Gallery: A Company That Lets You Custom-Design Your Dream Home Online
Pure Photo01Agoura Hills Breezehouse
Premium prefab housing has gone through a revival in recent years. Blu Homes is one of a few companies that does the design, manufacturing, and set up as a company.
Pure Photo02Healdsburg Sidebreeze
Building a house is a dream that comes with a massive headache. Since launching in 2008 Blu Homes has tried to change that.
Pure Photo03Healdsburg Sidebreeze 3
Blu Homes uses proprietary 3-D modeling software to let customers scroll through templates and hundreds of finishing options online. Once they've settled on a design, they order it.
Kesten Migdal04FactoryEXT2013-01-09
It's assembled at a factory in northern California. Blu Homes has a patent for their origami-like folding system, which allows entire houses to fold up for shipping.
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Upon arrival, they need about one day for set up. (Finishing details like siding takes longer.)
Adrienne Aubry06Healdsburg Sidebreeze 10
Blu Homes has been able to scale quickly by pooling all their resources under one roof. They commissioned a MIT study, for instance, that found that 20 to 40 percent of the average home goes to waste.
John Swain07Maryland Breezehouse Breezespace
That—and $200 million in funding—has allowed them to start offering bigger homes, but not necessarily at bigger prices, this year.
John Swain08Maryland Breezehouse
They’ve also figured out how to efficiently fold more complicated housing designs, like Southwest and modern farmhouse styles, and gabled roofs.
