There are a number of things that are important in designing a bird hide. To be used as a hide the building must be comfortable to inhabit for long periods of time, this means that you need to provide benches for people to sit on, arm rests below the viewing portals to rest your elbows on while holding binoculars.

The building needs sufficient sound insulation so that birds are not aware of the viewer’s presence, also the building should provide adequate ventilation, and enough light inside the bird hide so that you can quickly adjust your eyes from the outside to the inside so that you can make notes or read from guide books.

You need to be protected from the sun and from the wind. It is important to have sufficient access for viewing by several people at once, therefore ideally you would have viewing portals at various heights. Normally all the portals will face directly onto the most convenient viewing area, such as a lake or wetland.

The windows must be large enough to be practical but not so large that movement inside the hide becomes obvious. It is best to provide doors at rear, with a solid wall between where people enter and the viewing area so that movement visible from the front of the hide is kept to an absolute minimum. Often these solid walls double as a display area for charts indicating the various birds common to the local area.