One of our most frequent email questions from community members is, ‘How can I visit a straw bale house?’, or find a straw bale house near me.
Often, folks find a nearby home to visit by meeting others interested in natural building from their local community, but thanks to a growing number of straw bale homes available for short-term rental, there is a new way to experience the feel of a bale home for yourself with an overnight stay.
Whether it is a staycation in your local region, on your road trip to a workshop, part of your research into straw bale construction for your own future home, or just for fun, we wanted to make it easier for you to find a straw bale house to experience an overnight stay in.
Read on for straw bale homestay listings we found online and how we found them. Short-term listings change all the time! So, you may need to repeat our step-by-step online sleuthing methods to find the most up-to-date options.
We haven’t yet had the experience of staying at these straw bale houses, so if you do visit them, drop us a line at [email protected]. We’d love to hear about your experience.
Find Straw Bale Houses Near You
Airbnb Method & Listings
Using this method, we identified thirty-two Straw Bale House Listings. Here’s access to Dainella’s Airbnb Wishlist with Saved Straw Bale Homes to help get you started.
For Airbnb, we found we could get 90% there with Filters. Then the final sorting of listings was done by eye to look for those standout characteristics (natural plaster, thick walls, window seats, etc.) that so many of us love about straw bale homes!
Here are two of our Airbnb methods:
Searching Everywhere – No Dates Set
- Login to Airbnb as a Traveler
- Use the Filter Scroll to Select Earth Homes
- Select Filters to the right of the scroll of icons where you found Earth Homes and scroll to set Property Type to “House” and “Guesthouse” (at the time of this article, this returned 444 results!)
- Visually scroll through the results looking for structures with a natural plaster finish and thick walls. (Yes, it is easy to get sidetracked looking at other styles of natural construction!)
- When you identify a potential straw bale home, click on the Listing.
- Once on the Listing, scroll the photos for those pictures, including windows. Look for 18” or thicker walls (this is how you can sort straw bale walls out from adobe structures.)
- Check the description and/or comments for mention of “straw bale.”
Searching Regional – No Dates Set
- Click on the ‘Where’ input area on the Search form. We recommend inputting a State name.
- Leave dates blank to maximize results. Click “Search.”
- Use the icon filters to select “Earth Homes.” It is also worth searching the “Off-Grid” and ‘Tiny Homes’ as we have seen them listed under that filter. It is worth noting that this feature can be a bit finicky. It was often best to begin all the way back at Step 1 when choosing a different icon filter to improve the accuracy of the search results.
- Scroll the photos for those including windows and look for 18” or thicker walls (this is how you can sort straw bale walls out from adobe structures.)
- Check the description and/or comments for mention of “straw bale.”
AirBnB Featured Listings
VRBO-Search Method
This method is less accurate than the above method, but it does reveal options outside of AirBnB and narrows down general search engine listings quickly, so we decided to include it. See the end of this article for a list of shortcuts to searches we ran by State with this method.
The best results we have had so far are searching by State, but if you find a better search prompt, feel free drop it in the comments below to share with the community!
- Open your preferred web browser.
- Enter the search prompt: VRBO strawbale house “State“
Note: including “quotes” around the State name will help limit results to display only those including that specific word somewhere on their webpage. - The search will include results from other platforms than just VRBO.com, but using ‘VRBO’ in the search prompt helps to quickly narrow the search down.
Conclusion
We hope that this has given you some new research options to explore your straw bale home dream and add to your understanding of what your unique bale home will look (and FEEL!) like.
There are a ton of decisions involved in building your own home. Decision fatigue is real! If you are feeling overwhelmed, know it is part of the home construction process that many others have successfully completed ahead of you. Join us for a hands-on workshop, and you’ll quickly see you are not alone.
A whole community is waiting that shares your dreams of a straw bale home!
Check out our current workshops, and if you are noodling through the early stages, we highly recommend joining us at our Straw Bale Home Design Workshop to learn how to take all these inspirations and start putting them to paper where they can become a process of steps you accomplish to make your bale home a reality.
Disclaimer: Sharing the above listings is not our endorsement, as we have not personally stayed at these homes unless otherwise noted. In some towns, short-term rentals have evolved from their roots to contribute to challenges in affordable housing for locals. Straw bale homes are typically owner-built and managed, making corporate abuse less likely.
As always, use your best judgment and remember that, just like in conventional construction, not all homes are built the same. As an owner-builder, you decide what elements and craft to include in your home!
2 Responses
Thanks for posting this article. I originally learned about Strawbale construction from a workshop years ago and finally have a completed a Colorado mountain strawbale home we now offer on Airbnb. We also love to travel and stay in other unique and natural homes!
Congratulations, Jenna, on your strawbale home build! From interest, to workshop, to snuggling in on a cool Colorado mountain day – All of that is something to celebrate and enjoy in our book! Feel free to email me your listing and I’ll add it to the shared List for everyone to use 🙂 [email protected] – Dainella