Dear Alice | Interior Design

Alice Lane

About

Dear Alice is an Interior Design podcast brought to you by Jessica Bennett and Suzanne Hall, the spunky geniuses behind Alice Lane Interior Design. These two ladies break down the highest end of the design and interior fashion world through their beautiful lifestyle approach with a heaping dose of wit and taste.

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363 episodes

Let's Debate | Buy New vs Reupholster

In this week’s episode we are doing re-upholstering or refinishing vs buying new. This is an age-old debate where some people don’t think it’s worth going through the trouble of refinishing old items, but others see it as an effective way to make their items look new while also preserving maybe some of that vintage touch said item might convey. Don’t think you’re doing this to save money, but rather to preserve an older item that has special meaning to you.   __ __   “It adds up with all of our projects. Once you really stare at the numbers, it just all adds up, so just know that you’re gonna spend more than you thought to cover everything, so just make sure it’s something you really, really want.” 11:44   https://www.instagram.com/alicelaneinteriors/ https://www.instagram.com/alicelanehome/ https://alicelanehome.com/ https://www.facebook.com/AliceLaneHome https://www.pinterest.com/alicelanehome/ https://www.youtube.com/alicelanehomecollectionsaltlakecity News Letter:  https://manage.kmail-lists.com/subscriptions/subscribe?a=HZENWY&g=PFcqV5

27m
Mar 28
Listener Questions | Answering Your Questions

Tune in this week to hear us give answers to more listener questions! We have people asking about how they can improve the design of their front door and alter the side lights or windows, how to mix wood tones like in a bedroom or dining room, what the ratio of mirrors to art in a home should be, what to do about the finish for interior and exterior door knobs and hinges, and a few other fun questions. Join us today to hear what we have to say!   __ __   “It depends on your preference operationally too, like if it’s something that you’re just gonna swing open and you never use that, except when guests come over and you’re using the mudroom entrance, and you just want it for aesthetics, beautiful. But just know that one is usually gonna stay closed and one is gonna be operative, and is that wide enough for people to come through? Or do you have to swing them open both times?” 12:24   https://www.instagram.com/alicelaneinteriors/ https://www.instagram.com/alicelanehome/ https://alicelanehome.com/ https://www.facebook.com/AliceLaneHome https://www.pinterest.com/alicelanehome/ https://www.youtube.com/alicelanehomecollectionsaltlakecity News Letter:  https://manage.kmail-lists.com/subscriptions/subscribe?a=HZENWY&g=PFcqV5

48m
Mar 21
Our Unfiltered Opinions | Kitchen & Bath Trends for 2024

This week we wanted to talk about some trends we saw pop up in an Elle Decor article and we feel like we wanna fight back on some of these things they say are a big deal. So we’re going to break down this article and break down/debunk, or agree with some of these kitchen and bath trends. All of us, both who are hosting and listening to the podcast need a moment to figure out what’s true and what’s not because sometimes people are reporting on things and maybe have only asked one source, so we want to make sure that we are giving you our best information based on what we’re seeing since we’re on the front lines of design. We want you to be well equipped before you go and make these really expensive decisions based on what you read in an article.   __ __   “There’s nothing more romantic than a pizza oven like, I think they’re so cute and it’s so fun to make homemade pizzas with your kids, it’s so much fun” “We did it last night. We just got a pizza oven and have just been using it way too much. It’s like making dinner, what we have to do anyway, but then it’s an activity at the same time. It’s memory making.” 43:58   https://www.instagram.com/alicelaneinteriors/ https://www.instagram.com/alicelanehome/ https://alicelanehome.com/ https://www.facebook.com/AliceLaneHome https://www.pinterest.com/alicelanehome/ https://www.youtube.com/alicelanehomecollectionsaltlakecity News Letter:  https://manage.kmail-lists.com/subscriptions/subscribe?a=HZENWY&g=PFcqV5

