Hygge Sunrise Lake House

Lake Leelanau, Michigan, United States
4 guests
2 bedrooms
2 bathrooms

Stylishly Comfortable: A property designed with great style and with amenities that offer a relaxed stay.

House: A standalone unit of accommodation

Lakeside: On the waterfront

Natural Gallery

The first home fully designed and built by Kelly Sean Karcher, founder of Hygge Supply, a kit-home maker of intentionally styled, mindfully simple modern residences inspired by Scandinavian comforts, this onyx gem sits on a wooded lakeshore camouflaged by tamarack trees and cattails in a preserved wetland area alive with wildlife and seasonal blooms. Sleek yet subdued, it’s a gallery quality home immersed in nature.

Hygge House: Contentment and Well-Being

Inspired by the Danish word for comfort and conviviality, this generously windowed, waterfront retreat is docked on the shore of a shimmering lake in northern Michigan, ringed by lush forests and silhouetted by rolling hills blanketed with vineyards. The ebony beauty’s contrasting interior is light and high-ceilinged, brightened by double-height banks of glass on all sides creating a veritable natural observatory.

A modular design that’s truly next level, the two-bedroom home is light filled and elegant, with a clerestory-like, open-plan living space outfitted with a contemporary chef’s kitchen and island. Refined furnishings give the home a modern residence versus lakefront cabin feel, and warm wood has been given a contemporary reinterpretation in the form of polished plywood floors and ceilings. Bathrooms are ensuite, one with a deep soaking tub, and the living and dining areas are equipped to seat six. An office nook connects the rectilinear home’s wings, and outdoors, a raised, boardwalk-styled wood path leads through the wetlands down to a lakefront patio zone, where a fire pit and extended dock await.

Around

The home is buoyed in a wetland zone of northern Michigan’s dramatic Lake Leelanau, a wildlife-rich area, home to deer, bobcat, and rabbit and abundant bird life. Wooded with evergreens and deciduous trees, its lot is also an aquatic grassland, waving with cattails and rush, featuring a boardwalk-like pathway from the house to the lakeshore, with its firepit patio and dock. Considered a hidden gem of Northern Michigan, the Lake Leelanau area is a nature-lover’s paradise, with watersports (water skiing and wakeboarding, kayaking and canoeing, swimming, paddle boarding and boating) from the home’s dock, and hiking and cycling, angling and forest bathing also possible out the front door.

The region does have winter sport options as well, from snowshoeing to ice fishing, and more. Inhabited first by the Anishinaabe, the area was settled by Europeans in the mid-1800s and they began logging the area, before tourism took hold and water enthusiasts created homes in the area. Small lakeshore towns such as Suttons Bay offer traditional rural charms as well as art galleries and independent boutique shopping. The fishing harbor of Leland on the lake’s western shore has a pretty harbor and picturesque downtown with historical architecture and views of Lake Michigan. Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is several miles from the home, an area of surprisingly tall sand dunes, miles of sandy beaches, and trails for hiking the park’s forest or climbing its vast dunes. Lake Leelanau is wine country, home to dozens of winemakers and tasting rooms open for sampling. Sugar-lovers of a different sort shouldn’t miss the chance to tuck into one of Northern Michigan’s famed cherry pies, as the region around the lake is known for its thick cherry orchards.