Mountain houses are popular getaway homes for those looking to escape the hustle and bustle of busy cities. But they can also be a perfect main residence for those who want a quiet life surrounded by nature.
Regardless of how you intend to use it, building a lodge home is all about creating a peaceful, relaxing mountain house exterior design that blends your tastes with the outdoors.
While every element of the exterior plays an important role in the overall design, nothing is as important as the roof, which ties everything together with style and material.
Mountain Home Climate Considerations for Roofing
You shouldn’t build a house in Washington using the same materials as you would in Florida.
The fact is:every area has different climate considerations you need to be aware of when you start construction and design. And while no two mountain areas are the same, the climate generally includes:
Wintery Conditions
Mountainous climates are known for heavy snowfall and icy conditions. Therefore, you should use a roof material that can withstand consistent exposure to moisture and freeze-thaw cycles.
Water
Between melting snow, ice, and rain, your roof will have near-constant exposure to water. That's why, again, it is so essential to have moisture-resistant roofing. You also want a roof that avoids curling, rot, mold, mildew, algae growth, and more.
Hot and Dry Summers
But remember, it isn't cold all year— and mountain areas are no different.
Sometimes there is hot and dry weather, which beats down on your roof, which means:
You need to also have a roof material that is resistant to UV exposure. Materials like slate and cedar shakes are a great example, which can become brittle, crack, and flake the more they are exposed to the sun.
Wildfires
Between late summer and early fall, another concern is: wildfires. These fires can wreak havoc in mountain regions and destroy acres of forests and homes.
Using high-quality fire-resistant roofing in your mountain house exterior design is another great idea. Even though materials like cedar shakes can be treated for fire resistance, they are still banned in many areas—or will not be covered by insurance.
Mountain House Exterior Design Ideas
There is no definitive look for a mountain home. While they typically were wooden homes in the past, today, mountain house exterior design has countless possibilities, with homes coming in every shape, size, and style, from traditional to modern.
1. A Shed Roof and Cedar Shake Siding
When Marcy Pickering, property manager of The Lodges of Sundance in Mountain Village, Colorado, needed to replace the old, worn cedar shake siding, she relied on Brava’s synthetic Cedar Shake.
Those looking to add touches of a modern mountain house design exterior to an otherwise traditional design can do it through simple changes—like the roof shape. This lodge, for example, features a shed roof, a roof with only one side.
And the roof has the necessary steep pitch and is supported by simple wooden braces. The lower level and chimney are a gray and tannish-gray stone, a classic mountain home feature, paired with contracting black-brown wood siding.
While wood siding isn't always allowed in every area, you can get that cedar look with composite cedar shakes, which offer an authentic look and are approved for use in wildfire-prone areas.
2. Maintaining a Light Color Palette
For a beautiful mountain home that is worthy of standing in the midst of so much natural beauty, cedar shake tiles can be used as a roofing as well as siding material. Because natural cedar shakes require so much maintenance, using them as both roofing and siding adds a lot of maintenance to a mountain home. Composite Cedar Shakes are a better option because they last longer and don’t require any maintenance.
3. Blending in With Nature
This modern mountain house design showcases how Brava Cedar Shake in Aged completes the look of a mountain house exterior. Paired with stone columns and chimneys, it enhances the natural feel and helps the home blend into its natural surroundings.
4. Manage Multiple Rooflines with Ease
This Wyoming mountain lodge exterior design features multiple rooflines that can create a challenge for installing and maintaining roofing materials. Brava Cedar Shake Aspen roof tiles are able to handle the multiple rooflines and transitions with ease. They don’t require any maintenance, so this roof is much more manageable than if a high-maintenance material, like natural cedar shake, was chosen.
5. Create Stunning Details
Modern mountain home exterior designs are known for their unique touches. This mountain home exterior design features a flower inlay on the balcony overhang. The overhang’s hexagonal roof adds even more character. These little touches are made even easier with synthetic cedar shakes that can handle any roofline while protecting the roof from the elements.
6. Mix Natural Materials
One goal of mountain homes is typically to blend in with their surroundings. This is achieved using materials like wood and natural stone veneer siding. For the roof, materials like cedar shake and slate shingles are often used to enhance the natural look, but natural cedar and slate come with a range of problems that create the need for costly maintenance over their life. Brava offers Cedar Shake and Old World Slate tiles that enhance the natural look, but without the downsides.
