When most people picture a celebrity home in Beverly Hills, they imagine columns, fountains, and gold fixtures. Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis built the opposite. Their primary residence is a working farmhouse powered by solar energy, where they planted corn during the pandemic and named the property KuKu Farms. It is one of the more unusual real estate stories in Hollywood — and one of the more thoughtfully designed homes in Los Angeles.
This article covers every significant Ashton Kutcher house in his real estate history: the farmhouse that made architecture headlines, the Beverly Hills mansion they eventually sold, the Santa Barbara beach house, and the earlier properties he owned before his marriage to Kunis.
KuKu Farms: The Beverly Hills Farmhouse That Surprised Everyone
What the Property Actually Is
Sitting on six acres high above Beverly Hills, the main residence consists of a primary house connected to a guesthouse and entertainment barn, manicured gardens, and a freestanding barbecue pavilion — all arranged along a central axis carefully plotted to capture sweeping views of the valley below. The couple nicknamed it KuKu Farms, a mashup of Kutcher and Kunis, and they took the farming concept seriously. They dug a well on the property to irrigate the land and planted and harvested a full field of corn during the COVID lockdown.
The deliberate rejection of typical Beverly Hills excess defines the place. As Mila Kunis put it: “We wanted a home, not an estate.”
How It Got Designed
The couple launched their five-year project by building independent Pinterest boards to flesh out their individual visions. This was a make-or-break test — Kunis herself acknowledged that building a house from the ground up is “no small thing” and could have been a serious point of conflict. When they compared boards, 90 percent of the images they had each selected were the same, and most of the pinned houses were designed by the same architect.
That architect was Howard Backen of Backen & Gillam Architects, an AD100 firm celebrated for its modern farmhouse work. Backen is known for coaxing contemporary life out of distilled vernacular forms and rustic materials — essentially making old barn silos feel like the future.
Kutcher, whose background in technology startups shaped how he thought about the process, described Backen as “a great software designer” who “wants to get you where you want to be with the fewest doors and obstacles” but also understands “where you want a barrier to mark a threshold and create a little friction.”
Both Kutcher and Kunis got deeply involved in technical decisions — beam sizes, cross bracing, structural details that Backen doesn’t typically discuss with clients.
For the interiors, they brought in Vicky Charles of Charles & Co. Charles wove in pieces from the couple’s previous homes, including custom silver throne chairs Kutcher had commissioned during a trip to India and a dramatic 10-foot crystal chandelier suspended in the entertainment barn — a deliberately theatrical counterpoint to the barn’s raw timber structure.
Architecture and Materials
Reclaimed oak floors, board-form concrete walls, 19-foot sliding glass windows, and exposed wood beam ceilings define the material palette. The structures are positioned so that valley views are visible from nearly every interior space, and the boundaries between inside and outside dissolve throughout the property. The couple’s central goal was creating a home that felt embedded in the landscape rather than perched on top of it.
Kutcher articulated the philosophy behind it plainly: “To feel tranquility in a space, everything needs to be in order. If the world around you isn’t in order, it’s hard to get your brain in order. When we’re in our home, the world just makes sense.”
Sustainability Built In From Day One
This is not a celebrity home with a few token green touches. The property runs entirely on photovoltaic solar panels, concealed from view above the main porch. The array produces more energy than the property actually consumes.
The engineering challenges were real. Tall exposed ceilings and full-length glass walls demanded creative solutions for airflow and ductwork. The entertainment barn — with floor-to-ceiling glass on two sides — needed its own dedicated ventilation and temperature management. The open-air barbecue pavilion and pool area required compact climate systems built for hot Los Angeles summers.
The couple has stated their goal of eventually exceeding current energy legislation, producing enough surplus to distribute locally generated power back into the grid.
The farmhouse was featured on the cover of Architectural Digest’s June 2021 issue — a recognition that the design accomplished something genuinely unusual for its location and price tier.
The Beverly Hills Mansion They Sold
Before KuKu Farms was finished, Kutcher and Kunis lived in a more conventional Beverly Hills property in the Hidden Valley neighborhood.