48m
Mar 14
Finding Your Niche | Cultivating Your Design Style

Today we are talking about how you can find your own niche and cultivate your personal style. This is a podcast we feel everybody wants to know as they’re trying to figure out who they are when they’re trying to make these massive decisions for a home, whether you’re a new build, remodel, or maybe you’re just furnishing, it really needs to tie back to who you are, how you use that space, what nostalgic strings you want to pull, depending on if you really are sentimental. We keep seeing this topic pop up for people everywhere and have even listened to a couple of podcasts on this in fashion to really understand what some of the points are that people are making to help us cultivate our own style, so this is gonna be a fun one.   __ __   “So I go to the plumbing store and I’m like ‘OK, I like that suite, I think this is the finish I’ll go with.’ and then I put that actual faucet in there with the tile, with the cabinetry that I’m thinking and I’m like ‘Yep, that’s good. Send that over to the cabinet maker.’ and then I’ll get my hardware. It’s really easy. I’ll always try and figure out my art because that’s important to me too because I know that’s a part of my style. That’s a big North Star for me.” 30:20   https://www.instagram.com/alicelaneinteriors/ https://www.instagram.com/alicelanehome/ https://alicelanehome.com/ https://www.facebook.com/AliceLaneHome https://www.pinterest.com/alicelanehome/ https://www.youtube.com/alicelanehomecollectionsaltlakecity News Letter:  https://manage.kmail-lists.com/subscriptions/subscribe?a=HZENWY&g=PFcqV5

1h 2m
Mar 07
Fundamental Design Principles | Dimensions You're Going to Need to Know, Tag Now

Today we are going to put all the fundamental design principles into one episode. We often give you guys little bits of information, such as you should hang your chandelier over your dining table, this height to this height, here’s the range. We thought we should do an episode for you guys where when you are finally ready to make a remodeling move, or maybe you’re rearranging your furniture this year, you’ll know what to do with spacing and dimensions. You’re probably all going to be working on some little project because you love interiors. So do we. We’re all ready to make a move, which may just be moving furniture from one room to another, but we’re going to give you dimensions that you need to know. Make sure to bookmark this episode because you’re going to want to come back to it in the future again and again in your lifetime to make sure you’re getting the spacing right.   __ __   “Otherwise the cocktail table just feels like it’s out in the middle of the room and nobody can use it for what it’s intended for…Or you have to stand up to walk forward while you’re crouched to put your drink down, and your quads are burning by the time you get to the cocktail table! No really, you go in those homes and the cocktail table is sitting on a 4x6 rug in the middle of the room, and you’re like ‘What!?’ If you learn nothing else today, at least learn where your cocktail table goes.” 13:13

50m
Feb 29
9 Ways to Make Small Spaces Luxurious

This is a topic that came in from one of our listeners, which we thought was a great question and perfect to focus on in this episode this week. We’ve been at this for 4 years and feel like we’ve covered it all, but we’re having such a good time that we wanna keep the party going, so feel free to send us any questions, topics, or even guests that you want on, which you can send to dearalice@alicelanehome.com.   __ __   “The next thing we have is real living finishes. This is the most luxurious thing. We’re talking about using real stone, real marble. We’re not using porcelain countertops that have marble stamped onto them so that you think that they’re marble and when you feel them, you’re like ‘Somethings not right…’ Whenever you can use an honest material, real stone, real wool carpet, real countertop material, real flooring material, real wood…Honest materials are gonna make your space look more luxurious.” 32:05   https://www.instagram.com/alicelaneinteriors/ https://www.instagram.com/alicelanehome/ https://alicelanehome.com/ https://www.facebook.com/AliceLaneHome https://www.pinterest.com/alicelanehome/ https://www.youtube.com/alicelanehomecollectionsaltlakecity News Letter:  https://manage.kmail-lists.com/subscriptions/subscribe?a=HZENWY&g=PFcqV5

