A courtyard always serves as an impressive way of dividing up the rooms of a house or separating one building from another. The architecture is perfect for bringing a little piece of the outdoors inside. While it’s easy to assume you’d need a lot of greenery in a courtyard to make it really feel like a natural setting, you might be surprised to see how achievable it is with even the most modern and minimal designs. Here are a few beautiful examples.

Living Space Escapes

With a view like the one in this living room along with its modern Asian sliding doors, you’d never need a television! Even in an urban area, this courtyard still offers a little piece of the natural environment to look out on. [Photo from Ontrus]

An interesting courtyard design example featured on ArchDaily stretches one out along the wall of a living space, using bamboo that reaches up past the ceiling.

Courtyards can be tiny and still make a big impact. Here’s a courtyard at the center of a living room that’s bright and serves as a gorgeous focal point. [Photo from Visi.co.za]

There’s nothing like a very minimal, zen garden-like courtyard to help anyone feel more calm and at peace. This example from Interiores Minimalistas shows one with sliding doors and a very minimal look that extends indoors as well.

Another very zen-inspired courtyard from Home Adore creates a calm, clean, and natural courtyard space beside one of the main rooms of the home.

A larger courtyard shown here from Home Designing features a substantial tree that’s two stories tall, which can be conveniently seen by all the rooms surrounding it.

Kitchen & Bathroom Tranquility

You definitely don’t see a kitchen or a bathroom every day that walks out into a courtyard. Have a look at this miniature zen-inspired design featured on ArchDaily that’s barely big enough to be considered a real courtyard, and built beside the kitchen of a home designed in Indonesia.

A slightly larger courtyard design featured on Home DSGN separates a kitchen from another room.

And wouldn’t you say that this is the tiniest courtyard you’ve ever seen?! No glass windows or doors necessary for this one featured on DigsDigs.

Another unique courtyard from Home DSGN actually connects to a bathroom, and luckily maintains privacy on all the other adjoining walls!

Decks for Divided Serenity

Some courtyards feature gorgeous decks and patios that make room for just enough plant life too. Here’s one from Architizer that serves as a stunning divider between a dark building and another with glass windows.

This beautiful courtyard from World Architects still keeps it minimal, even with the added mossy rock garden beneath the tree in the center of the deck.

A courtyard from Kurosaki Satoshi pairs a sunken garden with a surrounding deck, which could even double as a bench area.

This spacious courtyard featured on Plataforma Arquitectura creates a common entryway for a building based in Portugal.

Naturally Snug

It’s true that courtyards come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and even the smallest can still be home to some pretty large and tall plant life. It may look cramped, but this space still fits a sizeable tree! [Photo from Home Garden]

Of course, not all trees have to be lush and full. A narrower and more sparse tree grows up through a deck in this smaller courtyard, featured on I Like Architecture.