Celeb Homes: Ashton Kutcher & Mila Kunis’s Sustainable L.A. Farmhouse

Building a sustainable home from the ground up is no easy feat, but when you’re a famous celebrity couple calling Los Angeles home, the project is done on the grandest of scales. This is the story of Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis’s sustainable LA farmhouse.

This barn-inspired home is certainly a special retreat for a growing family – home to Kunis and Kutcher and their two young children, Wyatt and Dimitri.

A 10-foot-tall crystal chandelier and a set of custom-made silver thrones might not scream “contemporary farmhouse.” But somehow the couple makes these feel right at home in their opulent yet rustic hilltop house in Los Angeles.

Inviting Architectural Digest magazine into their six-acre property, the couple share some of the joys and hardships of building a sustainable home from scratch.

“We wanted the house to look like an old barn, something that had been here for decades, that was then converted into a house,” Kutcher is quoted as saying in the magazine’s June cover story.

Douglas Friedman

The couple called in the expertise of Architect Howard Backen to realise their dream of a contemporary barn-inspired home. Above all, they wanted the place to feel like home and not like a retreat.

“Howard is like a great software designer, someone who approaches design as an accentuation of function,” explained Kutcher in his interview. “A software designer wants to get people where they want to be with the fewest clicks. Howard wants to get you where you want to be with the fewest doors and obstacles. He also knows that there are certain places where you want a barrier to mark a threshold and create a little friction,” Kutcher added.

Douglas Friedman

What makes this home sustainable?

The house is entirely powered by photovoltaics, concealed from view above the expansive porch that stretches along one side of the main structure. In fact, the house’s solar array produces significantly more power than the property requires, although antiquated municipal codes don’t exactly encourage energy sharing—a situation the homeowners hope will change in the future.

“Ashton and Mila are concerned about the quality of the soil, the purity of the food they eat and the water they drink. The ideals of sustainability and regenerative farming aren’t just abstract concepts to them,” Backen avers.

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When it came to the house’s interiors, Kutcher and Kunis enlisted the help of Vicky Charles, who was just about to leave a post as head of design at the exclusive members club, Soho House.

Kunis said that the pair were “obsessed” with Charles’ work, which includes fitting out Soho Farmhouse, a British country estate reportedly beloved by celebrities from Victoria and David Beckham to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

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Charles balanced her clients’ desire for both sleek modernity and farmhouse warmth. She combined dark woods with neutral greys and browns. Plush touches came via emerald velvet couches. These are by designer Montauk and contemporary light fixtures crafted by Hector Finch.

“Over time, the design moved away from a traditional farmhouse aesthetic to something more contemporary,” Charles said.

Douglas Friedman

The house feels rustic yet opulent. Balance is brought about with rich, warm wooden tones and large windows that allow natural light to flood the space.