You can create a beautiful, relatively low-cost shipping container home simply by adding a touch of luxury to a shipping container. If you have decided that you would prefer a shipping container home rather than a small house with basic insulation, these ingenious ways to transform shipping containers into luxury homes will set you on the right path.
There are many benefits of building a shipping container home – and you can make yours as simple or as luxurious as you want. Here are four ways to really separate your home from the rest.
Line the inside of your home
Your house lining really makes a difference in making it stand out from other shipping container homes. You can use various materials to line your floors and walls – depending on what colours and textures you would like to feature in your home, your options include bamboo, plywood, timbers, and even traditional plaster and wallpaper walls.
You can theme your shipping container home any way you want – different lining options can make the interior of your home feel like a comfortable cabin in the woods, a mainly minimalistic house with a couple of feature walls, or even like your grandmother’s house. Just make sure that you keep an eye on how many layers of lining you add on top of your insulation – you’ll have to leave some room for your luxury furniture!
If you would like somebody to help you install the lining of your choice, or to help you with any of the other aspects of constructing your new shipping container home, you can use a helpful service like NoCowboys to find skilled, competent tradespeople and businesses in your area who provide proven, quality service.
Photo Credit: Francisco Galarza via Unsplash under License
Use passive solar energy
One way to really make your home feel luxurious is to make use of passive solar energy. When you are planning where to build and position your house, identify what angle the sun comes in, place the long side of your home of that angle, fill that side with windows, and clad the house in a way that controls the sun. This will help keep your home warm and won’t cost you any money for electricity. It’s a solid investment for those that want to make the most of their available resources.
Use the space around your home to really set the scene
Plant some trees, grow a garden or do some landscaping. An easy way to make your home feel homey and luxurious is by setting the scene. Lush greenery, cobble paving, or nice concreting can be a smart way to use your space more efficiently to get the best use of space. After all, the way you feel inside your home can be hugely influenced by the space that home is placed in.
Do you want to wake up to birds chirping every day? Plant some trees. This is a cheap and easy way to really add life to your space. Do you want to feel part of an open community? Open up your yard to share the space with others. You’ll feel more involved with your area and the people around you. You can also really use the space around the home by building decks and even small balconies, if you’re building vertically.
Photo Credit: Benjamin Combs via Unsplash under License
Get creative with cladding
Creatively covering and cladding the exterior of your home can easily remove the industrial look of your container and is a good way of transforming ordinary shipping containers into amazing homes. You can use logging, wooden panels, rocks, bricks, and even grass to match your home with your environment, weather conditions, and personal aesthetics.
It’s easy to remove the shipping container look for something that’s more comfortable to you, but if you’d rather run with the block colours and the corrugated iron look, you can own the industrial look too. After all, you are the one who defines what makes your home luxury. Design your home to a style that fits what you see as a luxury, not by the going trends of the time.
Hopefully, these ideas helped inspire you if you want more than a simple storage container home. Using shipping containers to create amazing luxury accommodation will take some work, and money, but you will have an unlimited amount of options to get the look you want out of an extremely versatile structure. You’re not as weighed down by the costs of a traditional build, so make the most of your resources and get creative.
Make sure you build your home how you want it, not how the architecture magazine you picked up at the shopping mall says you should. Styles will always come and go, but who cares if you feel at home.
Johanna Cider is a New Zealand-based writer who loves writing about travel, home and lifestyle. Her biggest passion is home design, and she often seeks inspiration from her a huge design book library. Find more of her work here.
*Photo Credit for featured image: Pixabay via Pexels under CC0 License
