Dear Alice | Interior Design

This episode is not a plug for you to hire Alice Lane, but this is if hiring anybody, or if you don’t, this is going to be the work that you should make sure and do for yourself because it’s not something you should phone in and take lightly. You know yourself. If you’re not a great decision maker, you’re not going to be a good designer for yourself. If you waffle, don’t know what to do, and you g...

We thought it would be so much fun to kind of lay out what we think are your next steps to turning your home over for the season, for fall, for holidays. We’re entering this new season where we’re gathering again after the pandemic mostly kept us apart from loved ones, but now we can be with them again and we want to feel something. We want to feel that feeling of the holidays and these are things...

We are doing a book review today on the top 10 favorite design books. We get asked this question a lot about what our favorite design books are and in projects we’re always installing the most beautiful big coffee table books on their cocktail tables and we try to find out a lot about their interests so that we can align some of these gorgeous, big treasures with what they’re interested in, like i...

Today we’re going to be talking about your forever home, which is kind of the final destination. A lot of the homes we do are people’s forever homes, or what they think it is, and then they have so much fun during the process that they decide to do it again. We love this because it really does just delve into all the options that make life ideal and make your lifestyle really beautiful. We get int...

In this episode we continue our discussion about exteriors and answer many of the questions our listeners have sent in. We have a question about whether you can paint your stucco, and that all depends on the climate in which you live, so if you live in a place like Utah where you get the extreme of all 4 seasons, it’s going to need to be repainted probably within the next 5-7 years. When talking a...

Today we’re going to be talking about exteriors and updating the outside of your home. This is a hot topic for Jess because she keeps driving into her neighborhood and seeing one house after the next turning completely white, which used to be Utah tuscan/brown. A lot of repainting happens with homes and we want to talk about the dos and don’ts of painting and what will or will not look good on you...

The reason we wanted to do this episode is because celebrity spaces give us this great courage to go bold. In the early days when we were doing presentations, we just were trying to get people to do a colored kitchen because everyone wanted a white kitchen, and many still do, so we would always go to this classic, Cameron Diaz. She had the green kitchen that was always easy to reference back and s...

We have David Phoenix with us today, who is the most fun we’ve had at Market so far. He has 20 years of design experience and is a master at combining traditional and modern elements. His interiors are thoughtful, well designed, and most importantly they’re livable. He was named one of America’s top young designers by House Beautiful Magazine. His firm, David Phoenix Interior Design has won numero...

Our podcast today comes from a listener question. She said that she’d love to hear us discuss what the process was like for us personally and what we learned, what we would do differently, etc. when we built our own homes. So today Cory and Jess talk about their process and what they learned just to help you overcome some of the shortcomings that maybe you’ve experienced. Even as professionals, we...

Today we are answering your questions again, which is your favorite podcast and ours. We love knowing what you guys want to know from us and know that we can always answer your questions. Sometimes your questions will require a lot of information to answer and we will dedicate a whole episode to it, but often we get smaller questions that require shorter answers, and so that’s what we’ll be doing...

We’re so excited to have Jesse Carrier and Mara Miller with us today. They are the great Carrier and Company and have the whole meal deal. If you’re an interior designer, you want to be them. They have collections through Loloi rugs, Century Furniture, Visual Comfort, Lee Jofa, and Soicher Marin. They’re also named on Architectural Digest AD100, Elle Decor’s A list, Deluxe Gold list, and they’ve b...

Today we’ve got Adam, Jess’s husband on the podcast who will be interviewing her, which we have been wanting to do for a while, but haven’t been able to until now because Sue just had a baby and will be away for a bit. Adam has a very good understanding of construction and the quality of how and why things are made a certain way, and Jess has a great eye for design, so blending them together is al...

Today we have a special treat for you. We’ve got Kristina Kellett and Jessica Talbot who are both senior designers at Alice Lane Home. We had a question from one of our listeners about how to keep traditional design fresh, so we brought in the designers to get their opinions, some of the work they’re doing, and some of the risks they take to just update, freshen, or even what our fresh approach is...

We have lots of opinions about the trends we think should go, which is very polarizing, so don’t be offended if you have something we don’t like and love it. You do you, but we definitely have some opinions to share. This kind of got sparked in our idea bank when we were looking at an article called “Ten Designers Share What Trends Need to Disappear Forever.” Naturally this caught our eye, and we...

Today we’re talking pattern, scale, rhythm, and repeats. This is a really important part of design and keeps things from looking too stale, static, or flat. Pattern preference really depends on what kind of person you are and whether you end up wanting something different down the road hinges on if you’re the kind of person that constantly needs to be changing your style (like in what you wear) or...

Today we’re doing listener questions again because after looking at the data, it shows that these are your favorite podcast episodes. Whenever we answer your questions, everyone seems to tune in, so we always want to make sure we do this for you guys after saving up the questions until we have enough to do one of these. If you have a specific question you’d like answered on here, send in your ques...

Today we are going to be talking about pools and it’s Summer time, we’re all thinking about it, and some of you are planning them for your future homes, so we’re here to talk about everything we’ve learned and all that we can share with you from an interior designer’s perspective. There are a lot of questions we’ve had for different pools and price points, so we want to talk about the different ty...

Today we’ve got Paloma Contreras who is an award winning interior designer and taste maker based in Houston Texas. Her design is a modern take on traditional style gravitating toward classic silhouettes and timeless pieces paired with a touch of glamour and an infusion of color. Paloma is highly decorated when it comes to being a designer. She’s in the Next Wave interior designer by House Beautifu...

Today is part two on cabinetry. We had 4 pages of questions from you guys and got tired the last episode and quit early, but today we wanted to try and be less wordy with these ones and get through them all as best we can. We talked about a whole plethora of things, such as what tones have become more popular, or what styles will stand the test of time, to which we answered that it depends on you....

Many of you may be wondering what the party pantry is, which is why we have set aside a whole episode on it. We didn’t really feel like the party pantry had a name, but we felt like we were doing it even before and we first saw it on Veranda, which also goes by the name of party closet. In a word, it’s a place where you’re going to store all your things to party, such as your cake plates, tea pots...

Laura Kirar is the founder and Creative Director at Laura Kirar Design (LKD). She is an internationally renowned interior & product designer as well as a sculptor, a design industry connector and a creative experience producer. She’s in every single highly published shelter magazine that we love, she’s an artist, she’s fun, and we got to hang out with her at Market this last Fall, 2021. You just g...

We’ve had so many questions about cabinets, so we have gone to some experts and done quite a bit of research in order to be able to answer the various questions you might have on this subject. The cost of cabinetry is speculated to be around 15-20% of the home, which is similar to what we recommend for furniture when people are willing to go all in and style their home to its fullest potential. Th...

We’re talking about one of our favorite topics, which is High Point Market. We’re gonna tell you all about it, answering the questions of what’s new, what’s the latest, and addressing concerns about making huge purchases like new furniture, which can cost a lot, so we’re here to answer your questions and give you the information you’re searching for. High Point is an entire city and all they do is...

Today we’ve got a really fun guest with us who is a big hero and favorite of Susan’s and mine. Kara Mann is the founder and creative director of KARA MANN established in 2005 with offices in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. Over the past fifteen years, she has acquired the reputation of a cultural vanguard for pushing the boundaries of tradition. Her impactful, refined interiors draw inspiratio...

For today’s episode we will be answering all of your questions you’ve asked and sent us in recent months. We do an episode like this about once every quarter in which we answer the questions that have a shorter answer, but we sometimes do whole episodes around one question if it requires a lot more explanation. Send in your questions to dearalice@alicelane.com Walls and trim color 3:13 Favorite wo...