Houzz Contributor; journalist with more than two decades of experience as a graphics editor and writer at the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune; outdoor guidebook author; lover of all things outdoors, nature and wildlife. Follow me at https://westcentric.wordpress.com/

During Denmark’s short summers, vacationers there enjoy holidays at sommerhus cottages near the beach — dark-colored wooden structures with light-filled, cozy interiors. A vacation home in Washington state was inspired by these Danish summer homes. Thousands of miles away from Denmark, the home is on the shores of Hood Canal, an American version of a fjord that stretches like a crooked finger for 70 miles from Puget Sound. The architects who designed this Olympic Peninsula vacation retreat for a Seattle family used “the clean, economical forms and materials of the classic Danish sommerhus as a starting point,” says Philip Burkhardt of Prentiss Balance Wickline Architects. It’s light and airy inside, a further nod to the Danish aesthetic.