Scotland is a magnificent place to live with a vibrant culture, stunning scenery, cutting-edge innovation, and a world-renowned reputation for welcoming everyone with an open, warm, and friendly disposition.
Moreover, with the cost of living up to 50% lower than in other UK cities such as London, an international reputation as an inclusive and safe society, a commitment to excellence in education that goes back centuries, and a lot more, there are bountiful reasons to move to Scotland.
Once you’ve decided to live in Scotland, the first thing you will need is a home. If you’re looking to move to the country or already reside there and simply intend to relocate, we suggest considering a sustainable green home.
Living in a green home allows you to reduce your carbon footprint and benefit from water efficiency, energy efficiency, and lower energy bills.
To help you out in your search, we have curated a list of the top 30 sustainable builders in Scotland.
Top Sustainable Green Home Builders in Scotland
Here are our top picks for Scotland’s highest-acclaimed green home builders that stand apart from the rest, including:
- Neat Living
- LC Ecohomes
- Carbon Dynamic
- Ptarmigan Homes
- James MacQueen Building Contractors
- Caber House
- Enevate Homes
- Echo Living
- R.House
- Reywood Construction
- McTaggart Group
- Eskgrove Homes
- Marshall Construction
- North Woods Design
- CCG Group
- Pat Munro Homes
- Ness Homes
- Timber Design and Construction
- Inhabited
- Macform Ltd.
- Heb Homes
- AS Homes Scotland
- Green & Cameron
- Log Home Scotland
- Green Leaf Design and Build
- McFarlane Joiners and Builders
- eCoe Homes
- Warm Eco Homes
- Avant Homes
- The Wee House Company
Now that you’re familiar with the (long)list let’s further consider what each esteemed green home builder can offer prospective homeowners.
Neat Living
Neat Living is one of Scotland’s top sustainable home builders, covering home design and kit supply. The company believes homes should minimize the environmental impact and stand the test of time.
Some features of its sustainable abodes include:
- Home battery storage – all Neat Living Homes have dedicated space to fit a battery storage solution, which is an excellent way to reduce dependence on energy from the grid, particularly during peak hours.
- Sustainable and natural materials – Neat Livings Flex building uses a super-insulated Advanced Timber Engineered Kit structure made with natural, sustainable, and non-carcinogenic wood fiber and cellulose insulation which is durable and robust.
- Airtightness – a building with a high airtightness level minimizes leaks and drafts and reduces energy loss. Neat Living pays considerable attention to airtightness in the design, manufacture, and construction phases.
LC Ecohomes
LC Ecohomes creates homes that meet all your requirements while having a minimal detrimental impact on the planet. With a lifetime of experience in low-energy and timber frame building, the company seeks a consistent emphasis on eco-friendly home building.
It is committed to offering you the best and most affordable homes. Built to high-performance standards and using the latest techniques and materials, LC Ecohomes tries to ensure your home is uncomplicated and comfortable to live in.
The company aims to integrate your desires and needs within your new home, having care for the local and wider environment.
The best thing about this green home builder is that it offers bespoke designs, and none of its two homes will look the same. This way, the company reflects the individual lifestyles and needs of the homeowners.
Carbon Dynamic
Carbon Dynamic is a world leader in manufacturing sustainable timber homes. The company designs and manufactures beautiful modular buildings with incredible airtightness, sustainability, and insulation.
It is dedicated to delivering environmental, social, and economic impact by offering low-energy and cost-effective buildings using sustainable, healthy, and locally sourced materials.
Carbon Dynamics’ offsite system comprises fully-fitted, highly-insulated timber modules that are prefabricated and pre-tested in its factory and transported to the site, where they can be assembled and finalized in just a few days.
All Carbon Dynamic modules are designed with an airtight internal skin and breathable external skin and surpass industry standards in their U-values, acoustic performance, and airtightness. Moreover, its buildings typically use less than 7% of the energy of an ordinary home.
Ptarmigan Homes
Ptarmigan Homes is a family-run business specializing in premium-quality, turnkey package solutions through timber kit supply across the Highlands, Argyll, Aberdeenshire, Moray, and Islands of Scotland.
