You don’t actually like Modern Farmhouse — you like a formula you can follow.
Summary:
Most people think they love Modern Farmhouse, when what they really love is a way to decorate their homes in a way that looks good and is easy to replicate. You don’t have to overthink it, and you know it will look good. But, Modern Farmhouse leaves you feeling like your home isn’t really you. The good news is that Modern Farmhouse follows a repeatable design formula, and once you learn it, you can create a home that feels completely authentic to you. The Home Alchemy Method teaches you the step-by-step design formula that works no matter your taste.
I’m sick of modern farmhouse. I really am.
I don’t hate the way it looks. And I don’t hate every house I’ve seen that decorates in Modern Farmhouse either.
Some people were born for this look – and it makes sense for them. They put their personal spin on it and it looks incredible.
One of my good friends has a gorgeous style that blends the Farmhouse look with her very personal family and sourced antiques, and I’m obsessed with it.
I also helped a client last year put her personal spin on Modern Farmhouse. We added a Jazz influence, infusing smoky charcoal, deep olive and brass into the mix. It was dope.
The thing I’m sick of is the boring copy/paste prescription that retailers are far too comfortable pushing on the masses. I see rooms devoid of any personality whatsoever, and it infuriates me to no end.
Why? Because the same formula that delivers Modern Farmhouse can be deconstructed and used to create your own deeply personal style.
Instead, it’s marketed as the perfect plug-and-play design everyone should copy — and it’s been around for more than a decade now.
Put me to sleep.
You Don’t Love Modern Farmhouse. You Love a Formula.
What works about Modern Farmhouse is that its expectations are clear.
You know what general color palette works: White, off-white, gray, black, maybe some gold, maybe silver. Maybe a pop of sage in there for a twist.
You know your finishes. Matte black metal, reclaimed wood.
You know what type of décor fits the aesthetic, and it’s readily available and easy to find.
You know you’re going to come out with a room that looks good put together and that people will like and compliment when they come over.
That’s great!
But the secret here is that Modern Farmhouse — and any style, really, follows a formula.
This isn’t an official formula, this is the Home Alchemy Method formula, but it’s the undercurrent of any design, and once you know it, you can use it to create your own personal style, and you know it will look good every time.
The Secret Sauce for Designing a Beautiful Room
There are seven elements that go into creating a beautifully designed room, and inside the Home Alchemy Method, we break them down into steps, each one building on the last:
Space
Color
Furniture
Texture
Lighting
Art & décor
Natural Elements
You can pull apart any style — I just like to pick on Modern Farmhouse because it’s currently robbing so many people of their own personalities!
Once you start to see how each element of the room is connected to the others, you can start to make your own choices.
Like what you hear so far? Subscribe to the Alchemy Archive for more!
This was where I started with my client, Linda – the one with the Jazz twist on Modern farmhouse.
She really liked the overall style, but she wanted it to feel like her. I asked several questions in our consultation, including, “when you walk into your finished space, what soundtrack is playing?”
And her eyes glazed up just a little with a bit of a faraway look, and she said, “Well, my husband and I used to love listening to Jazz.”
As we talked more about that, she got really excited about incorporating that sultry, underground, moody feeling into the home.
In Linda’s case, we started with off-white, smoky charcoal and deep olive. We also shifted the usual brushed gold of modern farmhouse to a richer brass for some of her finishes. (Inside the Home Alchemy Method, we plan out your color palette together in the very second step, so everything else in the room has a plan.)
Everything else in the room from there out was filtered not just through the Modern Farmhouse lens, but also through Linda’s love for Jazz and the moodier vibe she was going for in the room.
How A Design Formula Works for You
Using a formula makes figuring out a room exponentially easier. You don’t have to feel overwhelmed starting from scratch because you’re only focused on one aspect of the room at a time.
Once a step lands, like your palette for example, you carry it forward into your next decision.
With Linda, she was keeping a lot of her furniture in the move, so we factored that into her palette and then made choices that worked for her situation.
This is the secret to a cohesive-looking room. Whether designers say it out loud or not, they use common threads to tie everything together, which is why some of the most unique-looking rooms still go.
But I don’t think you should have to hire a designer to get that effect. They’re so expensive, and you have to put a lot of trust into them and hope the finished result is worth the time and money spent.
Plus, most people just never hire designers because it’s a luxury service, which means you’re left DIY-ing, trying to figure out how to make the room work on your own.
The Home Alchemy Method meets you in the middle – it’s what I call DIT, or Do It Together.
The problem with DIY is that it’s too general, so you’re left trying to copy a generic-looking room, and that’s why it feels dull or like something is missing.
The Home Alchemy Method designs the room with you, just like I did with Linda. By having a stylist by your side, you can make sure that your home comes out looking like you! We focus on just one step at a time until the room is done, so no matter your style, you know it will look good.
In 7 steps, your room is transformed into a soul sanctuary that’s tailor-made for you, by you.
Not to brag, but it’s ✨magical.✨
If you already have a Modern Farmhouse home and you want to personalize it to make it look more like you, I created the 7-Step Room Redesign Blueprint. It’s all 7 steps of my signature Home Alchemy Method extracted into an easy-to-use format.
You won’t need to overhaul everything, but you can go one step at a time through the Home Alchemy Method design framework and update or refresh whatever feels stale.
You can download that right below.
Either way, if you nodded along throughout and you’re still here, why not subscribe so we can get to know each other a little more? You’re gonna love it here.
I believe our homes are mirrors of who we are, whether we choose them or not.
You can design your own reflection any time you want.