1h 0m
Feb 22
Insider Publishing Tips | Interview with Krissa Rossbound Editor Traditional Home Magazine

We have a very special guest with us this week named Krissa Rossbound, who is a veteran and the Senior Style and Design Editor for Traditional Home Magazine, and we are giddy to have her here. We discuss topics such as how the current state of this country and the education system doesn’t favor art or prioritize helping people develop their own personal style, so it’s a journey on which one has to go the extra length in order to discover for themselves. Listen to how we discuss traditional design and how to go all about it in today’s market.    __ __   “Something that I’ve learned to do over time is really edit myself and learn to pause for a moment, enjoy what I’m looking at, realizing I really don’t have to take this home with me. I’m going to look at it wherever it’s displayed and maybe take a picture of it and remember it that way, but I don’t have to bring it home with me because you do that and then sometimes it just doesn’t work, or you didn’t really actually want it, and I think that hearkens back to that idea of understanding your personal style.” 13:25   https://www.instagram.com/alicelaneinteriors/ https://www.instagram.com/alicelanehome/ https://alicelanehome.com/ https://www.facebook.com/AliceLaneHome https://www.pinterest.com/alicelanehome/ https://www.youtube.com/alicelanehomecollectionsaltlakecity News Letter:  https://manage.kmail-lists.com/subscriptions/subscribe?a=HZENWY&g=PFcqV5

1h 6m
Feb 15
Listener Questions | More Burning Questions Answered

Today we are doing listener questions, which we always enjoy because we get to see how you guys are living, what problems you’re facing, and we get to help you answer them, which is kind of why Dear Alice was born. Dear Alice is our take on Dear Abby, which is an old advice column that was written, and we are actually doing that exact thing right now for interior design. You guys are sending in pictures now, which really helps us to better know how to be more informative.    __ __   “When you do refinish the floors on the upper level, they might be different colors because the years, and the sunshine, and everything on those 2 inch floors maybe two years earlier, because maybe you’re not gonna get to that renovation stairs for a couple of years, but it’s on another plane, it’s on another level. You’ve gotta get it right when you’re doing it because nobody’s gonna go back and refinish floors.” 11:40   https://www.instagram.com/alicelaneinteriors/ https://www.instagram.com/alicelanehome/ https://alicelanehome.com/ https://www.facebook.com/AliceLaneHome https://www.pinterest.com/alicelanehome/ https://www.youtube.com/alicelanehomecollectionsaltlakecity News Letter:  https://manage.kmail-lists.com/subscriptions/subscribe?a=HZENWY&g=PFcqV5

41m
Feb 08
Design Insider | Sourcing the Best with Marvin Wilkinson

Today we have guest Marvin Wilkinson who has the most fabulous store in the Denver Design District and Scottsdale. He has just the top shelf brands and with him you can find a secret tunnel into a magical world of offerings only offered to designers and we consider Marvin as ‘El Presidente’ of this world. We know him because he is one of our reps and educates us designers on what’s newest, what’s best, textiles, wallpapers, de Gournay, etc. Marvin is an artist at heart, a curator of beauty, and incredibly dynamic, so Suz insisted that he be on the podcast because people are gonna eat him up.   __ __   “I really need to hear what you are looking for instead of me just automatically thinking I know what you’re looking for. I think that’s really important for working with a design community. I think just being able to communicate properly and pull stuff out of other people and try to get their information and what their needs are, I think is really important.” 33:02   johnbrooksinc.com @johnbrooksinc   https://www.instagram.com/alicelaneinteriors/ https://www.instagram.com/alicelanehome/ https://alicelanehome.com/ https://www.facebook.com/AliceLaneHome https://www.pinterest.com/alicelanehome/ https://www.youtube.com/alicelanehomecollectionsaltlakecity News Letter:  https://manage.kmail-lists.com/subscriptions/subscribe?a=HZENWY&g=PFcqV5

