50 Narrow Lot Houses That Transform A Skinny Exterior Into Something Special

A tall skinny house can become lost along the row, but that doesn’t seem to be an issue with these narrow facade house ideas. By implementing a selection of innovative planting ideas to create vertical gardens, some beautiful screening and modern shutters, these narrow plot houses stand way out from the rest of the street. This collection also has a multitude of architectural features such as asymmetrical roof lines, contemporary cladding and unique shaped windows. A tiny plot in the middle of a city can even harbour an internal garage, tucked away into the small footprint of the ground floor, to provide coveted off-road parking.

Architect: VTN

Our first narrow home looks less like a house than it does like a wall of outdoor planters. Plants peep out from each and every level as the eye climbs to the top.

Designer: DAN Studio

This transformation of a normal house uses a new facade of ‘shelved’ plants.

Designer: Cong Sinh

Spaced vertical planks present as modern screening on this tall house exterior. The lengths extend way up into the sky to make the building appear even taller. The screen also has a stepped effect between the neighbouring houses that have one lower and one higher roof height.

Designer: Nguyen Khac Phuoc Architects

Exterior parking space has been achieved here by raising the entry floor, which is accessed via an external staircase to the front door.

Visualizer: K5 House

Squares are punched out of a sloping concrete facade, to create peepholes to lush planting and warm glimmers of light.

Architect: Tekuto

This amazing geometric structure is the exterior of a small home that we have previously covered here. An impossible looking cutaway in the base provides a cheeky little parking place.

Visualizer: Nguyen Thuan

Faces protrude and shrink away to create an alluring home exterior. Decorative concrete blocks form an attractive, light pierced backdrop to a first floor tree.

Visualizer: Nguyen Thuan

Another stunning first floor tree installation, this time with a towering wooden slatted backdrop, which extends all the way up to the roof line where a skylight feature allows sunshine to spill through.

Visualizer: Nguyen Thuan

Cascading plants fall like emerald waterfalls from two balconies. A faux pitched roof makes a sweet silhouette against the sky.

Visualizer: Kien Truc Moi

Aqua blue shutters pop against an all white exterior that is perforated to allow moments of greenery to protrude through.

Visualizer: CS Smart Home Construction

A patterned glass panel shelter extends over a second floor balcony. The ground floor has been reserved for a two car garage.

Visualizer: Kien Truc Moi

This small plot has a lack of spare ground space for a garden, so a roof garden crowns the top.

Visualizer: Nguyen Thuan

Tall shutters give privacy to the large windows. Decorative concrete bricks screen off the outdoor living areas from prying eyes.

Visualizer: Nguyen Thuan

A towering wood clad volume is chamfered inward toward the tall house; a tree grows out of its top. Above the tree, a section has been omitted from the shelter to allow for branch growth.

Visualizer: Vinh Võ Duy

This home is cantilevered over a driveway. A row of exterior lights are fixed below the upper volume to brightly illuminate the cars approach.

Visualizer: Vinh Võ Duy

Outdoor plants feather the super flat roof line of this tall narrow facade.

Visualizer: Nguyễn Diên Hoàng

This roof garden is framed like a living shadow box, at the very top of an impossibly towering stack. The tallest trees protrude through a ceiling cutaway, reaching up to touch the sun and catch the very first raindrops from the clouds. Another mature tree is held within a lower frame, with is branches viewable to windows on two levels.

Visualizer: Phan Anh

These daytime and nighttime views of the same narrow home design show how shutters can be retracted to reveal the concealed living spaces, where they glow like a library of lightboxes.

Visualizer: Thanh Nguyễn

A triangular design makes up the top floor, with railings and wood cladding colouring the geometric shape.

Metal garage doors, window shutters and screens colour this home exterior. A modest amount of planting draws attention to an asymmetrical roof line.

Visualizer: Home Designing

A black border surrounds this small home, cutting through the blue sky at a sharp slope. The black exterior elements are complemented by pure white trims for high dramatic contrast. A spray of bright pink flowers fizz straight across the centre of the monochrome facade.

