10 Modern Beach Houses With Beautiful Designs and Magnificent Views

A beach house is for many a symbol for the perfect vacation home, a wonderfully relaxing oasis with a bright and airy interior and magnificent views of the sea or the ocean.

There’s of course a variety of different architectural styles that can be adopted when designing a beach house. Some are modest and have a rustic or a shabby-chic aesthetic while others loom super clean and minimalistic.

Let’s have a look at some modern beach houses and see what else stands out.

The Castle Rock beach house – New Zealand

This is a small and modest beach house, one which is not meant to stand out much or to be impressive. It is however designed to be really welcoming and cozy. It was created as a holiday home which can be enjoyed during the summer months so it’s not optimized for cold weather and has a very open and breezy look and feel throughout. The Castle Rock Beach House is situated on the North Island of New Zealand and was designed by studio Herbst Architects.

The house as a whole is defined by certain flexibility in design, specifically highlighted through details such as the pivoting windows and panels that can open up the interior spaces and create a smooth transition towards the outdoors. Spaces like the dining area have nice transitional feels, being both an indoor and outdoor space. Other parts of the house are meant to look and to feel very intimate, warm and cozy.

The Peconic Bay House – New York

What usually makes beach houses so iconic and special is the fact that they have really nice views. Their designs are thus optimized to make the most out of this feature. This modern beach house for instance has a fully glazed facade. It’s a house designed by studio Naiztat + Ham Architects and it’s situated in Southampton, New York.

It’s a two-story structure with really simple and clean geometry. It’s framed by large wooden terraces on the outside and it has large windows and numerous skylights which let in lots of natural sunlight during the day but also offers really great views from every part of the house. There’s a cedar extension attached to one of the sides of the main house and this is where the private bedrooms and bathrooms are situated, leaving the rest of the interior space nice and open. There’s a big double-height living area that takes full advantage of the glazed side.

The Veronica Beach House – Peru

Studio Longhi Architects worked a while ago on a cool project in the Pucusana District or Peru. It was a modern beach house with a beautiful design inspired from the local culture. This design approach makes it easy for the house to blend in with the other neighboring structures and to look natural and at home in this context.

The design, both on the outside and the inside, is a blend between natural and artificial materials and features. That allows the house to look natural in its surroundings and to integrate well with the area around it but it also allows it to have a fresh and modern aesthetic focused on comfort and convenience. On the ground floor the large social area seamlessly extends outside where there’s a really cool swimming pool with a flowing and organic shape.

Victoria Beach House – Canada

The design of this modern beach house from Victoria, Canada is really beautiful and inspiring. It’s meant to seamlessly interact and blend in with the surrounding landscape, the goal being to achieve harmony between architecture and nature. At the same time, the design is heavily inspired by the lovely beach cottages typical for this area but with a more modern and amplified aesthetic overall. This was a project by studio Cibinel Architecture.

The low and flat roofline allows the house to maintain a modest scale and to look more inviting. At the same time, the facades have been opened up in order to take advantage of the beautiful panoramic views over the ocean and to let sufficient light into all the different interior spaces. The living areas are also extended outside onto the beautiful open decks facing the ocean. A small section of the house is two-floors high and the views from up there are absolutely magnificent.

A modern beach house in Chile

Although this is not a very big house it definitely has a strong visual impact. It’s located in Cachagua, Chile and was designed and built by studio Martin Schmidt Radic Arquitectos Asociados. The team had a clear idea in mind from the start of what the house should look like and what it should prioritize in terms of design and features. The site that it stands out has a really nice view of the coast and the sea and one of the main objectives was to frame these views and to bring them into the house in a seamless and natural way.

There were also other more specific features and elements which the design had to focus on. For instance, the owners wanted the main living area to be an open and inviting space with a nice view and with a fireplace. They also wanted to be able to enjoy the view from the dining area and to plenty of space for guests. On a similar note, the kitchen needed to have easy access outdoors for entertainment purposes and convenience. The architects made sure to include plenty of beautiful outdoor areas which can be enjoyed throughout the day, like a big al fresco dining area with a bbq station and a nice open deck with a hot tub.

Bundeena Beach House – Australia

This lovely beach house fits beautifully in this area and really looks like it belongs here. It’s located in Bundeena, Australia and it was designed to be a little weekend retreat, a place where the owners can escape and city and enjoy a few tranquil moments by the ocean. The design created for it by studio Grove Architects comes as a direct response to these requests.

What makes this beach house stand out compared to many others is the fact it’s surrounded by lots of greenery and vegetation and this detail is reflected in the building’s design, more specifically its green roof. This strong connection to the surroundings allows the house to feel very close to nature and to make the interaction between the indoor and the outdoor spaces feel natural and seamless. This is really an aesthetic that’s common to this area and the house stands out from this perspective.

The Marina Lancheros Beach House – Peru

It’s often quite challenging to find a suitable building site for a beach house because the views are always a priority and the best views can be enjoyed from the least friendly environments. This modern beach house from Lima, in Peru, is a strong example. It’s positioned on a cliff facing the Pacific Ocean and the site on which it stands has a rugged and uneven topography. It was up to Giovanni Schettini Architectos to come up with a design that suits this area.

As expected, one of the main objectives was to give each and every area of the house a great view. In response to that, the architects came up with a tiered design which structures the house on six levels starting from the street level at the top and going down to the pier. This way each floor has an unobstructed view towards the ocean and also allows the various functions to be spread out and organized in a more independent way.

Modern coastal home on Camano Island – Washington

This house takes the place of a small coastal cabin that used to sit on this property on Camano Island, in Washington. The owners wanted an upgrade so they decided to get rid of the cabin and to replace it with something bigger and more modern. They worked with studio Designs Northwest Architects to make this dream come true. The area here is really beautiful. The site is positioned at the bottom of a super steel slope which acts as a cool backdrop for the new house.

This area is also quite remote and has no road access. This made the project quite challenging and meant that the architects had to deal with certain restrictions such as the fact that there was no way of bringing heavy equipment on-site or for concrete trucks to reach this area. This however wasn’t a breaking point. A choice was made instead to use low-maintenance materials and to build the house entirely above ground using steel columns. This had the added benefit of creating better views and creating a big storage area below the house for canoes and other related things.

The Naman Residence – Vietnam

This modern villa is located on Non-Nuoc Beach in Vietnam and was a project completed by MIA Design Studio. It occupies a fairly big site with a tropical landscape and plenty of greenery around it and the ocean just a few meters away. What’s cool and interesting about it is the fact that it’s not as open towards the ocean as other beach houses and instead is positioned a bit more towards the back of the site. The trees and vegetation act as a shallow barrier between the house and the water.

This type of placement and orientation allowed the house to retain a nice level of privacy but also meant the views were a bit obstructed. To make up for this the architects included a rooftop terrace into the design. Up here there’s a cozy sunken sitting area, space to move around and glass railings that allow an unobstructed view of the whole surrounding area.