Lanai Living, Reimagined.
Inside Nānā Kai’s Quietly Luxurious Island Homes.
The five floorplans at Nānā Kai read like a quiet argument for a slower, more gracious way of living, one in which the line between the house and the island is deliberately, almost stubbornly, blurred. On a breezy afternoon in Kohala, standing in one of the deep lanais with the sliding doors flung open, the architecture feels less like a defensive shell against the elements and more like a frame for them.
A Community Built Around the Lanai.
Most mainland buyers shopping digitally for new construction in Hawaii are greeted with familiar forms: stucco boxes, clipped gables, a token deck tacked on like an afterthought. Nānā Kai, a new enclave on the dry, sunstruck flank of the Kohala Coast, takes another tack. Its plans are arranged around lanais that are not just outdoor rooms but primary organizing devices, sometimes running the full width of the house, sometimes curling in an L-shape like a protective arm around the great room.
The square footage tells its own story. The Maile plan, with 2,040 square feet of interior space and 663 square feet of lanai, devotes nearly a quarter of its footprint to covered outdoor living. The Koa, the largest of the five, stretches to 3,155 interior square feet and an expansive 1,034-square-foot lanai, a proportion that suggests evenings spent lingering outside long after the trade winds pick up.
Ohi‘a
2.5 bathrooms2,032 s.f.
635 s.f. lanai
The Working Island Home.
At 2,032 square feet, Ohi‘a is the quiet workhorse of the group, a single-level plan that seems designed for people who intend to live in Hawaii rather than simply vacation there. The plan’s three bedrooms and two and a half baths cluster around a generous great room, with the kitchen and dining area sliding open directly onto a lanai that feels like an extension of the living space.
What distinguishes Ohi‘a is not its size but its flexibility. A front bedroom can serve as a guest room or a den, and buyers can option it into a full study, a nod to the remote workers who now log into mainland meetings from a different time zone. An optional outdoor shower off the primary bath and an available set of carport gates add the small, practical luxuries that make daily life on an island both easier and more pleasurable, from rinsing off salt water to securing paddleboards and beach gear.
Naupaka
3 bathrooms2,092 s.f.
915 s.f. lanai
514 S.F. Ohana
Multi‑Generational by Design.
If Ohi‘a is the archetypal family house, Naupaka reads like its more extroverted cousin. The 2,092-square-foot, four-bedroom, three-bath plan wraps a 915-square-foot covered porch and lanai around a central great room, creating a wide, shaded margin where life can expand or contract with the season.
Here, the architects lean into Hawaii’s long tradition of multi-generational households. Naupaka offers an optional multi-gen suite with its own living room, compressing the main house to three bedrooms and three and a half baths but allowing grandparents, a grown child or a long-term guest a measure of privacy. There is also the option of an ohana unit above the front-load garage, with sleeping and living areas stacked like a small apartment, ready for visiting family or a caregiver.
Maile
3 bathrooms2,040 s.f.
663 s.f. lanai
514 S.F. Ohana
Compact But Indulgent.
Maile, at first glance, is the modest one: 2,040 interior square feet, three bedrooms, three baths. But its numbers conceal a certain indulgence. The lanai, at 663 square feet, reads almost like an extra room, inviting a full outdoor dining table, a daybed, perhaps even a hammock angled to catch the sunset over the lava fields.
Buyers can specify an optional tub-and-shower configuration in the primary bath, a small luxury that feels surprisingly rare in resort-adjacent housing, where showers tend to dominate. There is also the offer of an outdoor shower and an ohana above the garage, reinforcing the sense that the plan is meant to flex between everyday practicality and periodic influxes of guests—spring-break cousins, college friends suddenly eager to discover the Big Island.
‘Alani
3.5 bathrooms2,883 s.f.
635 s.f. lanai
514 S.F. Ohana
The House That Entertains.
If Nānā Kai has a headliner, it is probably ‘Alani. At 2,883 square feet and four bedrooms with three and a half baths, the plan treats the first floor as a public realm and the second as a private one, in a division that will feel familiar to anyone who has lived in a prewar townhouse. The great room opens in two directions: toward a deep lanai on one side and a welcoming porch on the other, so that both arrival and departure pass through a kind of outdoor foyer.
‘Alani’s options reinforce its social ambitions. Like Naupaka, it offers a multi-gen suite with its own living area at the ground floor, ideal for in-laws who stay long enough that “guest room” begins to feel like a misnomer. An ohana above the garage adds another layer of flexibility, while the second-floor loft and balcony off the primary suite make the upper level feel like a retreat, complete with a vantage point over the community’s low-roofed streetscape.
Koa
4.5 bathrooms3,155 s.f.
1,034 s.f. lanai
A Quiet Statement Piece.
Koa, the largest plan, takes the language of the smaller homes and stretches it out, but not in the hulking, double-height way common on the mainland. With 3,155 interior square feet and 1,034 square feet of lanai, the house seems designed for owners who will host frequently but prefer to do so in a low-key way, letting guests spill out into the shade rather than gathering them around a formal dining table.
Four bedrooms and three and a half baths anchor the standard plan, but options for a fifth bedroom and a library hint at the competing fantasies driving many buyers: room for more people, or room for more solitude. The library, in particular, feels like an old-fashioned luxury recast for the streaming age, a space that might just as easily hold surfboards and yoga mats as hardcovers but still signals a desire for a quieter interior life.
A Calibrated Sense Of Scale.
Despite the range of sizes, there is a striking consistency in how these houses handle scale. None of the great rooms vault into two-story spaces; instead, the ceiling heights are generous but controlled, the rooms wide enough for large sofas but not so cavernous that a single family feels lost in them. The sense of volume comes from width and openness to the lanais rather than raw height, a choice that keeps the houses visually low and better suited to the horizontal landscape.
Outdoor square footage, meanwhile, is carefully calibrated. The smaller Maile and Ohi‘a carry more modest lanais; the larger Koa and Naupaka unfurl deeper covered edges, good for the strong afternoon sun of Waikoloa’s leeward side. ‘Alani strikes a middle path, its lanai wide enough to function as a second living room but tucked close to the house, preserving a sense of enclosure when the wind picks up.
Life Between Mountains and Sea.
Taken together, the five plans suggest a particular way of inhabiting Hawaii, one shaped as much by family structure and remote work as by trade winds and volcanic soil. The ohana apartments above garages acknowledge that the island is a place people move to, not just visit; the multi-gen suites nod to those who have always been here, choosing to stay close across generations.
For a buyer overseas, the appeal may be less about square footage and more about this calibrated porousness: doors that slide away, lanais that are neither patio nor interior but something in between, outdoor showers that quietly insist on rinsing off the day before stepping inside. In a housing market that often prizes spectacle over subtlety, Nānā Kai’s plans feel almost restrained, and that restraint might be the most luxurious gesture of all.
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