'It's healing to be out here': All about the Earthship that made one Colorado Springs resident go viral

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Sunlight fills Arianna Danielson’s Earthship home, feeding the array of plants, providing warmth and creating natural light inside the home. Earthships were created in the 1970s and are self-sufficient homes built in the berm of the earth using natural and recycled materials. Most feature a front wall full of large windows such as the one pictured here.

photos by Parker Seibold, The Gazette

Arianna Danielson poses for a portrait in her Earthship home. Danielson bought the home with her family last fall as a place for them to share and gather.

Parker Seibold, The Gazette

A hanging chair, stained-glass door and old record player are reflected in a mirror. Earthship homes typically feature large open floor plans for efficiency.

Parker Seibold, The Gazette

Arianna Danielson and her family has put lots of time into decorating and fixing the Earthship they bought last fall. “It’s not like we had to sacrifice aesthetic to live here, you know,” Arianna Danielson says.

Parker Seibold, The Gazette

One of the best things about the house Arianna Danielson says, is the bathroom. “There’s nothing like showering with the windows open,” she says.

Parker Seibold, The Gazette

Earthship homes are designed to regulate temperature — the sun heats the home directly through the windows, which are also outfitted with shades to keep cool in the summer. For the occasional cold spell, a propane or pellet fueled fire helps heat the home.

Parker Seibold, The Gazette

With her interior design skills, and the rest of her family’s DIY capabilities, Arianna Danielson has helped make the Earthship much more modern.

Parker Seibold, The Gazette

A vase full of lavender hangs in front of a glass bottles in a wall. Earthships are made with items like straw, tires and glass bottles.

Parker Seibold, The Gazette

Earthships are built directly into the environment around them, so they often blend in. This Earthship is off-grid, powered by solar panels and a backup propane generator. It also has its own well-water system and septic system.

Parker Seibold, The Gazette

Arianna Danielson poses for a portrait in her Earthship home on Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2023. Danielson bought the home with her family as a place for them all to share and gather last fall.

Parker Seibold, The Gazette

Burrowed in the hills of Black Forest sits a home.

It would be easy to miss in the winter, buried in snow, if it weren’t for the protruding wall of windows.

The air inside is crisp and carries the sweet smell of earth.

The interior is flooded with plants bathing in sunlight. The walls of earth are painted by rainbow prisms.

Interior designer Arianna Danielson landed in this Earthship last October. The space, she said, seems to connect with everyone.

“When you walk into this house, it just feels really special,” she said. “Everything just feels really earthy and natural and organic. I feel like it’s healing to be out here.”

Soon after moving in, she decided to share a video on TikTok showing off the unique living space. That clip, which provides a walkthrough tour of the Earthship, went viral — since posting her home on TikTok, the video has received 4.7 million views and 959,500 likes.

With the massive response, Danielson has continued to use her platform to educate and promote the sustainable house. Her follow-up videos on the Earthship have also been popular, receiving views ranging from 62,000 to 1.2 million.

“It was really cool to share, and to just inform people about different types of housing that are out there,” she said. “It’s not like we had to sacrifice aesthetic to live here, you know. You can still live in a place like this, and it be nice and beautiful.”

So, what is an Earthship?

Created by architect Michael Reynolds in the 1970s, an Earthship is a self-sufficient home built in the berm of the earth using natural and recycled materials.

“It’s so magical, it just feels like we’re part of the earth,” Danielson said in the clip. “We have so much wildlife out here in the forest — we see deer and elk and turkeys, and I’m just surrounded by plants and it’s so beautiful.”

The 2,900-square-foot home was constructed during the 1990s with items such as straw, tires and glass bottles. Built right into a hill, it blends with the environment so well that it’s not uncommon to see local critters walk across the roof, she said.

“It is really cool, especially the animals,” she said. “Sometimes our neighbor’s dog runs over, and we’ll hear him running on the roof.”

The Earthship is off-grid, powered by solar panels and a backup propane generator. It also has its own well-water system and septic system.

Earthships are designed to regulate temperature — the sun heats the home directly through the windows, which are also outfitted with shades to keep cool in the summer. On a day when it’s 25 degrees outside, the inside remains a cozy 71 degrees.

For a severe cold spell, the home does have a propane fireplace and a pellet stove.

“I feel like that’s one of the most important parts is this whole back wall is built right into the earth, which I feel like is one of the biggest reasons why it can regulate its own temperature,” she said. “It’s cool, because it’s just perfect for the winter and the summer sun.”

Since posting the home on TikTok, Danielson has received a slew of questions about the house. The two most common questions she gets about the ship are “What does it smell like?” and “Are there a lot of bugs?”

The smell she describes as a “clean, sweet, earthy” scent. As for the bugs, there were some when moving in, she said, but after living there for four months, there aren’t any more than would be in a traditional house.

“We’ll find a roly-poly every once in a while,” she said. “Maybe they’re in the garden beds or some will be on the ground, but I can deal with a roly-poly.”

The home has its share of modern luxuries. After moving in, her father, who’s an electrician, updated the wiring and installed smart technology, making the home even more efficient. The house also has an attached two-car garage.

Hassle of buying

Danielson, who is from Colorado Springs, purchased the Earthship with her extended family last fall. They had been searching for a piece of land to share and eventually pass down to future generations.

“We wanted land to build something self-sufficient and something sustainable. We’re all DIYers and renovators,” she said.

At first, they struggled to find a plot worth the money.

“It was just like a lot of just really crap land for people asking for an insane amount of money,” she said.

So, they tweaked their search a bit, expanding it to include land with already built houses. Boom — there it was.

“This house came up and we just all freaked out,” she said. “We were like, ’An Earthship is for sale in Colorado Springs!’ It was wild.”

The family immediately put an offer on the house at $680,000. But, despite being preapproved, they had to find a different mortgage broker to finance the house because it was an Earthship.

“We reached out to so many different people,” she said. “They don’t like that it’s built into the earth. They don’t like that it doesn’t have central heat.”

They had similar problems trying to find insurance coverage because of the location’s fire rating, even though the home is fire retardant.

“They’re seriously flame resistant, because of the way it’s built,” she said. “It’s made of stucco and mud; like, this house would be the only one around here that would survive a fire.”

Despite the obstacles, with only one day left until closing, the stars aligned.

“It took days and days and days of just trying to get someone to cover the home,” she said. “It’s honestly like a miracle. Sometimes, sitting in here, I’m still just like, how?”

Future of the ship

While Danielson stays at the Earthship with her husband and two kids on the weekends and several days out of the week, the couple have decided to occasionally list the home as a short-term rental once it warms up to let others experience the unique lifestyle.

“We’re gonna try our hand at that maybe once the weather gets a little nicer,” she said. “It’s just such a cool experience, and there’s only a handful of them in Colorado.”

Danielson wants to see more Earthships built in Colorado, especially because the homes were designed for the high desert.

“I honestly feel like we have the perfect climate for it,” she said. “There’s like no humidity here. It’s nice. We don’t really have crazy flooding out here. We have fires, but honestly, this is the perfect house for a place with fires.”

Ultimately, Danielson hopes Earthships become more accessible.

“So many people want it, but it’s just so unattainable. I feel privileged as hell to be able to own this,” she said. “There should be more of them, and it shouldn’t be so hard to get building permits for it.”

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