Interior designer Lisa Storer’s modern farmhouse outside Johannesburg blends rustic warmth with industrial simplicity to create a happy home for her family.

WORDS Lori Cohen PHOTOGRAPHY Elsa Young

“It was time to shift gears,” says Lisa Storer, who turned her back on city life in Johannesburg to build a new home with a strong connection to the land. Lisa had worked for years as a retail buyer and chose to simultaneously untangle herself from corporate life to pursue interior design. Pouring her creative energy into a new career, as well as a new build was ambitious. But a glance at the modern farmhouse she has created makes it seem effortless, thanks to her natural gift for mixing comfortable furniture with salvaged finds. The barn-inspired home is an enchanting off-the-map escape with open floor plans, large windows, and a balance between rustic warmth and industrial simplicity.

SPACE AND LIGHT Vast inward-opening windows bookend the kitchen and dining barn, capturing the sunrise, and flooding the space with light and air throughout the day.

Lisa and partner Brad’s home rests in the grassy habitat known as the Highveld, on the Monaghan Farm estate, an hour from the city. “We looked at the landscape first and let this lead the design, as well as the interior choices,” explains Lisa. She worked with architect Adrian Morris of Morris and Co on her contemporary interpretation of a farmhouse. “It’s essentially three barn-like structures, hugging a central courtyard, with internal, glass-lined passages connecting them,” she continues.

Like a traditional farmhouse, the home features open plan living in the 'barns', each with large windows positioned to embrace the outdoors. Taking the South African context into consideration, Lisa says they explored using relevant materials – a way to ensure the house fitted sensitively into the landscape. A combination of corrugated metal, locally sourced stone and concrete form the multi-textured skin, while inside, it’s an assembly of polished concrete floors, wood and injections of interest in the furnishings.

Taking the lead from a traditional farmhouse, the kitchen is the heart of the home, inhabiting a vast space, with exposed distressed poplar beams, with striking steel supports. Tucked to one side is a snug lounge with a fireplace – the ideal spot for a post-lunch nap or after-dinner drink. The lounge has pops of blue and green in the furnishings – a break from the muted tones used elsewhere, and an example of how Lisa enjoys introducing unexpected elements in her design. “When I design a space, I’ll first consider the purpose of the room. Then I start with one piece – in this case, I had an existing blue vintage rug. The choice of the green chairs grew naturally from there,” she explains.

I'm a big believer in the honesty of your home.

“A room is never complete. It’s a process,” she continues. “As you live in the room, you get a better sense of what it needs, and I add layers until you have a room that feels like part of the family,” says Lisa. She reveals her two favourite rooms to design in homes are bathrooms and bedrooms, and it’s clear she’s had immense fun conceiving unique quarters for her children Maxine, Tomas and Lucy. Shocks of wallpaper adorn her daughters’ bedroom walls, but it’s the whimsical beds that are doses of fantasy – one a romantic, French white cane wedding-cake-of-a-bed, the other an antique upholstered Corbeille, fit for a princess.

Antique stores are regular hunting grounds for Lisa. “Choosing pieces is quite an organic process. I go with an open mind and then look for items that resonate with me, and I am particularly attracted to pieces that come with a story. When I feel a pull to something, I have to have it in my house; it’s a heartfelt process. I’m a big believer in the honesty of your home. It’s about expressing a feeling of what the house is about,” says Lisa.

Many pieces have also been collected on buying trips abroad. Her collections of vases, figurines, and curiosities are sourced from travels to India, Morocco and Mexico, and from Kenya and South African artisans throughout the house.

A COLLECTION OF MEMORIES "All over the house, there are pieces that we've either inherited, bought on trips or collected. When we pick them up or use them, their story and memories are relived," says Lisa.

Her playful touch is evident everywhere. Dried flowers in muted tones are swept together in bunches and strategically placed on ornate brass side tables in a bathroom or emerging from shelves hosting waterfalls of green plants. Rug choices sway from shaggy to shabby – Lisa is unafraid to mix things up. “I enjoy putting things together that seem like they shouldn’t be together, including antiques with modern pieces,” she explains.

In planning the footprint, she was also led by the surroundings and the light that orientates the house. The Highveld’s icy winter mornings, and bright warm afternoons, she says, dictate how and where they live in the home. “The mornings are all about the kitchen and dining room; then we move into the TV room in the afternoons where we’ll have a fire on, or the children will be in their rooms or playing in the courtyard. Then, in summer, we are down at the pool house or up on the verandah eating, entertaining, and enjoying the views,” says Lisa.

Her favourite room in the house? “In each room, there is an element of love. I’ve put a lot of love and attention into this house. It’s like having lots of friends. They each fulfil a different need in you, and you have a different special relationship with each of them.”