Box Modern - Medium Density
Box Modern is a bold, smart style that celebrates creative ingenuity, design flexibility, and personal expression. Box Modern transforms simple cubic volumes into distinctive homes through smart layouts, purposeful materials, and pops of colour. Clean architectural lines maximise flexibility, with open-plan spaces that support evolving routines and room functions. The home acts as a backdrop to creativity, where unique stories and interests are celebrated, and agile design invite experimentation and play.
Functional simplicity is at the heart of Box Modern - pragmatic and restrained forms allow personality to stand out without visual clutter. A base of clean whites and cool neutrals provides a flexible backdrop for personal touches and seasonal updates. This minimalist canvas is punctuated by contrasting pops of colour ranging from bright reds to yellows and blues. Surfaces combine smooth render and matte finishes, balancing structural precision with softness and delight.
Box Modern offers a flexible foundation for self-expression. It is a blank slate where clean lines and adaptable structures meet bursts of colour, modularity, and personality. Minimalist architecture becomes a personalised statement, layering in creativity and joy as life evolves.
About the Trend
Practical Guidelines
Recommended products

Linea™ Weatherboard: The strong shadow lines of this weatherboard, painted dark add a modern twist. Using with Linea™ Aluminium Corner Soakers differentiates from a more traditional look which has trim covering the corners.

Axon™ Panel Brushed Concrete: The texture of the panels transforms with light and proximity, creating a smooth, contemporary appearance from a distance, but unexpectedly tactile up close.

Stria™ Cladding: The deep, 15mm-wide grooves create strong, sleek lines ideal for contemporary designs that require a bold but pared-back aesthetic.

Axon™ Panel Grooved: The vertical groove lines make an impact to simple box designs by bringing variety and textural interest to external walls.

Oblique™ Weatherboard: The wide grooves and design flexibility of board widths delivers visual interest and horizontal and vertical installation options.

ExoTec™ Facade Panel: Provides a durable, expressed joint panel appearance, it will give an effortless jointed panel look with an ultra-modern feel.
Theme Insights
Creative Living
Box Modern offers a minimalist canvas for experimentation, where modular forms and crisp lines become tools for imaginative living and evolving personal style. Pops of colour and tactile finishes turn the home into a creative playground.
Evolved Living
Box Modern focuses on agile spatial design and streamlined surfaces that adapt to changing routines, offering practical comfort without excess.
Multigenerational Living
Modular zoning and vertical stacking create distinct living areas, balancing autonomy and togetherness in multigenerational households. Upstairs-downstairs living, private retreats, and open-plan communal areas allow families to co-exist comfortably.
Recommended paint colours
Exterior
Ōkārito
Manorburn
Godley Head
Red Jacks
Norsewood
Mt Inaccessible
Global GreenTag™ GreenRate™ Level A and Product Health Declaration™ PHD Platinum Health mean our products have passed the world's toughest standards for health, eco performance and safety.
Feature case study
Barry Parkville, Oblique™ Weatherboard & Stria Cladding
Answering Auckland’s demand for affordable housing, this multi unit development in Flat Bush is designed for superb liveability and low maintenance.

The Design Book
The Hardie™ Cladding Collection has a wide variety of products to select from, creating design versatility, in which It’s Possible™ to Make Modern™ like never before. It’s a movement that’s reshaping perceptions and changing the way New Zealand builds. Whether you are planning a renovation, new build, or extension, this forecast will be an invaluable tool on your journey. Welcome to the James Hardie Design Handbook. It's time to Build Your Modern Life.