This green home builder builds energy-efficient houses using sustainable and locally-sourced materials wherever possible. Its insulation, heating, and micro renewables system will be the most efficient on the market to improve your new homes.
In addition, Ptarmigan Homes is committed to maintaining the environment. Most of its timber comes from Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) or Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified suppliers.
James MacQueen Building Contractors
James MacQueen Building Contractors offer a holistic solution for commercial and domestic new build projects.
The company’s dynamic team can take your project from pre-planning to completion. It specializes in working on high-specification, bespoke homes, and prefabricated, new-build properties.
Moreover, the company is a specialist builder for R.House and bespoke projects. R.House was established in 2012 when James MacQueen Building Contractors and Rural Design architects came together to create an efficient and sustainable solution for housing in the Highlands. Together, they developed the R.House—a green home that could be constructed in a workshop, minimizing waste and costs without compromising design and quality.
Caber House
Caber House specializes in energy-efficient homes and will work with you to design a house that suits your needs. The company’s expert team of builders and architects has first-hand experience in offering the best design, manufacture, and build services.
Using its knowledge and cutting-edge technology to design and create these incredibly-efficient homes, the company constantly innovates and redefines its methods. This way, the team at Caber House ensures that every house doesn’t just look beautiful but has the latest processes to offer you the sustainable build you want.
Caber homes can also attain the PassivHaus Low Energy Building Standard and an SAP rating of 100, meaning a zero-carbon and even positive energy home. This exceptional standard makes these the most efficient homes available to self-builders.
Consider that attaining such stringent standards isn’t a “one-size-fits-all” approach. Instead, all its houses can meet these requirements, and every design is optimized using site-specific data. This way, all of the company’s clients will settle in an efficient home.
Enevate Homes
Enevate Homes designs, constructs, and installs bespoke steel framing systems for leisure, education, commercial, and residential applications. It is committed to building homes in the most eco-friendly way possible.
The company produces up to 70% fewer carbon dioxide emissions in its construction process. In addition, every building’s energy savings are up to 90% higher over its lifetime, owing to the highly-insulated nature of its properties.
Enevate Homes’ core material, steel, is completely recyclable and doesn’t emit toxic fumes during construction or in the event of a fire. This even minimizes waste as any offcuts are recycled. In fact, Enevate has a wastage rate of 1%.
If you no longer want to use the building, you can get it relocated as a whole or as individual components for reuse.
Some other factors that make Enevate Homes one of the top green home builders in Scotland include:
- 85% higher thermal efficiency
- 40% lower heating costs than required by building regulations
- Recycling 60% of factory waste
- No ozone-depleting potential in its insulation materials
- 100% reusable builds, meaning they’re easy to relocate and reconfigure
Echo Living
Echo Living specializes in designing and constructing contemporary small, off-grid buildings and cabins. Its structures are designed by award-winning designers and the company’s founder, Sam Booth.
Each one is entirely built offsite at its workshop in southwest Scotland, using a unique low-waste construction process.
All Echo Living materials come from sustainable sources and are high performance, contributing to the building’s efficiency and longevity and, ultimately, its sustainability. For instance, it uses hemp or sheep wool insulation as it’s both efficient and sustainable.
Moreover, the company builds with timber panels, each produced efficiently from renewable timber sources, and the carbon captured in the timber will be locked in for the lifetime of the buildings. Its processes keep waste to a minimum and ensure it uses valuable resources efficiently.
ECHO Living’s structures require minimal groundwork, which means less disturbance to the site and its environment. Depending on the site conditions, they use screw piles or galvanized steel base supports anchored to small concrete pads.
R.House
R.HOUSE offers a complete turnkey solution to green home building. The company covers planning permissions, building warrants, groundworks, and utility connections to your completed house. The R.HOUSE is designed to provide a simple solution for design-led, smart, modern houses throughout Scotland.
R.HOUSE is committed to the highest standards of energy efficiency. For instance, heating in the house is provided by an air-source heat pump system which even heats the water. This feature, coupled with mechanical heat recovery ventilation, makes the R.HOUSE incredibly economical to operate.
