10 Best Kids' Playhouses for Every Backyard (2024)

Children and parents alike love the realistic design elements of this wooden playhouse, including a play kitchen, cordless phone and working doorbell. You can even add plants to the flowerpots flanking the door to make it extra homey. Large windows and a swinging half-door allow for interactive play and make it easy for you to keep eyes on your kids, whether you decide to place it indoors or outdoors.

This model arrives as precut, pre-stained and pre-drilled cedar wood panels, along with a selection of assorted plastic pieces for the accessories. Like most every playhouse you'll find, this one takes some significant assembly, and some parents are able to put it together in an hour or two while others say it takes longer. Backyard Discovery works with the Bilt app to offer simple visual instructions.

While there's no built-in kitchen or working doorbell, this classic, if basic, plastic playhouse is affordable and highly reviewed on Amazon. It's been available in various color combos for years and we love the current white-and-blue incarnation.

Because this is fairly simple — four thin walls and a roof that fit together with the included plastic screws— this won't take you all day to put together, either.

This is a small playhouse so you can fit it indoors or keep it outdoors, or move it between the two spaces (if moving it from outside to inside, you'll need to give it a good scrubbing beforehand). Once fully built, it's only about 30 pounds, so it's one of the lightest on our list. Kids will like the swinging door, windows with working shutters, the mail slot and the flag holder — add a little flag to make it even cuter.

Whoa! This wooden playhouse sits 3 feet off the ground and features a 6-foot slide as well as a ladder for kids to climb up.We like that this has a clubhouse feel and it gives the kids their own little escape. Because of the steps up and the fact that there are not as many sight lines into the raised house, we think this is best for kids who are pre-K age and up.

There's an entire play kitchen inside with a "blender" that spins, plus a working doorbell. Outside, one of the structure's posts is a wooden growth chart where you can mark your kids' change in height, a super-sweet touch.

This is another choice by Backyard Discovery, so you can access the Bilt app for guidance when putting it together. The brand says up to six kids can use it at a time, though realistically we like it for three or four children max.

The features on this playhouse are total kid bait: There's a working doorbell and pretend food, a play grill, stovetop and sink, all of which gets kids occupied immediately. We love that this can be a camper or a food truck or a house, depending on how the kids are feeling. Kids can also use it by going into the camper's interior or by standing outside.

Just note that there are no steps, slides or crawl tunnels on this one. The highlights are really the 50+ accessories. The camper has a little half-door to open and close and a seat on the inside. It's new for 2023, so we don't yet know how it will hold up over months of use, but so far we like this unique choice.

Because it weighs a little under 40 pounds, it is also easy to move between the outdoors and indoors, depending on the season.

Like the name implies, this playhouse looks straight out of a fairytale. The exterior's faux stonework, thatched roof, window shutters and hinged door with a battery-powered doorbell are matched with a cozy cottage feel on the inside, where children are met with a stocked kitchenette, fold-down kitchen table and fireplace. A clickable faucet and stovetop make play more realistic and a cuckoo clock with movable hands adds charm.

The durable plastic structure is built to withstand the outdoor weather, and the earth-tones can blend fairly seamlessly with your landscape. The only thing is this is pricier than a lot of other four-walled playhouses.

It's worth considering this two-slide playhouse made to hold up to four young children at a time if you've got multiple kids who are 6 and younger, host frequent playdates or run a home daycare. Interactive elements include a steering wheel and porthole-style windows as well as crawl spaces and tunnels (perfect for hide-and-seek), an elevated clubhouse, a bridge and, of course, the two slides, each going in a different direction. It's a plastic, highly weather-resistant, outdoor-ready set.

Online reviewers mention it helps having two or more people build this one as a team. It's the largest set on our list (more than 11 feet long) and, once built, it weighs nearly 200 pounds, so you'll want to assemble this where you intend to keep it.

All the touches on this KidKraft outdoor wooden playhouse are magic for your Frozen-obsessed child. They'll walk through double doors and peer out through lattice windows like Anna watching for arriving guests. Inside, there are images of a castle interior wallpapered on the walls to complete the effect. It's impressive even for adults, with a spire nearly 7 feet tall!

This can, in theory, work indoors or outdoors. If you keep it inside, you'll need a tall ceiling — and must build it in the room where it will stay, since it won't fit through most doors. If you set it up outdoors, on the other hand, many online reviewers report that rain can eventually warp the wood.

KidKraft's Modern Playhouse takes full advantage of the space around it with a built-out picnic table and extended windowsill grill station. In our tests, kids loved the interactive elements, like an interior chalkboard and a mailbox on the outside, as well all the adorable details, including framed windows and fabric curtains. Some parents get very into the fact that they can paint this playhouse to match or compliment the real house.

