Are you looking to reimagine your living space to fit with a more modern farmhouse decor style? This style blends two seemingly distinct types of decor: chic and rustic. This combination gives you the chance to truly make the style your own. But with so many choices, it can certainly feel overwhelming at first.
How are you supposed to include elements of a hip, modern space with the decor ideas that are inspired by a warm, cozy farmhouse?
With the right eye and a discerning sense of style, you can pull off the farmhouse design so that your guests feel both welcome in the rustic space but don’t feel like they’re stepping into a 19th century log cabin.
Let’s take a look at the guiding rules for the style and ways you can incorporate it into the most important rooms in your house.
Achieving Balance in Your Modern Farmhouse Decor
Finding your personal modern farmhouse style is all about balance; you don’t want it to be too modern, but you don’t want it to be too farmhouse either.
To set the stage for the modern style, you’ll want to incorporate white walls as your backdrop. Having clean, negative space gives you a canvas to work with as you add a few select farmhouse pieces. If you don’t want to go with a pure white, use eggshell, cream, or any neutral tone that works for you.
Once you have a clean backdrop to work with, start with selecting your large statement pieces that will bring the farmhouse aesthetic into your home. Think about farmhouse furniture that can rely on reclaimed or natural wood features.
Once you have those statement pieces, think smaller; on your rustic coffee table, have an industrial, farmhouse lamp. On a wooden chair, place white pillows embroidered with the word “family.”
It’s all about finding the moments to lean into the farmhouse aesthetic amongst the clean space. Find the balance between cozy and minimalism.
You’ll want pillows and throws to keep your guests comfortable, but don’t have so many that it overwhelms the space. It is possible to make things too cozy. Once you find that balance, you’ll really be able to take the style and make it your own.
Living Room Modern Farmhouse Decor
The soul of the modern farmhouse decor comes from making a clean design feel warm and inviting by highlighting the rustic elements. The place feels chic, but not in a cold, distant way that a minimalist home can sometimes feel.
If everything is white and empty in a minimalist home, you might feel nervous to put down a coffee mug as even one thing out of place can ruin the aesthetic. With the blending of modern and rustic, this isn’t as much of a concern with this style.
The living room is a perfect place to incorporate this inviting spirit into your home.
A great way to add farmhouse pieces to your living room decor is through a gorgeous, wooden coffee table and unique lighting fixtures.
Reclaimed, up-cycled wood creates a sustainable, unique piece, which the FreddysPalletWorks Etsy shop achieves with this Reclaimed Pallet Wood Upcycled Coffee Table. It gives the room a great, rustic focal point, and gives your guests a place to put down their coffee mugs and snacks for your homey get togethers.
If you really want to commit to the modern rustic style, you’ll need farmhouse coffee mugs as well. With these, you can go in a few different directions.
- Pottery: Handmade pottery certainly fits in well with the rustic theme. MarieKennedyPottery has a gorgeous array of handmade mugs available in their Etsy shop.
- Wooden: Since natural wood is a staple of the rustic aesthetic, it of course makes sense to incorporate wooden mugs. ElephantWalkInc offers these beautiful mugs made from coconut wood finished with a bone handle.
- Glass: Glass mugs come in a variety of styles, and fit the modern theme. You could go with something simple and chic, such as CeraCasaStore’s heart-shaped glass mugs, or you could go with something more unique, like GreenlineGlassware’s glass mugs etched with chemistry molecules. The details you incorporate in this style are what will make the space unique to you, and these coffee mugs are a great way to achieve that.
With lamps, you can find a wide variety of creative, rustic styles to fit your particular brand of modern farmhouse. This industrial-style Edison lamp from UrbanIndustrialCraft on Etsy will become the centerpiece of your end table. It’s a unique piece that highlights the beauty of the brass and silver sockets in addition to the vintage-style lightbulbs. It even has dimming options, giving you more control over the lighting levels in the room.
