Modern Farmhouse Custom Homes
The most-requested custom home idiom in the Chicago suburbs built generationally.
The Modern Farmhouse has become the defining custom-home idiom of the past decade across the Chicago suburbs, and for good reason. It pairs the honest, agrarian silhouette of a traditional farmhouse steep gables, a deep covered porch, a simple rectilinear footprint with the open, light-filled interiors and clean detailing that families building today actually want to live in. The result is a home that reads as timeless from the street and contemporary from the inside.
Forest Heart Builders approaches the Modern Farmhouse not as a trend to be copied but as a discipline of proportion. The steep roof pitch has to be genuinely steep. The porch has to be deep enough to live on. The board-and-batten has to be detailed so the battens align with the windows and the corners resolve cleanly. These are the decisions that separate a custom Modern Farmhouse from a production builder’s interpretation, and they are decided in the field, in coordination with the architect, before a single board is hung.
Defining Features
01
Steep, simple gables with crisp eave and rake detailing
02
White or warm-white board-and-batten siding, often paired with painted brick
03
Black or bronze windows in a clean, ungridded or simple-grid pattern
04
A deep covered rear porch and frequently a covered front porch sized as true living space
05
Open floor plans organized around an oversized kitchen island
06
Vaulted or beamed great-room ceilings with exposed structural or decorative timber
07
Natural wood accents white oak, walnut set against the white envelope
08
Mudroom and rear-entry built-ins handled as a designed millwork moment, not an afterthought
The Material Story.
The Modern Farmhouse palette is deliberately restrained: a white or warm-white exterior envelope, black or bronze fenestration, and natural wood used as punctuation rather than field. Inside, the warm-white walls continue, grounded by white oak flooring in a wide plank, quartz or quartzite countertops, and matte-black or unlacquered-brass hardware.
| Element | Specification |
|---|---|
| Exterior | Board-and-Batten Painted Brick Fiber-Cement |
| Roof | Steep-Pitch Gables Architectural Asphalt Standing-Seam Metal Accents |
| Windows | Black or Bronze Clean Grid Gridless Option |
| Flooring | Wide-Plank White Oak |
| Millwork | Painted Shaker Cabinetry Beamed Ceilings Mudroom Built-ins |
40+
Across Our Service Area.
The Modern Farmhouse performs in nearly every market we serve — but it is especially at home on the larger, semi-rural lots of the Barrington area, Long Grove, Inverness, and the Fox Valley communities of St. Charles and Geneva, where the agrarian silhouette has genuine landscape to sit against.
On wooded or open-meadow lots, the steep gabled massing reads honestly; in established North Shore neighborhoods, a more restrained, painted-brick interpretation keeps the home in conversation with its neighbors.
Barrington
North Barrington
Long Grove
Inverness
Lake Forest
Highland Park
St. Charles
Geneva
Glenview
Northbrook
Building This Style with Forest Heart.
A Modern Farmhouse lives or dies on its millwork, and that is where Forest Heart Builders’ in-house millwork studio becomes the difference. The beamed great-room ceiling, the painted Shaker kitchen, the mudroom lockers, the window seats and the panelled hood are all built to the home rather than ordered to a catalog.
- Beamed ceilings and cabinetry designed to the home, not for a catalog
- Dedicated project team carries design intent from framing through finish
- Sympathetic site planning preserves mature canopy and landscape character
Frequently Asked.
What is the difference between a Modern Farmhouse and a traditional farmhouse?
A traditional farmhouse is a historical building type with compartmentalized rooms, modest windows, and utilitarian detailing. A Modern Farmhouse keeps the recognizable exterior silhouette steep gables, deep porch, simple massing but opens the interior into the connected, light-filled, island-centered plan that families build for today.
Does a Modern Farmhouse have to be white?
No. White and warm-white envelopes are the most common because they make the black fenestration and natural-wood accents read crisply, but Forest Heart Builders also builds Modern Farmhouse homes in soft greige, charcoal, and natural painted-brick palettes. The defining elements are the proportion and the detailing, not the color.
Can a Modern Farmhouse be built as a green or high-performance home?
Yes. The Modern Farmhouse silhouette is fully compatible with a high-performance building envelope, geothermal systems, and solar-ready design. The style is an exterior and interior language; it does not constrain the engineering of the home behind it.
Is the Modern Farmhouse style timeless or will it date?
Built well, it ages gracefully because it is rooted in a centuries-old building type rather than a styling fad. The risk of dating comes from production-grade execution thin trim, shallow porches, applied battens. Genuine proportion and real materials are what make it a generational home.