Visualizer: Ngotrung Ngo

Royal blue paint stripes around the midsection of this narrow exterior. A huge screening feature has been created to lightly obscure the upper levels, made by installing white rods of varying length in a repeat pattern. Branches protrude through an opening in the asymmetrically angled roof.

Square concrete blocks with open centres build almost one entire half of this home; plants grow though the missing middles. A lower balcony is clad in wood plank to contrast.

Architect: LIJO.RENY

With warm lighting twinkling through perforated walls, and luminous exterior lighting bathing the outside, this golden home appears positively precious. We have covered this gorgeous home with an internal garden atrium in detail before.

Architect: dIONISO LAB

This unique facia has symbols punched out of the walls and window shutters. By night, interior light sets the symbols ablaze.

Visualizer: X Home

A cantilevered section extends an arm of this home out into the world, with a tree cradled in its upturned palm.

Visualizer: X Home

Floating staircases rise through this narrow building, which are visible through glass fronted volumes.

Visualizer: X Home

When lit from within, moulded concrete blocks pattern the flat face of this home like a luminous wallpaper. Climbing plants grow on the inner plane of a wood clad wrap around wall, providing a healthy green view to most of the home’s picture windows.

Architect: NguyenHieu Architecture

Checkerboard windows and crisscrossing wall structures make this home appear like a stack of overlapping chessboards.

Visualizer: X Home

This home is a series of interlocking boxes, defined by white concrete and dark stained exterior wood cladding. LED stair lights warmly and safely mark out the approach to the front door at night.

Architect: Bassam El-Okeily

Peculiar flooring volumes lurk behind the frosted glass wall of this colour changing home exterior.

Visualizer: X Home

Locked behind white metal fretwork and hidden by green shrubs, this home is a very private place.

Visualizer: Hữu Phước

Green shrubs are held at treetop height in two constructed concrete planters that span the entire width of the building, so as not to break the line of greenery that travels the length of the street.

Decorative concrete blockwork makes up the entire facade, laid over like a sheet of white lace.

Visualizer: X Home

A spruce extends from the top of this tall home, like a feather in its cap. Enormous windows bathe the interior in natural light.

Visualizer: X Home

A glass balcony balustrade ensures the sprawling central window of this narrow home living room doesn’t lose any of the view or the sunlight.

Visualizer: X Home

Decorative wooden doors make a big statement down at street level. Wooden slats take the eye all the way up past a mid-level balcony and finally to a rooftop garden.

Visualizer: More Design

Modern gates welcome guests into this towering build. A vertical stripe of wood cladding runs all the way up one side of the facia.

Architect: Landmak Architecture

A delicate look is achieved by this lacey patterned blockwork, despite its concrete makeup. Moments of interest step across the facia in diagonal line, first as a picture window, then in the form of two architecturally framed tree planters.

Architect: Studio 8

Punched out squares of varying sizes give this tall home exterior an almost digital graphic look.

Visualizer: 23o5 Studio

Another digitised facia style. This time all of the square cutouts are of a uniform size except for one isolated picture window. The rooftop is sliced away at the front to accommodate a rooftop garden with trees.

Visualizer: More Design

Greenery spills through these square peekholes. The cantilevered upper volume of this home clings to a thin brick wall, looking as though its massive weight could pull the whole thing over.

Visualizer: X Home

A textured white section adds interest to the centre of a dark volume; wood cladding crosses beneath it, matching the look of the modern house number plate.

Visualizer: X Home

This unique front door design has a ‘v’ shaped wooden inlay. Matching the width of the double door front entrance, a wall garden grows to the height of the ground floor, flourishing right on the front street.

Designer: Block Architects

Colourful painted window shutters completely engulf the front of this skinny tall home. Some of the shutters can be opened up to reveal window openings, others are purely cosmetic.

Architect: FHHH Friends

This brick built tall home has dual aspect windows across one corner. The double banked cutout windows make the brickwork appear like a capital letter ‘E’ on the front face.

Architect: Green Dot Architects

A super thin window climbs the entire height of this skinny home, offering a view of the stairwell from top to bottom. The living room glows on full view to the driveway.

Designer: JagerJanssen

The picture windows of this modern home are a bespoke design that extrude from the flat brickwork face, as though they were picture frames hanging on a gallery wall.