Some of the features of its sustainable buildings include:
- 90% reduction in manufacturing waste attainable by offsite building
- High acoustic and thermal insulation
- FSC-approved and responsibly-sourced materials
- Low energy lights
- Optional PV panels to enhance energy performance
- Lower carbon emissions
Reywood Construction
Reywood Construction Ltd. is an award-winning home builder based in East Lothian.
Since the company’s launch in January 1990, it has grown to become a highly-respected construction firm, providing a vast range of building services, including unique, prestigious renovations and extensions for both commercial and residential properties.
The multi-award-winning passive house in North Berwick built by Reywood is just one example of its specialist building services.
Using construction principles developed in Germany, the ultra-eco house benefits from the following components, including:
- Natural timber-frame construction
- Recycled glass insulation.
- Triple-glazing
- Mechanical ventilation heat recovery system to keep indoor air fresh
- Photovoltaic panels reduce energy bills and offer a source of income
Reywood Construction Ltd. has received numerous awards for sustainable construction. For instance, it was the Regional Winner of the Energy Efficiency Project 2015 by the Federation of Master Builders. It also secured the Scotland Sustainable Building Award 2013 by the Chartered Institute of Building and the Housing Design Award 2013 by The Saltire Society.
McTaggart Group
McTaggart Construction by McTaggart Group constructs over 750 new homes annually, with 90% in the affordable housing sector. The company’s business is rooted in history and traditional values such as integrity, honesty, and dedication to its clients.
The McTaggart Group launched its Sustainable Communities Programme in 2017. Initially, the program formalized and provided structure to the delivery of all activities related to the ‘Community Benefit’ obligations laid out by Scottish public sector contracts. that now talks about building sustainable homes and partnerships that go beyond bricks and add substantial value to the communities it helps to create.
Nevertheless, McTaggart goes above and beyond its contractual commitments.
As a result, the initiative has become a vital element of the organization’s sustainable growth strategy, including a re-working of the Groups vision statement.
In 2018, the program won the ‘Community Contribution’ Award at the Scottish Home Awards 2018 and the ‘Business in the Community’ category of the Ayrshire Business Awards 2018.
Eskgrove Homes
The next green home builder on our list is Eskgrove Homes. The firm offers beautiful new builds in fantastic locations constructed to incredibly high standards.
Its homes are unique because they combine brilliant eco-credentials with elegant designs. In addition, they focus on constructing homes fit for the future, minimizing environmental impact, and saving on energy bills.
Eskgrove builds sustainable, solid, and reliable homes with high levels of airtightness and insulation, together with whole-house ventilation and heat recovery systems, which means that their energy requirement is quite low.
In addition, Eskgrove homes actively promote the use of timber products sourced from well-managed, sustainable sources and maximize the benefits of timber design to cut down raw materials’ waste during manufacturing and construction.
Some of the things Eskgrove does to make its home sustainable include:
- Using particle board with no added formaldehyde
- Storing structural timber in a temperature-controlled environment to maintain the appropriate moisture content
- Manufacturing using only the best strength and kiln-dried lumber
Another interesting thing to note about Eskgrove is that it has made a durable, environmentally responsible choice of material using PAR (Proprietary Acrylic Render). PAR has been used externally as a contemporary alternative to conventional cement render.
Marshall Construction
Established in 1983, Marshall Construction Limited has earned a reputation as one of Scotland’s leading private building contractors.
A family-owned company, its core values of reliability, quality, and competent business practice has earned it a reputation as an organization that homebuyers can trust to deliver consistent quality service.
The company’s approach to sustainability is to comply with its environmental policy accredited to ISO 14001:2015.
It embraces the 2008 Government strategy for sustainability targets within the construction industry, including sustainability in the design of the built environment to adhere to social, environmental, and economic sustainability principles.
Its approach to sustainability is defined through its action in the following areas, including:
Materials
The company’s policy impacts the selection of materials at the design stage by adopting responsible sourcing principles.
It works with its designers to facilitate the process of specifying and sourcing materials, taking into account social and environmental impacts by using:
- Sustainably-sourced materials
- Locally-sourced materials to minimize transport emissions
- Materials manufactured with high recycled content.