Dining Room Modern Farmhouse Decor
The dining room is a great place for you to invoke a “farm to table” aesthetic. If you’re looking for inspiration, try going to a local, rustic restaurant that uses local produce. These restaurants generally stick to the modern farmhouse style and could give you some good ideas on how to incorporate those design styles into your own home.
When considering lighting, you can go with something like the CRAFTEDofLight Etsy shop’s Farmhouse Beam Light with Cages. The unique lightbulbs that they include in the shipment really make the piece shine: literally! This type of lighting works best when hanging over a dining room table.
Your dining room table should be the feature piece in this room. It’s the best place to showcase the natural wood that is essential to the farmhouse aesthetic. This table by MozilyaDesign on Etsy really highlights the natural textures of the wood they use to really make the piece one-of-a-kind.
It also has the option of including a bench that perfectly matches the table’s aesthetic. If you decide to choose your own chairs, look for ones in the same wooden style and include comfy cushions on the seats.
These pieces succeed when they’re crafted with warm wood and exposed beams. It’s almost industrial, but has less wrought iron and instead features the natural wood.
Bedroom Modern Farmhouse Decor
Since the modern farmhouse aesthetic revolves around rustic, chic comfort, you want your bedroom to feel the most comfortable of all. Going to bed and waking up in a clean, comforting space helps you relax into sleep and wake up with a sense of serenity.
For your bedspread, go with something in neutral tones without a pattern. A white, goose down comforter like the one offered by MarCieloBedding on Etsy will keep you cozy and maintain the fresh, clean aesthetic of the space.
For your closet, go with a sliding barn door. This is a great way to incorporate the farmhouse living vibe into your home! Especially in a room as important as this one.
Make sure it opens up into a well-organized closet! Choosing a Knotty Pine Wood Sliding Barn Door like the one from OliveGroveStudioUS will really stand out in a good way against a white wall.
When selecting art for your wall, you can lean into the modern or farmhouse side of the style dynamic. You could choose something chic with clean lines, like the Bursting Sun Rays downloadable print from SmartPrintsStudio.
This comes as a digital download, so you can get it printed and mounted however you’d like. When selecting a frame, make sure you get one that uses natural wood.
On the other hand, you could choose something that depicts the serenity of farmhouse living, like the vintage farmhouse style gallery wall downloads from NorthPrints. Since it’s a gallery wall, you’ll have even more of an opportunity to impart your own personal style on the piece, since you get to arrange it however you’d like.
The decorating styles you ultimately go with will depend on which part of the modern farmhouse vibe you want to lean into more. If you want something more chic, lean into the cleaner, simpler elements.
If you want to keep things more farmhouse, emphasize the wooden pieces.
Make Your Interior Design Unique to You
No matter what style you choose for your home – from a cozy fall aesthetic to even something more seasonly-themed – you need to infuse it with your own sense of style.
No matter how picturesque or magazine-ready you make your home in the modern farmhouse designs style, if it doesn’t fit who you are individually, your house won’t feel like home.
Modern farmhouse decor is one of those design styles that leave its application up to the designer. Because it’s a blend of two interior design styles, you can pick and choose which style you want to lean into more.
Whether you want stainless steel countertops to make your kitchen modern or you want farmhouse tables to emphasize the use of natural wood, it’s completely up to you. As long as you make your home somewhere that makes you happy, there are no wrong answers.
Author, Artist, Photographer.
Sarah Margaret is an artist who expresses her love for feminism, equality, and justice through a variety of mediums: photography, filmmaking, poetry, illustration, song, acting, and of course, writing.
She owns Still Poetry Photography, a company that showcases her passion for capturing poetic moments in time. Instead of poetry in motion, she captures visual poetry in fractions of a second, making cherished keepsakes of unforgettable moments.
She is the artist behind the Still Poetry Etsy shop, which houses her illustrations and bespoke, handmade items. She is the author of intricacies are just cracks in the wall, a narrative poetry anthology that follows a young woman discovering herself as she emerges from an abusive relationship.