Beautiful windows in natural homes around the world.

You don't have to pay a fortune to have a home with beautiful and unique windows. This is a collection from straw bale and cob homes around the world demonstrating some of the patterns from 'A Pattern Language', the architectural bible for many natural builders and architects.

This is the kitchen window to Ianto and Linda's home at Cob Cottage Company in Oregon, USA. The window has been pargeted, that's decorative work in clay or lime, and styled with natural pigments to represent a happy face. The interior of the cob cottage kitchen is 100% hand made. If you look to the shadows above the window you'll see the ferns that drape over the living roof. Using plants in this way helps to provide filtered Light (Pattern Language No.238). Where the edge of a window or eave of a roof is silhouetted against the sky, make a tapestry of light and dark to break up and soften the sunlight.

It's common practice in cob home building to incorporate coloured glass and reclaimed windows of all shapes and sizes. This cottage in Canada is a lovely example with a sweep of pale blue bubbles across three arched niches.

The tiny cabin was built by Tracy Calvert and a small crew of paid cobbers. It's about 240 sq.ft (22 m2) including the framed-in sleeping loft upstairs.

Generally cats and dogs have a habit of finding the best place to sit. In this case it's the window seat in Rachel's straw bale home in Wales at Quiet Earth. A window seat is basically a niche in the thick walls [Pattern No.197] of the home.

Rachel lived off-grid in a shed in her woodland in Wales, carrying water from a local spring, using candlelight, a gas stove and a compost loo. She loved it, but the shed was small, so she built a straw bale extension onto it with the help of some friends. From this humble start she has built what has become an iconic home winning the 2009 Grand Designs eco-house award.

This beautiful window with swirling cob walls looks out over the banks of a small stream in Somerset, England where the local dialect still has remnants of the Anglo-Saxon language. It was built by Rich and Lisa. Rich, who made the unbelievably beautiful window, is an artisan woodsmith.

You can find them at UK festivals teaching wood carving and Celtic Ogham under the name of 'Goatlings' at events like Buddha Field and Sunrise Celebration.

If you happened to be taking a walk around a little place in Wales called Fachwen, you may come across a sign pointing to a place called Cae Mabon that nestles in an oak forest clearing by a little river that cascades down to the nearby lake. If your curiosity is strong enough to take you there, then half a mile down a woodland track you will discover a magical place with storytelling rooms, tree spirits and Celtic traditions woven into the hills.

This is the cob cottage that overlooks all the other wonderful natural homes at Cae Mabon. It was built with the help of Ianto of Cob Cottage Company.

Any window can become an inviting window space as long as the window is designed as a place to sit, to be, rather than just a hole in the wall.

How much do you think it would cost to get a contractor to install a window like this in your house $2k, $3k maybe $4k? It's Simon Dale's house at Lammas ecoVillage in Wales and the whole house cost about $6k. It took two months to build and attracted help from over 50 volunteers. It incorporates straw-bale walls and a rammed earth floor.

When it comes to windows in naturally built homes there are no rules. This beautiful asymmetrical window is at Bill and Athena Steen's Canelo Project in Elgin, AZ, USA. The window belongs to probably the most stylish straw bale paint shed (above) on the planet

As well as being forerunners in straw bale building with an impressive collection of books to their name they are also experts in decorative clay plastering.