- Products that cut down the use of hazardous substances in their manufacture
Energy
Marshall Construction has considerable experience in the use of renewable energy, including:
- Heat recovery systems
- Wind turbines
- PV & solar panels
- Grass roofs
- Airtightness
- Rainwater harvesting
Environment
The company operates a waste transfer depot where it recycles materials for reuse.
Transport
Marshall Construction has developed a “Carbon Plan” with the critical consideration of minimizing carbon dioxide emissions. In addition, it has implemented a fuel management system within its vast fleet of vehicles which has positively impacted fuel consumption.
North Woods Design
North Woods Design creates bespoke timber buildings that are conscientiously crafted by a small family company. Every person in the company has a fundamental understanding of ecology and sustainability through either inclination, upbringing, or training.
Through meticulous design and consideration of every site’s unique features, North Woods can create buildings that take advantage of the natural resources offered while reducing their environmental impact.
The company’s designs incorporate as many technologies and techniques from Passive House standards as possible, including high levels of airtightness and insulation, passive solar gain, heat-retaining glazing, renewable heating technologies, and the use of natural light.
All these features help minimize the operational energy required by the building over its lifetime.
CCG Group
The CCG Group is one of Scotland’s largest privately-owned manufacturing and construction companies. It believes in building a more progressive and sustainable future for its industry, people, and communities.
The organization is investment-built on a straightforward and honest approach to partnership working, developing a robust reputation of integrity among its peers and its trusted clients, stakeholders, and partners, creating contemporary, highly energy-efficient buildings and homes throughout Scotland.
CCGs projects showcase a vast range of recent building technology advances in construction engineering, design, and innovation. The company’s continued development and research underlie its commitment to delivering products and buildings that offer energy-efficient, sustainable, and future-proof outcomes.
Pat Munro Homes
Pat Munro Homes is Scotland’s next green home builder that aims to build sustainable dwellings for future generations.
The company promises to stay by your side from the initial inquiry to the first night in your new home to ensure your expectations are met each step of the way, thus providing exceptional, high-quality customer service and delivering a house you will enjoy living in.
Pat Munro’s commitment to your future starts with its development, with every house design incorporating energy-efficient and sustainable options where applicable.
Working closely with the community in all the development locations it operates in ensures its fingerprint will positively impact the area.
Ness Homes
With over 75 years of experience in the construction industry, Ness Homes offer clients a completely bespoke service, ensuring your house is constructed to the highest craftsmanship and material standards. All Ness Homes properties meet building standards and expectations for sustainable and eco-friendly properties.
The company strives to offer levels of sustainability in line with current Scottish building regulations. In fact, it aims to meet higher levels that include energy (water and space heating), carbon emissions, design flexibility, and water efficiency.
Ness Homes offer various options throughout the construction process to move to a higher level of sustainability. These go beyond upgrading the heating system. Instead, they consider the very fabric of the building, from window specification, insulation, water consumption reduction, and air tightness.
Timber Design and Construction
Timber Design and Construction was founded almost twenty years ago by Gaetan Goubet, who was trained by the Compagnons Du Devoir in France.
The company is committed to providing personal service and premium-quality oak framed buildings to interested homeowners across mainland Scotland and the Western Isles.
The firm takes on a vast range of oak building projects, from complete oak buildings, garages, and porches to oak extensions. Timber Design takes immense pride in being one of Scotland’s most sustainable oak builders.
Oak is already an eco-friendly and sustainable choice. Thus, by keeping things local, the company ensures that it offers an even greener option for your build. More specifically, Timber Design and Construction sources its high-quality Scottish oak from within 70 miles of its premises, gets the trees milled within 10 miles, and shapes the beam itself.
Inhabited
Inhabited is a company focused on constructing homes by designing, developing, and building in healthy and eco-friendly ways, using intelligent, sustainable services and natural materials, with a blend of contemporary manufacturing processes and traditional craft-based skills.
