Playhouse Designs to Inspire the Imagination!

Playhouse designs are a brilliant way to get your kids using their imagination and having some fun. It's the perfect project for parents to bond with their little ones and teach them how great it can be to build something from scratch and take pride in their work.

The options are seemingly endless with the only limiting factors; budget, space and of course the limits of your own imagination. Get your children to draw their perfect playhouse and incorporate their ideas into your design. Even if you plan on buying a kit or a pre-assembled playhouse, you can still use their ideas to guide you when making a purchase.

As with any investment for the kids, you don't want it to be something they enjoy for a couple of weeks and lose interest. Getting the children involved from the planning to the building and painting is sure to give them pride in their work and appreciate their playhouse all the more.

Here are some ideas for playhouse designs to really put a smile on your children's faces:

Cottage style playhouses

Little girls particularly love cottage style playhouse designs. They come in all shapes and sizes, but are characterised by window shutters, window boxes, brightly coloured trim and often a white picket fence with a small garden out in front.

Kids love playing house in a pretty cottage and you can help them to create their own garden full of vegetables, herbs and pretty flowers.

Treehouses with raised platforms

Treehouses are always a hit with children, boys and girls alike. Plus for parents, they're a brilliant way to get them to burn off a bit of energy as they climb up a rope ladder or scale their scramble net to get inside.

This kind of playhouse design is perfect for small back gardens because they won't take up so much floor space, leaving you plenty of room underneath for extra storage units.

Castle style playhouses

Let your imagination go wild and create a castle playhouse to inspire your children's sense of adventure. They're great for a whole host of games, from dress up to staging their own play, kings and queens to hide and seek.

You can build a few separate turrets, paint with bright colours and create a roof balcony so they can peer over their kingdom!

Activity playhouses

If your child is particularly active and you want something to help them burn off that extra energy, an activity playhouse design is the answer. Swings, rope ladders, helter skelter slides and scramble nets... you can add as much activity as you like. Even monkey bars could be incorporated to get from one part of the playhouse to the next.

Just make sure you consider safety and provide adequate soft fall areas in case they fall off the equipment.

Playhouses on two floors

This kind of playhouse can be a bit more expensive to build. However you could end up with bags of extra storage, using one of the levels for yourself.

Or if you have more than one child, this is the perfect way to create a different level for their different age ranges. Or they could have a floor each to create whatever style they like. It's also the perfect place for a spare bedroom for sleepovers with friends.

Playhouses for limited space

Not everyone has a backyard big enough to house an elaborate playhouse design. But there's always a playhouse to suit every garden, you just need to make the best use of space.

You could create a small cottage that sits snug to your house, or build a playhouse on two levels, taking out the need for a separate storage shed and using the ground floor for this purpose, or buy a playhouse kit specifically made for tucking into a corner of your garden.

Whatever playhouse designs you favor, get the kids involved and let their imagination begin!