This wooden playhouse has reinforced panels and a water-resistant roof, though our own reviews show that it might not do well in very wet climates, where the wood can eventually warp. A main complaint is that this comes in dozens of pieces and requires hours to build — but all the features are also what everyone loves about it.

The open design of this playhouse makes it easy for kids to see out — and for you to keep an eye on what's going on inside. That makes it an especially great choice for toddlers, and this is one of the few age-graded for toddlers as young as 18 months. Inside, there's a play phone, sink, grill, counter space and seat. Outside, there's a working doorbell and a place for you to add a real plant.

When building, note that Step2 marks spots for drill holes but doesn't pre-drill them; that's deliberate, so you can line everything up yourself to get the fit just right. Use a little downward pressure with either your screwdriver or a screw to get the hole started. (The Step2 water tables work similarly.)

You screw in many of the screws from the inside, so be prepared to spend some time inside this playhouse during building. Made of lightweight plastic, this cottage only weighs about 30 pounds, so you can move it around the yard, onto the porch or even inside with ease.

To the moon! This new Little Tikes rocket is built for out-of-this-world pretend play. On the outside, kids can use the included plastic tools to do a little maintenance. Inside, there's a control panel with blinking lights and announcements, plus a dazzling star screen. A toy telescope is mounted on the side so kids can make sure that parents aliens are not approaching.

The small footprint of this playhouse makes it easier than most to fit into your indoor playroom or a kid's room. But it's very much a rocket, which means it would be hard to adapt to other storylines of your child's play — it would make a strange house or castle, for instance.

At the Good Housekeeping Institute, our team of experts evaluates more than 500 new toys each year for our annual Parenting Awards and Toy Awards.

We evaluate toys in our Parenting Lab to ensure that they meet necessary safety requirements and perform our own tests to ensure they are well-constructed, durable and offer skill-building value to kids. Then, to assess the "fun factor," we have our own children and those of our consumer tester panel try them out, as well.

To find the best playhouses for this article, we considered more than 30 choices, only including brands that regularly meet ASTM safety standards. We assessed whether the playhouses are well-constructed and durable. We considered each structure's overall design, interactive features, opportunities to build fine- and gross-motor skills, appropriate age-grading, and ability to hold up to the weather, too.

You might be shopping strictly with budget in mind, but we also like to think about the following:

✔️ Skill-building features: Sometimes a four-walled structure is all a child needs to let their imagination soar, though many playhouses on the market today have elements that activate additional skill sets. Features like kitchenettes, climbers and play phones can encourage children to further develop important creative, social and gross motor skills.

✔️ Size: Whether you're looking for an indoor or outdoor playhouse, measure your space to ensure that your child will have room to move in and around their structure. If you have the room, err on the larger side so that your child can grow into the playhouse and have space for siblings and friends. If you opt for a big playhouse, remember to build it where you intend to keep it.

✔️ Materials: You can find high-quality plastic and wooden playhouses. Wood is typically more expensive, and plastic is often easier to assemble, but both options can be durable. Fabric and cardboard playhouses will be more tent-like, less durable and should stay indoors (none of these options are included on this list).

✔️ Safety: Playhouses can be designed for indoor or outdoor use. Be sure to set them up as directed to keep everyone safe. Also take note of the manufacturer's suggested age range and/or development stage to help gauge whether the product will be appropriate for your child, and seek out structures that meet ASTM safety standards.

To encourage your kids to play with their playhouse even longer, we recommend stocking them with these under-$30 additions, some of which you may already own:

• Activate their imagined storylines with a costume (a princess dress, an astronaut jumpsuit or even a simple cape).
• If they use the playhouse to literally play house, add dolls, plush animals or pretend food.
• Place kid-size chairs outside the structure to give the playhouse the feeling of having its own back or front yard.
• A pair of kid binoculars helps them spy out of their new clubhouse.

At the Good Housekeeping Institute, we've been performing consumer reviews for more than 100 years. We employ engineers, scientists and product experts in our Labs to recommend the best products across all categories, including toys.

Much of our parenting content is overseen by Chief Technologist & Executive Technical Director Rachel Rothman, a mechanical engineer and data analyst with three kids ages 6 and younger who literally jump at the chance to test a new playhouse.

This article was researched and written by contributing writer Alissa Schulman (see her suggestions for the best backyard swing sets) and contributing writer Jessica Hartshorn, who has also covered toys for Parents magazine (see her review of the best magnetic toys for kids).