The firm is developing methods using natural materials without many dangerous ingredients typically found in today’s building products. For example, raw materials such as wood fiber insulation and locally-sourced untreated clay and timber mean no hazardous toxin emissions.
In addition, Inhabited minimizes building waste and reuses materials where possible. It incorporates off-grid and smart services such as active and passive solar gain, greywater recycling, rainwater harvesting, and responsive LED lighting. Additionally, you can upgrade the services with new technologies without compromising the building.
Macform Ltd.
Established in 1997, Macform Ltd. is a family business that has expanded and diversified over the years into an organization that delivers the value, quality, expertise, and reliability demanded by its clients in domestic and commercial sectors.
As professional building contractors, Macform creates innovative, sustainable, and design-led homes that continue to establish incredibly high environmental standards.
The company builds in various styles, with varied interior design and layout and several exterior finishes, styles, and characters. Macform offers a complete design and build service, from crafting the initial plans to handling applications for planning and building regulations.
HebHomes
HebHomes offers a vast range of self-build kits to cater to all budgets and households, taking you from your design selection to your completed dream home.
The company’s eco-friendly designs, inspired by traditional Hebridean architecture, are developed with the environment in mind and can swiftly adapt to your particular requirements and location.
HebHomes uses green construction systems, where instead of obsolete timber studs, it offers the options of its closed panel ‘Space studs’ system (CPS) along with advanced structurally insulated panels (SIPs), where the insulation is key to the structure.
For the ultimate sustainable building, HebHomes offers cross-laminated timber kits.
AS Homes Scotland
With more than 25 years of experience in the home-building sector, AS Homes Scotland has become a significant force in constructing and delivering social housing projects.
The company takes immense pride in its high-quality energy-efficient homes and looks at every project from a future-focused lens. This approach enables the AS Homes team to redefine how they think and work to bring your project to life.
AS Homes’ properties are characterized by modern design, created for improved family living, and constructed using the highest-quality, sustainable, and eco-friendly materials.
It has gained an unparalleled reputation for quality specification and energy efficiency, setting and delivering high standards in the home building sector.
Green & Cameron
Green & Cameron is a builder based in Caithness. It also does home extensions and property refurbishments. Green & Cameron has been renovating and building across Northern Scotland since 1970.
The company aims to construct all types of new houses, kits, or traditional ones while catering to your specifications, time, and budget requirements. If you have an old building that requires property refurbishments, it can also do that.
Green & Cameron offers timber frame construction. Timber allows for a quicker build—kits are pre-built, shipped, and later assembled on site. These timber frames are wrapped in a weather-tight envelope, and the outer walls can be clad in any material, such as render, stone, weatherboarding, or oak cladding.
Timber is sustainable and eco-friendly. Green & Cameron sources its wood from PEFC or FSC-certified sources and can even provide a chain of custody certification on request.
Log Home Scotland
Log Homes Scotland designs and constructs custom-made log homes. Its eco-friendly designs range from log cabins to modular timber frame houses, mobile homes, and post and beam construction.
The company’s passion for affordable and sustainable housing and superior quality is the hallmark of its trade. In addition, it takes great pride in the craftsmanship built into all its homes.
Log Home Scotland works closely with its clients to any specification. Their cost-effective and swift construction techniques lend themselves to several contemporary or traditional design modifications in urban or rural settings.
Green Leaf Design and Build
Established in 2008 by Jason Caddy, Green Leaf Design & Build focuses on eco-friendly and highly-skilled building and joinery methods. It has upheld a staunch set of values in its work to promote safe, eco-friendly, healthy construction, perform the job affordably and efficiently, and provide incredible service.
Some reasons Green Leaf is on our list of the top green home builders in Scotland include:
Natural Materials
The company uses low-impact, environmentally friendly materials, including recycled paper insulation, sheep’s wool insulation, and locally-sourced timber.
Sustainability
Guided by Passivhaus design principles, Green Leaf encompasses various sustainable practices, including MVHR, solar thermal, wood fires, rainwater harvesting, and incredible airtightness and insulation options to its client’s needs.
