Eight houses from our archive with impressive eco-credentials and what you can learn from them
Living sustainably doesn't start with whether you turn on your heating, buy from a refillable shop or use a compost bin (though, these are all recommended ways to do your bit for the environment). In actual fact, making an effort to reduce your impact begins the minute you walk through the door – or onto the plot of land if you're building a house from scratch – and think ‘yes, this is where I want to live’. From that moment, you may find yourself confronted with a series of decisions. Do I need to renovate, and if so, will I be using locally-sourced, sustainable materials which will help to insulate the house? Can the roof hold a few solar panels, or is there space for a heat pump? When it comes to decoration – how many of the house's existing materials are salvageable? And if new things need to be bought – what are the vintage furniture options and which naturally-dyed textiles will beautifully dress the windows?
It is crucial to make informed and mindful decisions early-on, so that you can live happily in the knowledge that your house is not just aesthetically pleasing, but doing as little damage to the planet as possible. We've scoured the House & Garden archives to find the most inspiring examples of sustainable design – houses which prove that designing mindfully is not only do-able but renders rather beautiful results, too.
Paul Massey1/8The couple behind Rapture & Wright fabrics and wallpapers are used to combining their talents to creative effect – not least in the design of the Gloucestershire barn conversion where they live and work.
The house and the workshop are largely self-sufficient. Neither are connected to mains drainage, so they installed a system of living ponds to treat all the water. This has, at the same time, introduced a growing habitat of water-loving plants to the surrounding gardens, as well as dragonflies and ducks. The house is heated by a ground-source heat pump and an array of 134 solar panels provide power for the print room and house, with excess electricity exported back to the grid. The Rapture & Wright's fabric – which is used liberally throughout the house – is all woven in the north of England. Printing is still done entirely in-house by hand and each design is printed to order, so the impact of their operation on the world is minimal.
Taran Wilkhu2/8Looking for a greater connection to the outdoors and a more sustainable way of life, Matthew and Nicky Lyttelton commissioned architect Sarah Featherstone to design their ideal green retreat in Rutland. The ground-source heating and insulating, seeded roofs mean running costs are less,’ says Matthew, adding that he feels 'much more connected to the garden and to nature, as each aspect of the house gives views or access to the outside.’
What the couple unexpectedly realised, is that one of the benefits of such architecture is that they did not need as much furniture as in their previous home. With glazing and wood panelling covering so much of the walls, there was not much space to hang paintings. So furnishing the house was a matter of hunting down one or two key pieces which would stand the test of time.
DAVIDE LOVATTI3/8Hoping that behind the cement render there was a 16th-century gem, the owners of this house in Umbria set to work restoring its architecture, before calling in Maria Speake of Retrouvius to transform the interiors. She was the perfect choice for these clients, who knew from the start that they wanted to preserve as many of the raw architectural ingredients as possible. Using salvaged materials and antiques, Maria has created a charming and inviting space which makes use of the wealth of existing materials, furniture and textiles.
Paul Massey4/8The architect and interior designer owners of this Somerset house welcomed the challenge of building an exceptional family home based on an energy-efficient design philosophy. It is a passive house - constructed using the principles of the Passivhaus building standard developed in the Nineties.
It combines advanced insulation, clever heat-exchange technology and careful orientation to avoid the need for heating even in the depths of a British winter. One of the subtle but effective lessons to learn is that a heavy front door will not only act as an insulator, but also creates a sense of weight and quality.
Kilian O'Sullivan5/8Hayhurst & Co's sustainable design for the ‘Green House’ in Tottenham won them the RIBA’s 2023 House of the Year award. When it came to the design, high performance (which is where those more technical bits come in) was both a priority and, for Nick Hayhurst, a necessity. The result is a house that not only used as little energy as possible to build, but continues to use as little as possible to run – something that particularly impressed the RIBA judges.
All but off-grid in summer, it’s been fitted with photovoltaic panels on the roof, which power both an air-source heat pump and a battery for gloomier days. Passive measures, such as windows in the glass roof, cool the building when necessary. Greenery, planted close to the house and filtering the air, feels less like a separate entity than part of the decoration.
Mark Anthony Fox6/8The filmmaker-turned-hemp-grower Steve Barron commissioned architect Paloma Gormley to design this house, on a hemp farm, in the Cambridgeshire countryside. She created the structure from prefabricated panels of hempcrete (hempcrete, a material that is made from a mulch of hemp shiv).
Paloma designed a system of timber-framed panels filled with hempcrete, which were made at the specialist brickworks HG Matthews in Buckinghamshire, before being assembled on site in just two days within the shed’s existing steel frame. These provide both structure and insulation. The house is clad in a corrugated rain screen of compressed hemp fibre, bound by a sugar-based resin made with other agricultural waste from the farm. The finished, off-grid building is powered by a wind turbine, solar panels and a biomass boiler.
Owen Gale7/8Seeking to create a house worthy of this extraordinary marshland site on the Isle of Wight, the owner was in no doubt that architect Níall McLaughlin was the ideal person for the job. His emphasis on the feeling of a space rather than on any particular style has resulted in a spectacular design. At the heart of the plan is a large atrium-like space clad externally in accoya and internally in ash: both are local woods which contribute to the building's air-tight structure and the internal high-performance thermal envelope.
Paul Massey8/8Contemporary additions by Built Works sit in harmony with the original architecture of this Victorian villa decorated by Tom Morris. For the owners, the house needed to offer the best of both worlds: a space that was completely energy efficient but retained the charm of a Victorian building. As such, cutting-edge technology is integrated throughout – everything from a heat-recovery system to high-performance foam insulation. Harry Kay of Built Works expanded the ground floor at the back and side, adding an impressive brick and glass extension to the rear that now accommodates a light-filled dining area leading to an open-plan kitchen and library.