The “East Coast Traditional” home on Lime Orchard Road was built in 1999 and offered roughly 7,400 square feet of living space. [VERIFY: Bedroom count varies across sources — some list 5 bedrooms, others up to 10 depending on how ancillary rooms are classified.] The house included a cook’s kitchen, wine room, sauna, mahogany-paneled office, and a shaded pool set on about half an acre.
Kutcher and Kunis purchased the home in 2014 for approximately $10.2 million. They listed it in 2020, relisted in September of that year at $12.3 million, then dropped the price to $11.3 million before it eventually sold in early 2022 for roughly $10.4 million. [VERIFY: Final sale price not confirmed through primary source.] The buyer’s identity was never publicly disclosed.
Notable neighbors in the area have included Adele, Katy Perry, and Jennifer Lawrence. The sale came shortly after their Architectural Digest farmhouse feature — a clean break from one chapter to the next.
The Santa Barbara Beach House in Carpinteria
In 2017, Kutcher and Kunis picked up a $10 million oceanfront property in Carpinteria, a quiet beach town just south of Santa Barbara. The purchase gave them a vacation home roughly two hours by car from their Beverly Hills base.
The house is 3,100 square feet with six bedrooms and six bathrooms — sized for family life with their two children, Wyatt and Dimitri. The interior follows a California coastal design: bright white walls, hardwood floors, and relaxed beach-influenced decor throughout. An open floor plan pulls ocean views into the main living spaces.
The property sits between two views — the Pacific Ocean on one side, the Santa Ynez Mountains on the other. A ground-level porch and a second-floor balcony both take advantage of the scenery. The eat-in kitchen has a large peninsula suited to casual family meals, and an outdoor dining area with a grill makes the most of coastal evenings. A private drive behind secured gates provides access and privacy.
The Carpinteria–Montecito corridor has become a magnet for celebrity homeowners. Natalie Portman purchased a property in neighboring Montecito around the same period, and the area’s mix of privacy, natural beauty, and small-town character continues to draw high-profile buyers.
Ashton Kutcher’s Earlier Properties
Before his relationship with Kunis, Kutcher’s real estate profile was more conventional. During his marriage to actress Demi Moore, the couple shared a substantial Beverly Hills residence. After their separation, Kutcher moved into a more private Hollywood Hills home — a compact, low-profile retreat suited to a different period of his life.
Detailed public records on those earlier properties are limited, and neither came close to the architectural ambition of what he and Kunis eventually built. The KuKu Farms project represented a fundamental shift — from buying existing homes to designing and building one from scratch over five years with a clear, sustained point of view.
What Sets Ashton Kutcher’s House Portfolio Apart
Celebrity real estate coverage usually stops at price tags and square footage. The more interesting story with Ashton Kutcher’s house history — particularly KuKu Farms — is the thinking behind the choices.
- They built slowly and deliberately. Five years is an unusually long commitment to a single project before moving in. Most high-net-worth buyers purchase finished homes. Kutcher and Kunis designed theirs from scratch and stayed involved at the technical level throughout construction.
- The sustainability is structural, not cosmetic. The solar system was engineered into the building from the start, not bolted on as an afterthought. The goal of producing surplus energy and distributing it locally reflects a longer-term commitment than most celebrity green claims.
- The interiors mix high and humble. A 10-foot crystal chandelier hanging in a working barn. Silver throne chairs in a reclaimed-wood bathroom. These choices show a willingness to have fun with the tension between raw materials and unexpected luxury, rather than defaulting to uniform opulence.
- They sold down rather than up. Moving from a larger East Coast Traditional mansion to a farmhouse is not a conventional upgrade. The square footage mattered less to them than the quality of the land and the coherence of the design.
Final Thoughts on Ashton Kutcher’s House History
Ashton Kutcher’s real estate portfolio tells a consistent story: early in his career, conventional celebrity choices; after building a life with Kunis, something far more considered. KuKu Farms is the clearest expression of what they actually value in a home — land, sustainability, thoughtful function, and the deliberate absence of flash. The Beverly Hills mansion is sold. The Carpinteria beach house remains a family retreat. And the farmhouse, designed over five years with Howard Backen and Vicky Charles, stands as the property most likely to outlast the celebrity headlines and be remembered on its own architectural merits.