McFarlane Joiners and Builders
McFarlane Joiners and Builders designs, manufactures, and installs timber frame kits for new builds and extensions throughout Scotland. The company’s eco-friendly homes are designed to have minimal environmental impact. It uses high-performance materials and intelligent design to reduce its energy requirements and minimize homes’ carbon footprint. Some of its eco-homes have little to no energy costs, making them excellent long-term investments.
McFarlane Joiners and Builders uses various methods to make its home more eco-friendly, including:
Triple Glazing
Triple glazing prevents heat reduction and helps with noise reduction.
Ground Source Heat Pumps
Heat pumps produce less carbon dioxide than conventional systems and, once installed, significantly reduce heating costs.
Passive Solar Gain
Creating windbreaks and planting trees on the east and north sides of the site improves the solar gain effect by securing the house from the cold northeasterly winds.
Reclaimed Materials
McFarlane works with various merchants dealing with reclaimed material. Stone, brick, slate, and roof tiles can all be used to utilize the embodied energy within the materials while creating a stunning and unique design.
eCoe Homes
eCoe Homes builds contemporary, highly energy-efficient three, four, and five-bedroom homes with breathtaking views and an exceptional finish.
The company implements high levels of insulation, so you don’t need to worry about unnecessarily high heating bills. As a result, electricity and heating cost in a regular 4-5 bed detached home can be as low as £350.
This green home builder uses materials grown locally in Scotland, like cladding that doesn’t require staining or treating. These types of materials ensure the lowest carbon footprint.
Moreover, with almost 30 tons of concrete in the floor slabs, eCoe properties self-regulate the heat, absorbing the sun’s energy during the day and gradually releasing warmth through the evening.
Warm Eco Homes
Warm Eco Homes is based in Stirling and constructs energy-efficient homes throughout the UK.
The company offers specialist expertise in the efficient and fast construction of ultra-low energy buildings in Scotland and other parts of the UK.
Experts in zero-energy buildings and certified Passive House constructors, the team at Warm Eco Homes offers unrivaled experience and knowledge of the most contemporary materials and methods. It even provides a unique, one-on-one, personalized approach to ensure client satisfaction, high-quality bespoke outcomes, and the most efficient project management.
Warm Eco also work with architects to offer unique homes with the most modern building materials and energy-efficient solutions.
Avant Homes
Avant Homes spearheads change in the UK home-building industry by continuously challenging the status quo. It is an HBF five-star-rated home builder working in Scotland, the northeast of England, the Midlands, and Yorkshire, with five regional offices employing more than 700 individuals. The company’s mission is to become the builder of choice in the north by making aspirational homes affordable and attainable.
Avant Homes aims to mitigate and minimize its impact on the environment. The company has robust policies to address issues around resource use, biodiversity, and ecology, allowing it to manage the environmental effects throughout the build development cycle.
In addition, Avant Homes works actively with the suppliers to adopt the most energy-efficient design for its homes, covering the construction equipment, appliances, and fabric. It also participates in research and development assessments around energy efficiency.
The Wee House Company
Founded in 2013, The Wee House Company is a multi-award-winning home builder in Scotland.
From high thermal insulation and high specification double glazed windows to solar photovoltaic panels and low-energy lights, you can be confident in the energy efficiency of your Wee House. The average bill for hot water, electricity and heating in a Wee House is around £1 a day.
Some more factors that make The Wee House Company one of the top sustainable green home builders in Scotland include:
- The timber comes from sustainably-managed forests with FSC certification.
- Up to 85% of its plastic waste is recycled
- 98% of the company’s cardboard waste is recycled
- Wee Houses have lower heat transmittance than traditional brick-built houses, using reduced energy and costing less to operate
- Solar PV panels as a renewable energy source
Last Few Words
We hope you found our list of the top sustainable home builders in Scotland helpful. Undoubtedly one of these reputable firms can construct you the home of your dreams.
Bear in mind that a green home is energy-efficient and allows you to reduce your energy bills. In addition, they even enhance indoor air quality by installing operable windows that let in plenty of sunlight and limit the use of materials that can emit hazardous chemicals.
Also, be sure to check out our list of the top green home builders in England, as several of the companies featured may service your region of the UK.
Best of luck!
