CAPE BRETON ISLAND, Nova Scotia

ELIOT ANGLE’S favorite spot in the getaway that he and his wife, Alexandra, designed has to be the outdoor shower.

“Sure, the weather makes it a little challenging to use at times,” he said, noting that 100-mile-an-hour winds and driving rain are not unheard of here, even in the summer. “But the romantic rusticator in me sticks with it.” (For the less adventurous, there is a 1920s footed bathtub indoors, bought and refinished in nearby Halifax.)

Inspired by local barns, with a nod to the spare Scandinavian aesthetic, the Angles’ 2,400-square-foot shingled cottage is all about the outdoors. The windows frame views in every direction: Cape Breton Highlands National Park to the north, the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the west, forested hills to the east and headlands to the south. And the landscape dictated the way the house looks inside as well.

The Angles, interior designers who live in Los Angeles, took long walks, photographing the densely wooded terrain in different seasons — the changing colors of the spruce, pine, birch, maple and cedar trees, and the goldenrod, rosa rugosa, blueberries, raspberries and cranberries.