Traditional housing styles reflect environmental circumstances. Examples range from houses dug into the ground to retain heat in the colder parts of the Highlands to stilt dwellings built over the sea in sheltered coastal areas, which help to keep out mosquitoes and simplify sanitation. Such adjustments are disappearing as Western-style housing becomes more common. In isolated areas of the southern interior there still remain some of the previously common giant communal structures that house the male population, with a circling cluster of women’s huts. 

In many coastal areas villages stretch between the beach and an inland swamp in long lines, broken into clan or family segments. In the Highlands numerous village forms exist: in the Eastern Highlands and Chimbu provinces, houses previously clustered along ridgetops for defensive purposes have been moved downslope along the roads; in the Western Highlands and Enga provinces, the traditional form is of scattered households, each surrounded by its own land, with separate houses for men and women; in the Telefomin area, clustered villages are supplemented by scattered garden houses at a distance from the central settlement.

Within the towns there are great contrasts in housing. The city of Port Moresby, for example, has grand modern apartment blocks overlooking the sea, but over half its population lives in improvised housing in settlements. Rapid urban growth and considerable income inequalities have meant that public or low-cost housing has not been built in sufficient quantities to accommodate much more than a small portion of those who need it