7. Take Advantage of Traditional Design
An A-frame mountain house exterior design is one of the simplest designs and is perfect for mountain homes for one person or a couple. This A-line uses natural, unpainted cedar shake siding with varied tones of brown, from golden hues to darker browns. It allows the home to blend in with the surrounding trees, creating the perfect peaceful retreat.
8. A Contemporary Mountain Home
This expansive contemporary mountain home has classic red brick siding and slate roofing on the Mansard roof. The slate features varying tones of black and reddish hues, which tie in with the brick, creating a cohesive design.
9. Monochromatic Tones
This suburban home kept all of its exterior design choices, except for its front door, in the same palette and tones.
The house is stone, with soft shakes in the gable end in a targeted pattern. The roof is a medium-gray slate, drawing colors from the stone and allowing the gable ends to stand out a little more.
10. A Simple Rustic
Like The Lodges at Sundance, this house has a rustic exterior. This log siding has been left natural with wood log siding, allowing the knots of the wood to shine through and add character. The black slate roof adds dramatic contrast and ties in with the metal porch rails.
11. White and Black Contemporary Design
This contemporary home features two gabled sections at an angle, joined at the center in a cross-gable.
Beyond the interesting shape, this house made very modern color choices: black and white. The house itself is a crisp, bright white, and the roof a rich black slate. It matches the black rail across the center, providing a space to enjoy the view outside.
12. An Interestingly Shaped Home
While A-frames are a unique shape, they don't compare to this home, which has a variety of interesting angles, making for a truly unique home. It is entirely covered in rich, brown cedar shakes, with red fascia creating a division between the body and roof.
13. Stone and Slate
This is a contemporary exterior mountain house design that has stone siding. The blue trim and gutters help to enhance the subtle blue tones in the stone. It also ties well with the dark shakes, which have varying tones that work well with the siding.
14. A Vibrant Color Choice
When designing a house exterior design for a mountain lodge, consider thinking outside of the box with your color choices. This homeowner chose a vibrant green shake siding with stone and metal accents. The small dome roofed extension adds more character to the overall home design. The brown cedar shakes tie in with the stone accents, creating a cohesive design.
15. Hues of Brown
Another idea to consider is choosing a single color and using varying stone shades and tones. This homeowner did just that, sticking with a largely brown-based design. The stone is a mixture of brown and white, with brown shake siding. White accents and green windows help to break up the brown.
16. A Pure Brown Cabin
This exterior mountain house design is another one that follows a brown monochromatic theme. The body of the house has darker brown log siding and a cross-gabled roof with a significant overhang that dominates the structure, providing a shaded area under which to sit. It is covered in similarly colored brown shakes, finishing off the quaint cabin.
17. A Modern Gray and Black Mountain House Exterior
Another somewhat modern mountain house design exterior possibility is to opt for gray. This home has gray stone accents paired with a darker gray siding. The roof is a dark gray shake, with black fascia helping to create a divide between the roof and the siding. Simple wood accent pieces break up the gray, adding a brighter natural element.
18. Wood and White Stone Siding
Wood panel siding is an alternative to log siding.
This home showcases its design possibilities, with thin plans installed vertically on the three front gables, while the rest of the house, with side gable roofing, is covered in pristine white bricks. The medium-toned gray shakes complement both sidings.
Together, it all creates a warm, bright exterior that welcomes you.
Build Your Mountain House Exterior Designs with Brava
Cedar shakes are one of the most popular materials for mountain home designs, with slate coming in as a close second. But, these materials are not without their flaws.
They are both expensive and heavy—though slate weighs significantly more.
Cedar shakes also require a great deal of maintenance and can suffer serious damage without the right care, which includes special protective treatments for moisture, UV, and fire resistance. Some states, like California, have also banned natural cedar in areas that are prone to wildfires, even if they have fire resistance coatings.
Brava offers an alternative. These composite tiles are designed to replicate the look of natural materials like cedar shakes and slate. They also offer Spanish Barrel Tiles. What makes Brava so special?
The tiles use closed-cell materials, which help prevent water absorption.
- They are Class A and C fire-rated, Class 4 impact-rated, and have wind resistance up to 211MPH.
- They are UV resistant.
- They are extremely lightweight.
- They offer a natural look and feel, with color varieties that create a more authentic look.
- Brava tiles are virtually maintenance-free.
Contact Brava todayto learn more about our products and find the right option for your mountain home.
