As our personal and professional lives become more demanding and hectic, people have reacted with a more casual, relaxed, and open way of living at home. Kitchens are no longer just for cooking but serve as entertainment hubs; barbeques on the grill have replaced formal dinners. As our lives at home have become increasingly informal, the "barefoot living" lifestyle has emerged and there is increased demand to carry this attitude over into home design.

Relaxed, open, filled with light, and intimately connected to the outdoors, barefoot houses make living at home feel like being on vacation 365 days a year. The 24 houses featured in The Barefoot Home reflect today's barefoot times. From a long, low house on the Kansas prairie to an adobe home in New Mexico and a New England cottage by the sea, these homes capture the essence of barefoot living.

"Dreamy and light, these hideaway domiciles across the country photographed with stunning serenity by Ken Gutmaker share an uncluttered effortlessness. Vassallo defines a barefoot home as enjoying informality, openness to nature, abundance of light ('helps blur the distinction between inside and outside'), and the use of straightforward, touchable textures — peeled cedar columns, exposed cabinets and framing. Vassallo's model here is clearly the Usonian house by Frank Lloyd Wright, as well as an open Japanese living room parceled into flexible spaces using screens. Many of the houses selected are located in California and the Pacific Northwest, such as a cozy bungalow in a busy neighborhood in Seattle with high transom windows and a courtyard. Other arresting structures include a summer house on Lake Martin, Ala., featuring flip-up windows rather than air conditioning; a modernly refurbished colonial in Bethesda, Md., with a fairly unconventional, detached screen porch that doubles as a clubhouse for the kids. By far the wildest structure here is a revamped Native American longhouse smack in the middle of the Kansas prairie: no curtains necessary. Vassallo, like Henry David Thoreau, whom he quotes, eschews the stuffiness and formality of the typical home." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Barefoot" in the title of this compendium of stylish homes is not a call to nudism but a reference to the carefree way of life these homes reflect and can instill. Their purpose is to make living at home feel like being on vacation and they accomplish this through light, open floor plans and by blurring the division between indoors and out. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Relaxed, open, filled with light, and intimately connected to the outdoors, barefoot houses make living at home feel like being on vacation 365 days a year. The 24 houses featured here range from a long, low house on the Kansas prairie to an adobe home in New Mexico and a New England cottage by the sea. Relaxed, open, filled with light, and intimately connected to the outdoors, barefoot houses make living at home feel like being on vacation 365 days a year. The 24 houses featured here range from a long, low house on the Kansas prairie to an adobe home in New Mexico and a New England cottage by the sea.

Create a relaxed, comfortable home for you and guests.

Forget using the front door or eating dinner in the dining room. Today, we live in a casual, no-tie-required fashion where we dress down for work, put our feet up on the coffee table, and entertain in our kitchens. We no longer sit down to a formal dinner, but rather fire up the barbecue on the back patio. Our lives have become increasingly informal, and now our homes are following suit.

The 24 houses featured in The Barefoot Home reflect today's barefoot times. From a long, low house on the Kansas prairie to an adobe home in New Mexico and a New England cottage by the sea, these homes capture the essence of barefoot living.

You'll find ideas to make your home as comfortable as a pair of well-worn jeans.

Marc Vassallo is one of today's top writers in home design. With formal education in architecture and creative writing, Vassallo understands and clearly articulates home design trends and ideas. He is co-author with acclaimed architect and author Sarah Susanka of Inside the Not So Big House: Discovering the Details that Bring a Home to Life (2005), the best-selling book about crafting quality and character in a home through architectural details. Vassallo writes for Cottage Living, Cooking Light, Saveur, and other national magazines, and is a frequent speaker at home design and future trends conferences.

The Barefoot Manifesto
Barefoot Dreams
Letting the Light In
House and Garden Are One
Barefoot under a Big Roof
Opening Up in New England
Alfresco Oasis in the City
Barefoot Cubed
Building Upward and Outward
Open to the Breeze
A Plan for Coming Together
Farmhouse on the Beach
Barefoot Out Back
Growing Barefoot over Time
Barefoot on the Prairie
Living Room as Town Square
Slice of Life
A Feel for Natural Materials
Barefoot Casita
A Simple Summerhouse
The Warmth of Sun and Earth
Barefoot Garage
Stay-at-Home Summer Camp
Barefoot by Choice
Uncluttered Home, Uncluttered Life
Architects and Designers