for the environment may compel some buyers to search for housing options that reduce their carbon footprint or bring them closer to nature. This home buyer may be more interested in building a house into a mountain.

Social butterflies may want to travel around in an RV and meet communities of like-minded people, sharing their lives and talents for the common good. Travelers and thrill-seekers may want to invest in a home they can use to travel around the country on water or roads or buy an alternative home that doubles as an adventure.

Other home buyers may be more interested in living more financially sustainable lives and want to reduce household costs and other bills.

Alternative Housing Ideas For Your Current Home

Fortunately, you don’t have to buy a yurt to experience the possibilities of alternative housing. You can incorporate alternative living arrangements into your existing home. While the home may look the same on the outside, the features you add and the habits you change inside the home can transform its functionality, purpose and all-around vibe.

1. Make Some Green Renovations

If you want to connect with nature, increase energy efficiency and live in a green home, consider making a few home renovations and additions.

Start with a home energy audit to increase energy efficiency and reduce your carbon footprint. An audit is the first step to understanding your home’s energy use and how to reduce it. Consider installing solar panels, reinsulating your home, switching your lightbulbs to LEDs or setting up a compost bin.

To surround yourself with nature, incorporate more natural elements into your home with houseplants, bamboo fixtures, stones, photographs of nature and organic scents like pine, lavender and citrus. You could also install more windows in the home to get more natural views or add solar tubes to bring in more sunlight.

2. Open Your Home To Your Community

To create a living space that connects you to your community, try aligning your home with communal living practices, such as:

• Renting out space in your home
• Opening your yard to a community garden or beekeeping project
• Working to transform your neighborhood into a cohousing community, with shared spaces, activities and meals

3. Redecorate With Your Wild Side

If you’re a worldwide traveler, fill your home with at least one decorative item from each country you visit. Take pictures as you travel the world. Have them framed and hung on your walls to reexperience your global adventures every day.

Find scenic pictures of places you want to visit and use them to inspire you and decorate your home. If you’re always setting up flight alerts, decorate your space to feel like your favorite vacation spots. Transform your kitchen into a Parisian cafe, your backyard into a Pacific Island oasis or your bathroom into a lavish Turkish spa.

If you love adventure, you can incorporate indoor thrills with nontraditional features, like a climbing wall in the hallway, a hammock or swing from a ceiling or a slide from the second story. For outside fun, build a treehouse or install a pool.

Alternative Housing Options For The Upcycler

If you’re searching for a new home that satisfies your eco-conscious priorities, remember the three R’s: reduce, reuse, recycle.

You can reclaim abandoned structures spread across the country and turn them into your home or incorporate surplus materials into your new home construction. You can reduce waste and create something unique by transforming abandoned structures or upcycling materials.

4. Barn And Other Structure Conversions

The best part about converting old structures, like barns, firehouses, silos or abandoned churches, is that they’re already built. By repurposing existing structures, you’re saving on energy and the materials you would use to build something new.

You also keep the structure’s materials from winding up in a landfill. Old buildings often offer the added benefits of historic charm and embellishments. For example, converting an old church into a home may be a unique opportunity to inherit a building with a rich history and legacy within its community, ornate woodwork, gothic arches and stained-glass windows.

5. Materials From The Landfill

Consider reusing building materials from another project if you decide to build a home. You’d reduce waste and cut your expenses. You can give your home a unique look by incorporating materials that break from standard building materials.

You can find recycled materials at Habitat for Humanity ReStores, on Craigslist and other community marketplaces or at the local landfill or salvage yard.

6. Shipping Containers

When you see a shipping container attached to a semi-trailer truck, you probably don’t think, “Wow, that would make an awesome home!” However, shipping container homes are growing in popularity. They offer a modern look and allow you to check off the eco-friendly box because you’re reusing a structure and keeping it out of a landfill. If one container is too small, you can join multiple containers to build a home as large as you need and your budget allows.

Make sure to research a shipping container's prior use before you buy one. Some shipping containers carry toxic cargo or hazardous materials and are coated with chemicals. Any toxic coatings must be stripped before the container can be deemed a livable space.

Verify that the shipping container home you want is clean and free of any toxic chemicals. In today’s market, with soaring home prices, shipping container homes are typically more affordable, but you must prioritize your health and thoroughly assess the safety of any converted living space.

Alternative Housing Ideas For The Traveler

If you’re a frequent flyer, a home that keeps you grounded may not be the best option. Luckily, you can make your home as mobile as you are. Just get one you can take with you wherever you go.

Here are a few options:

7. Tiny Homes

Many young adults want to live a simple life, enjoy more financial freedom and have the flexibility to pick up and go when they want. That’s why so many are drawn to tiny homes. The tiny house movement gained popularity in recent years due to its lower costs, eco-friendly features and mobility.

A tiny house measures up to 400 square feet and offers many amenities you would find in a standard home – just smaller. Because they’re so small, you can hitch many tiny homes to a vehicle for easy travel.

8. Sailboats

If you enjoy traveling by sea, a sailboat may be a perfect alternative housing option. Unlike a houseboat, which we’ll touch on later, a sailboat isn’t supposed to remain docked – they’re made to navigate open waters.

When you’re ready to sail to a new location, all you need to do is pull up the anchor and start your voyage.

9. Vehicle Homes

If you prefer to journey by land, you can drive your home to your next destination with a camper or recreational vehicle (RV), parking your home in almost every state in the U.S. and even Canada and Mexico.

