The Kohler Company continues to retain final authority over the design of home and business additions, outbuildings and fences in the village to keep them within a certain aesthetic standard.

In 1900, Kohler Company had moved from four miles westward from Sheboygan to its present location, then known as Riverside.

Chief executive Walter J. Kohler Sr. hoped to establish “a fine American city with opportunity for home ownership in agreeable surroundings, all tending toward a rational home life.” [6] He traveled to Europe in 1913, studying the Krupp Steel Works’s communities and conferring in England with “garden city” urban planner Sir Ebenezer Howard.

Kohler’s planning, starting in 1917, including engaging the Olmsted Brothers landscape architectural firm.

Among all other towns it stands apart, a compact manufacturing centre in the midst of garden homes, a manufacturing plant without a visible ash heap.”[8] In 1934, 1954–1965, 1983, and 2015, the United Auto Workers and other unions have gone on strike against the Kohler Company, causing limited to major disruptions to village operations.

Census[4] 2000 data: The population density was 354.0 people per square mile (136.7/km2).

Kohler's hospitality division along with its residential real estate and retail arms make up the largest goods and services employer of the village.

Kohler has two major shopping areas: the Shops at Woodlake Kohler just north of the village's downtown, and Deertrace on the extreme southeast side of the village at the intersection of WI 28 and Washington Avenue.

It is located on Union Avenue east of I-43 on Kohler village land north of the Acuity Insurance campus.