What makes a kitchen modern farmhouse
Modern farmhouse takes the bones of a country kitchen and cleans them up. The Shaker door stays. The big sink stays. The timber stays, but it moves to the island top instead of covering everything. What goes is the clutter: the plate racks, the fussy mouldings, the twelve different finishes. In the kitchen above there are three: a grey-green on the doors, pine on the island, black on the hardware and lights. It is warm without being busy, which is the whole trick.
The difference from Hamptons is temperature. Hamptons is whites and soft colours, marble-look stone and polished metal, a beach house. Farmhouse is deeper colour, more timber, and black or aged-brass hardware, a house with a paddock behind it, even if the paddock is a courtyard in Mount Lawley.
How we build it
The doors are our 21 mm Shaker in a matt colour, and colour is where the style lives. Sage, olive, a grey with green in it, a deep blue. We keep the frame slim so the door reads as calm rather than country, and we fit black cup pulls on the drawers and small knobs on the doors, which is the pairing in the photo and the one that dates least.
The island top is the big decision. Solid timber, as in the photograph, is beautiful and needs oiling once or twice a year; it will mark, and the marks are the point. If you want the look without the upkeep we make the island top in stone and put the timber on a shelf or a breakfast bar instead. The wall run gets a stone bench either way, because that is where the water and the heat are.
The farmhouse sink is a ceramic apron-front unit set into a cabinet we build around it. It is heavier than a normal sink and needs its cabinet reinforced, which we do as standard. The tall pantry in the same green is the other signature: floor to ceiling, one wide door or two, with internal drawers so you don’t lose things at the back.
In a Perth home
Farmhouse suits the character home more than any style we make: the limestone cottage in Fremantle, the federation house in Mount Lawley or Guildford, the cottage in the hills. Timber floors and high ceilings are its natural habitat, and a coloured Shaker kitchen sits beside original joinery without a fight.
It is a harder fit in a glossy new build with polished concrete and black window frames, where the timber and the Shaker frames can look like they belong to a different house. There, a modern kitchen in a warm oak gives you the warmth without the frames.
What it costs
A modern farmhouse kitchen from us typically lands between $40,000 and $58,000 for the joinery: designed, made in our Malaga workshop and installed. Benchtop stone, appliances and the trades are separate bills, and we say what they are on the pricing page. The Shaker doors and the coloured finish sit at Hamptons prices. Inside our number, the tall pantry and the reinforced sink cabinet are what move it. The timber island top and the sink itself are separate bills, and a timber top is usually cheaper than a stone waterfall end.