Like tiny homes, RVs feature many of the creature comforts of a standard-sized home – but on a much smaller scale. You can either drive the home mounted on a truck or attach and detach it from your vehicle. If you’re in the market for a cheaper housing option that offers more freedom to customize, you can convert a school bus or van into a livable space or buy a used one that matches your design aesthetic.

You can join a camping or RV club for free or discounted rates at campgrounds and parks that often have electrical and water hookups. Aside from gas, which will likely be your biggest expense, your other living expenses will be much lower or nonexistent because you won’t have a monthly mortgage payment or rent to cover or utility bills for electricity, water or cable to pay.

Alternative Building Materials For Homes

Sometimes, a structure’s uniqueness comes from its construction materials. Straying from typical building materials, like concrete, metal, lumber or brick, may help you save money and save the Earth.

Here are a few examples of natural, durable houses you can build:

10. Earthbag

As their name suggests, earthbag homes are built by stacking bags filled with soil and sand or gravel. You can literally fill the bags with materials you find on-site. While this building technique is new to housing, it’s a tried-and-true method for building a military bunker and flood walls.

The homes are usually covered with plaster and are known for their ability to withstand extreme weather events. Its interior walls are also sturdy enough to hold up cabinets and install lighting and other appliances.

11. Cob

A cob house is another example of a house built with earthen materials. Made from lumps of cob, a mixture of clay, straw and sandy subsoil, these houses are sculpted into shape. Because cob walls are thick and porous, these homes can withstand large amounts of rain and provide excellent thermal insulation. All that’s required to fix any exterior weathering is a new layer.

Cob houses can last for hundreds of years, and they’re cheaper to build because you’ll likely find most of the materials on-site.

12. Straw Bale

If you’re thinking of The Three Little Pigs, stop right there! Straw bale homes, made with tight bales of straw and covered with plaster, provide a solid structure that can last well over 100 years and also provide excellent insulation. Since the material is more breathable, it helps prevent moisture from building up in a home.

13. Earth Berm

In an earth berm house, the earth blends seamlessly into your home. The ground can be one or more walls and occasionally serve as the roof. Sometimes called hobbit houses, earth-sheltered homes are built at or below ground level – either built into the land or by surrounding the top and sides of the house with earth.

Earth-sheltered homes are energy-efficient, soundproof, protected from the elements and low maintenance.

14. Earthship House

You’d never know by looking at them, but discarded tires are a key material in Earthship homes. These passive solar homes use a combination of tires and other natural materials to insulate the interior.

Earthship homes are usually clustered in communities, many in the Southwest. The homes can control temperatures and collect rainwater.

Alternatives To Land-Based Homes

For an uprooted, mobile lifestyle, opt for a living space beyond what you can build on land, which may mean taking up residence on water or suspended in a tree.

15. Houseboat

A houseboat functions as a home with the amenities of a traditional house. They can feature stainless steel appliances, hot tubs and multiple bedrooms.

Because floating houses are typically primary residences, they’re usually moored to a dock and unsuitable for travel. Houseboats are designed for calmer waters, like lakes, rivers and a bayou – not the choppy waters of the ocean.

16. Treehouse

The treehouse has evolved from the mini playhouses parents built for their kids in the backyard. These above-ground homes now serve as modern, even luxury, permanent homes for adventure seekers. A treehouse uses the trunks and branches of a tree to support it and may even incorporate them into the design.

While treehouses provide privacy and swaddle you in the sounds of softly swaying branches and the serenity of nature, installing basic utilities, like electricity and water, can be challenging to figure out.

Alternatives To 4 Walls

Homeownership doesn’t always have to be so “square.” Instead of feeling boxed in, these alternative housing options go beyond brick-and-mortar, offering a different vibe and unique benefits.

17. Yurt

Yurts are circular structures covered in durable, high-tech fabrics. They’re traditionally one-room, one-floor homes, though modern models feature several rooms and, sometimes, two floors. Yurts are a traditional dwelling in Central Asia. Today, the ancient home design is slowly rising in popularity – and modernizing – in the U.S.

This style of housing first caught people’s attention in the glamping industry, but now home buyers are considering yurts as permanent homes due to their affordability. They are less expensive to build and relatively cheaper to heat, cool and maintain than a traditional home or cabin. Designed for nomadic living, yurts are mobile. You can easily take them down and rebuild them within a few hours.

18. Geodesic Dome

The geodesic dome house has a spherical shape made from interlocking triangles that make the structure extremely sturdy. Because of their unique shape, they provide efficient insulation and air circulation and keep temperatures consistent throughout the home’s interior.

Its spherical shape allows wind to move around it with ease and prevents snow from piling on top of it. But its stunning shape can also present challenges, like fitting standard appliances and creating functional room divisions.

The Bottom Line: Make Your Home As Individual As You Are

You can break away from the conventions of a traditional home with alternative housing, but there are factors to consider before embarking on what can be a unique, exciting experience.

If you want to build an alternative home, check your local zoning laws and building codes to ensure you can. Lenders typically don’t offer mortgages for these types of homes. You’ll likely need to consider alternative financing, like paying cash or taking out a personal loan for your alternative housing.

Whatever type of home you decide to live in, you can make owning a home a reality with creative thinking, research and the support of a housing market expert. Connect with a real estate agent to get one step closer to finding your dream home on land, water or air.