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With the bucolic charm of rural life and the stylish comforts of 21st century living, the modern farmhouse really does offer the best of both worlds. Pitched roofs, exposed beams, and the enthusiastic use of natural materials may be the charming hallmarks of a classic farmhouse, but these interiors truly sing when combined with contemporary elements. Below, we share eight homes, published by AD, that flawlessly exemplify this principle. From an envy-inducing East Hampton retreat to Jared Padalecki’s family-infused Texas abode, these homes show just how chic the countryside can be.
Indoor Coziness, Outdoor Splendor in Upstate New York
Beverly Kerzner first met architect and designer Niels Schoenfelder over 20 years ago. At the time, he was 24 years old and had already built a stunning hotel in Pondicherry, India, that caught her eye. After tracking him down and initiating a fruitful conversation, she tapped him to build her dream home.
Fast-forward to 2017, she purchased a vast plot of scenic land in the Hudson Valley. The sprawling hill-scape contained two stunning barn structures, a river that runs through the property, a cabin, and a residential home. Just like in the far-off regions near Pondicherry, this was a landscape that had to be appreciated, worked with, and understood. After four years of designing the property, the resulting home is a distillation of the land they had gotten to know inside and out—a modern barn-inspired structure meticulously crafted to fit seamlessly into its surroundings. —Sophia Herring
A Fresh Spin on a French Farmhouse
In Luberon, a mountainous region in central Provence, France, a centuries-old house sits on a plot of land that sprawls nearly 136 acres. Farm animals roam the grounds, newly planted with local species like pollarded plane trees, wild grasses, and olive trees. (The residents make their own olive oil.) A decade ago, local legend Alexandre Lafourcade renovated the farmhouse, bringing it into the 21st century. But after the homeowners were stuck there during the first of several pandemic lockdowns, they wanted to give the serene interiors a bit of a revamp. When they called on the Paris-based Peruvian interior designer Diego Delgado-Elias, he remembers, “The house was very interesting, but it didn’t have much of a soul. It was missing details and materials.”
To create a spirit for the stunning country house, Delgado-Elias started there, following his clients’ single bit of advice: “More material; less color.” Walls were given a rough plaster finish, and one was covered in woven raffia. All the standard 10-centimeter baseboards were removed and replaced. “Little things like that gave the interior a bit more grandeur,” explains the designer, who realized it all in an elevated and earthy palette heavy on hues like ivory and praline. —Hannah Martin
100 Acres of Hodgepodge Charm
When a Washington, D.C.–based tutor stumbled upon a 100-acre property outside of the city at the height of the pandemic, it was love at first sight. The historic compound had an original farm-fresh feel that she wanted to update with charming furnishings.
Three years earlier, the client in question had completed a gut renovation of her Arts and Crafts home with Cameron Ruppert Interiors. She turned to the decorator again for help replicating that same aesthetic in this project—which Ruppert refers to as “bold maximalism.” Architect Suzie O’Brien and Jeffco Development were also integral to the process.
“She didn’t want it to feel like a brand-new house that she’d gutted, but rather [one that was] layered on top of the original,” Ruppert explains of her client. “I knew from working together before that she loves dimension and tons of patterns and color, but she wants it to last. It had to be timeless.” —Allison Duncan
Light, Bright, and Airy in Connecticut
Like so many modern relationships, the New Canaan, Connecticut–based architecture firm Brooks & Falotico and their soon-to-be client Tyler Mitchell met through social media. Mitchell—a partner and co-owner of Mitchells, his family’s generations-old retail business—and his wife stumbled upon an über-contemporary project by Brooks & Falotico on Pinterest. Only a few weeks later, Mitchell invited managing partner Vince Falotico and one of the firm’s partners, Chuck Willette, to walk their eight-acre former dairy farm in Greenwich, Connecticut.
“My wife and I found the 18th-century property and thought, Why don’t we restore the existing structures and then build something similar to the [Brooks & Falotico–designed] house we saw and loved on Pinterest?” Mitchell explains of his modern farmhouse. “The idea was to connect the seams between the farm’s very old, original structures and the new, contemporary ones the architects would add.” —Jessica Cherner
18th-Century Angles Meet Modern Touches in New York State
Renovating a house—especially one three centuries old—comes with the careful question of how new, exactly, to push. When Manhattanites Jessica and Mark Kleinknecht bought a 1725 Colonial in upstate New York, they looked to AD100 architect Elizabeth Roberts for the answer. Since preservation is the hallmark of her Brooklyn firm, which has worked with clients such as Ulla Johnson and Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard, the couple requested her signature urban brownstone treatment with one key twist—its country setting.
