Collection: Outdoor Playhouses

Outdoor Playhouses for Kids, from Cottage to Cabin

Swing open the door of the 7' x 9' Cedar Cabin Playhouse — a real 23-by-58-inch door with its own window — and the inside is more house than toy: four aluminum windows with screens, locks and tempered glass, a flower box under each one, a shingled cedar roof overhead and a sandbox built into the base below the floor. It is Western red cedar throughout, sized so kids have a hard time outgrowing it.

That is the far end of this page. The playhouses here run from a pocket-sized cottage to that cabin, and what separates one from the next is how much structure surrounds the pretend play: some are four walls and a door, some carry sandboxes underneath, some arrive with a swing frame and slide attached.

The cedar three

The trio from Outdoor Living Today shares one construction story. Each is rot-resistant Western red cedar, arrives as pre-cut panelized walls with the siding already attached, and goes up in about two days with a helper and ordinary tools. Each stands on an 11-inch-tall cedar sandbox base, so digging happens in the shade of the floor and the footprint stays put. And each ships unstained: left alone the cedar weathers to a light grey, or it takes whatever paint or stain the household votes for.

The differences are scale and character. The 6' x 6' Little Cedar Playhouse is the preschool pick, with a Dutch door, three screened windows and two flower boxes. The 6' x 9' version stretches the same build to half again the floor space and cuts a heart-shaped window into the door. The 7' x 9' Cabin adds the fourth window and the tempered glass. A slide is not part of the kit — the two smaller houses accept a standard slide rated for a 48–53 inch platform, and some families install a second ladder instead.

Cottages and combos

The Casa Indoor/Outdoor Cottage Playhouse compresses the same idea to about 45 by 43 inches: a swinging front door, big windows, flower boxes and two serving counters that turn the window into a shopfront, listed for ages two to six and equally at home in a playroom. The Craftsman Wooden Playhouse & Swing Set puts a steering wheel, a climbing ladder, a rock wall and a slide on a hardwood frame that takes most common swing seats. The Forest Compact Wooden Playhouse & Swing Frame elevates the house itself — 78 inches tall, stretching past twelve feet once the swing frame is on — with two swing seats in the box alongside the ladder, the slide and the rock wall.

For the smallest crew

Two pieces scale the idea down to toddlers. The Palm 5-in-1 Indoor/Outdoor Playground Playset surrounds a fabric tent with a climbing net, a rock wall, a ladder and a four-foot slide in one FSC-certified frame for ages two to eight — the tent is the playhouse, everything else is the commute. The Aloe Mini Playset & Water Table adds weather to the game: a water wall fed by an ordinary garden hose, plus climbing rocks and a low slide, in materials that shrug off sun and splashes.

Why wood earns its keep

A plastic playhouse fades, bows and eventually cracks; cedar and hardwood take the same summers and ask only for an occasional coat of stain. Buy once, host a few thousand tea parties, hand it to the next kid. If the swinging and climbing matter more than the house itself, start from the Outdoor Playsets & Swing Sets collection instead — and for the crew that would rather cook the mud than sweep it out, there are Mud Kitchens & Water Tables.