Joanna Gaines' Kitchen Island Beautifully Combines Vintage And Modern

Joanna Gaines has always shared an appreciation for vintage design, whether that was embracing the shiplap typically found behind plaster (and creating an entire empire around it), restoring a castle, or redesigning a late-1920s hotel. But her love of vintage isn't just part of her business model; it's also the style she prefers in her own home. While her main kitchen is being remodeled in 2026, her dark green butler's pantry defined moody, earthy, English-inspired kitchens in 2025. And in this butler's pantry, fans were met with a beautiful kitchen island that combined a vintage wooden work table with a modern stone countertop.

The forest green kitchen looked like something you would find on a Georgian English estate, complete with grid-pane windows, heritage tiles, and a rolling cabinet ladder. It's the cozy design trend that embraces vintage charm, so it's no wonder that she tied the look together not with a fixed island, but with a standalone furniture piece. After all, British-inspired kitchens embrace freestanding furniture like China cabinets and butcher blocks since kitchens were historically unfitted. Because they relied on freestanding pieces for worktops, they were also usually wooden. But Gaines added a modern twist by incorporating a giant white dolomite slab in her island, ensuring it didn't look too much like a historic piece.

In Gaines' current kitchen, she sourced an authentic antique work table from Magnolia's vintage store, Found + Collected. It has beautiful scallop detailing on the underside, and she noted on the Magnolia blog that such particular detailing is what inspired the antique look of the butler's pantry. To make it more functional, she swapped out the wooden surface for a natural stone countertop. However, this isn't the first time she has used this combination.

In the Gristmill — the 19th-century stone house that serves as the set for her cooking show — she also opted for an unfitted kitchen island in the shape of an antique wooden table with a white marble slab countertop. Before that, in her farmhouse kitchen in 2019, Gaines used an unexpected item to replace her kitchen island. It was an old baptismal which she painted white and added a white countertop to, again combining vintage style with modern elements. 

If you want to recreate a similar look in your own home, follow Gaines' kitchen design tips and source a vintage standalone work table or counter, and retrofit it with a modern stone countertop. However, while stones like marble and dolomite are beautiful, they're also porous and prone to staining, so they might not be a good fit for every lifestyle. If you'd rather not be precious with your workspace, you can also use white quartz for a similar look that's stain- and scratch-proof.