43m
Feb 01
Agree to Disagree Listeners Edition

We’re gonna fight it out a bit today on this podcast episode. This is a continuation of our episode from last week and it’s just our listener’s comments when we polled our Instagram audits. We wanted to get to these since you guys took the time, so that’s what we’re doing today. We discuss the various designer styles you see here in Utah and which ones we agree with or do not agree with, but also there’s a lot of good in having variety. “Be effortless. Be believable…” “Don’t try so hard. I think that goes for anybody.”    __ __   “Today the cabinetry goes to the ceiling, or there’s a soffit with crown molding, but there’s no longer the dust collection. Nobody has done honey oak since the 90s. I don’t know if it’s gonna come back or not. Our oak came around again and it came more grayed, or ceruse, or toned down, but we have better lacquers today that don’t yellow the woods like they did in the 90s.” 15:01   https://www.instagram.com/alicelaneinteriors/ https://www.instagram.com/alicelanehome/ https://alicelanehome.com/ https://www.facebook.com/AliceLaneHome https://www.pinterest.com/alicelanehome/ https://www.youtube.com/alicelanehomecollectionsaltlakecity News Letter:  https://manage.kmail-lists.com/subscriptions/subscribe?a=HZENWY&g=PFcqV5

45m
Jan 25
Agree to Disagree | Our Opinions Unfiltered

Your hosts here on Alice lane have different opinions from each other. We’ve gotten some questions in and we find that we feel differently about these things and felt like maybe we should fight it out for you guys. We decided to just let it out and see what happens and we will still remain friends afterward. One example of something we talk about is having the TV above the fireplace and Cori says he has his TV above the fireplace, which Sue and Jess definitely disagree with style wise, but respect that he has made that decision.    __ __   “I personally have a sand and finish floor meaning we went and bought the wood planks, white oak, installed them all, water popped the grains, stained it, all the different layers of lacquer, the tedious process of doing a sand and finish floor…now everything is perfectly engineered. You get a perfectly finished, baked product in a factory where you don’t have to do it on site with all the chemicals.” 45:20   https://www.instagram.com/alicelaneinteriors/ https://www.instagram.com/alicelanehome/ https://alicelanehome.com/ https://www.facebook.com/AliceLaneHome https://www.pinterest.com/alicelanehome/ https://www.youtube.com/alicelanehomecollectionsaltlakecity News Letter:  https://manage.kmail-lists.com/subscriptions/subscribe?a=HZENWY&g=PFcqV5

53m
Jan 18
The 5th wall | Ceiling Design Ideas That Will Make You Look Up

Today we are talking about the 5th wall, which we define as the ceiling. It’s a controversial thing because some people consider the floor to be the 5th wall and the ceiling as the 6th, but that’s not what we think. The ceiling is something we strongly feel can really set rooms apart in design, and create a lot of energy and magic surrounding what’s happening up above the head. Join us as we discuss the various ways we’ve incorporated the 5th wall into our many projects we’ve done over the years.    __ __   “We had ceilings with a lot of eaves in it. This is Tan France’s closet and after setting this for quite some time, you can see the wall height didn’t start until way down here, like 2 and a half feet, so we’re all pitches and it only made sense to treat the ceiling like the wall and wrap that entire room in stripes. It felt tented, and then we were able to bring in a mirror that went 2 stories up from the stairwell and bounced back all of that around the space.” 18:48   https://www.instagram.com/alicelaneinteriors/ https://www.instagram.com/alicelanehome/ https://alicelanehome.com/ https://www.facebook.com/AliceLaneHome https://www.pinterest.com/alicelanehome/ https://www.youtube.com/alicelanehomecollectionsaltlakecity News Letter:  https://manage.kmail-lists.com/subscriptions/subscribe?a=HZENWY&g=PFcqV5