“We wanted to open up the walls and let in light, and I thought, Isn’t that the challenge of a brownstone too? I bet she can do it with a farmhouse!” Jessica says. “Elizabeth has a really great way of preserving the history of a house, yet modernizing it.”
The property and barn, set on nine acres of wetlands, offered everything their apartment in Tribeca did not. It had nature with lush views, just over an hour away from NYC. It had fields and creeks in which their four kids could run wild, get muddy, and catch frogs. It had six wood-burning fireplaces to curl up next to. It had a covered porch for dinners outside. But it needed new mechanics, chimneys, and windows. Most of all, it desperately needed someone to piece together the puzzle of choppy rooms with unusably low ceilings, which evolved from an initial one-room cabin. —Jennifer Blaise Kramer
An Inky Twist on a Classic Farm Compound
In his 1963 treatise Interaction of Color, Josef Albers observed that the most fascinating thing about colors is witnessing them shift in situ. “Colors present themselves in continuous flux,” he explained. “[They’re] constantly related to changing neighbors and changing conditions.” Meditating on this phenomenon, Bradford Shellhammer, vice president of buyer experience at eBay, will tell you that color also has a way of changing those who slow down enough to witness it.
Albers’s theory is brilliantly manifested at a 13-acre Stuyvesant, New York, countryside retreat, which Shellhammer and husband Georgi Balinov own. In a few short months, they transformed the 1840s three-bedroom farmhouse and the property’s eight (yes, you read that right) additional structures into a modernist Eden, with all the amenities for hosting their family and friends just two and a half hours from Manhattan. As a charming signpost indicates, there’s a swimming pool, sauna, network of bars and lounges, movie theater, and vegetable patch, not to mention an abundance of quiet spaces. The estate’s name, Rode Barns, comes from the three showstopping stables, painted in vivid hues inspired by Albers’s 1943 oil painting, Related (red). —Anne Quito
Pattern Play in East Hampton
In one family’s Long Island compound, two hallmarks of Hamptons architecture stand side by side: a 19th-century Shingle Style saltbox festooned with hydrangeas (they call it the farmhouse) and its super-modern foil heavy on the glass by New York City firm Architecture Outfit.
“East Hampton is our escape; it’s where we go to breathe and relax,” explains the client, who lives here with her husband and two sons. They acquired the tumbledown farmhouse in 2018 and knew they wanted a more contemporary counterpoint. “We needed to find an interior designer who could tie together these two very different structures.”
The client responded to New York City–based decorator Neal Beckstedt’s knack for what she calls “laid-back luxury,” a look he honed for a decade working for architect Russell Groves before launching his own business in 2010. For this project, Beckstedt recalls, “The client wanted something that was understated and livable—not stuffy. A new approach to the Hamptons.” And most importantly, “they were not afraid of color.” —Hannah Martin
Austin Furnishings That Put Family First
In 2010, when Jared and Genevieve Padalecki first bought a place in Austin, it seemed like they were the only actors in town—“other than McConaughey and Dennis Quaid,” as the former Gilmore Girls heartthrob puts it. The couple, who met on the set of the cult-favorite CW show Supernatural, and who now star on the network’s reboot of Walker, Texas Ranger, gravitated toward Texas because of its “slower pace.” Soon, they decided to give up their Los Angeles residence altogether and live full time in the state where their current show shoots.
The Padaleckis purchased their current Austin home in 2012, and have spent the years since slowly creating their ideal modern farmhouse. That’s where their three children (Thomas, 9, Shepherd, 7, and Odette, 4), as well as numerous dogs, chickens, mini horses, and even bees, live together in harmony. The house—which began as a model “Texas Tuscan,” according to their designer, Virginia Davidson—underwent a full gut renovation in order to become a compound inspired by the historic German homesteads of nearby Fredericksburg. “For the walls and woodwork, we pulled from these traditional German milk paints,” Davidson says. “They are in these very sort of neutral but tonal palettes: wonderful chalky whites, beautiful grays and blues, and browns.” Those hues provide an excellent foundation for layering the textures required to create an intimate, yet cozy home. The result is a bit masculine, a bit rustic, and refreshingly unlike what you usually see on Instagram. —Rachel Wallace