39m
Jan 11
I Love Lamp | Our Tips & Tricks to Getting the Lamp Layer Right

We have a question that catapulted into us making a whole podcast about this topic, which reads “Hi, long time listener to your podcast. Could you please do a session on lighting, like finding pieces that speak to each other room to room, dealing with custom shades. Do all lamps have the custom shades? For example, I have 4 lamps and they all have a beautiful fermoie shade that flank the perimeter of the room, but when I bring lamps into the center, I was going to coordinate, or even juxtapose that with a modern lamp. Best ways to wash out art with light when mounted picture lights just don’t work, but you also don’t want your ceiling to look like Swiss cheese from recess lighting?”    __ __   “The ideal shade is a natural linen, like probably a more off white or bone colored linen. That’s more beautiful than a natural paper shade because the paper shades kind of get burnt and get hot spots over years. It’s just not long lasting and if you’re paying a lot for a lamp it’s frustrating to have the shade start to show those warm spots on it…we use a place in Salt Lake City called the Lamp Company and they do custom lamp shades for us.” 29:24   https://www.instagram.com/alicelaneinteriors/ https://www.instagram.com/alicelanehome/ https://alicelanehome.com/ https://www.facebook.com/AliceLaneHome https://www.pinterest.com/alicelanehome/ https://www.youtube.com/alicelanehomecollectionsaltlakecity News Letter:  https://manage.kmail-lists.com/subscriptions/subscribe?a=HZENWY&g=PFcqV5

53m
Jan 04
The Business of Design | Beyond the Classroom

Design is a wild and complicated business to get into. Of all the designers out there, somehow we all end up doing it differently. In the school of design, they don’t teach you that your business should be done a certain way, they just teach you the art of design and the different types of design: commercial, residential, etc., or little classes that teach you how to do things like purchase orders, sales estimates, how to work with vendors, and internal trade secrets that you’ll need to know, but how to run a business is much more broad and really just comes down to the individual and their way of doing things.    __ __   “I do think that those with a good attitude are also grateful, and when you’re grateful, I feel like you’re anxiously engaged. When you’re not grateful, you’re like ‘Oh, lucky you. You get me.’ But those that are grateful work better with other people. They’re humble, and they learn faster. If you can be humble, you’ll learn a lot faster. You’ll get to the finish line on any project you’re working on a lot quicker, when you’re grateful.” 21:44   https://www.instagram.com/alicelaneinteriors/ https://www.instagram.com/alicelanehome/ https://alicelanehome.com/ https://www.facebook.com/AliceLaneHome https://www.pinterest.com/alicelanehome/ https://www.youtube.com/alicelanehomecollectionsaltlakecity News Letter:  https://manage.kmail-lists.com/subscriptions/subscribe?a=HZENWY&g=PFcqV5

39m
Dec 28, 2023
Design Regrets in Our Own Homes | Lessons and Embracing Our Mishaps

We were discussing this topic and when we started listing these out, we realized it’s proof that we lived. We leaned hard into a trend, it’s the Asymmetrical haircut, and a part of us is like “No, respect that girl that was just trying her darndest!” But was it a good idea? Probably not. Listen in as we tell about our various design decisions we made early on that we later came to realize was a mistake.    __ __   “I feel like we wanted to do this episode because I don’t know if somebody maybe asked us to do it, but just to illustrate we all have regrets. Those of us who do it professionally, we still have mishaps. We trust the system too much because we do it all day, and then we work too fast, and then we forget something, or a few of these things where we’re saying to just fix it right the first time.” 38:45   https://www.instagram.com/alicelaneinteriors/ https://www.instagram.com/alicelanehome/ https://alicelanehome.com/ https://www.facebook.com/AliceLaneHome https://www.pinterest.com/alicelanehome/ https://www.youtube.com/alicelanehomecollectionsaltlakecity News Letter:  https://manage.kmail-lists.com/subscriptions/subscribe?a=HZENWY&g=PFcqV5

40m
Dec 21, 2023