How to Mix Materials: Flooring, Hardware, & Lights

0:00Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of Dear Alice. If you're new here, welcome. We're so glad you found us. We are the designers behind Alice Lane and Alice Lane Interior Design. And we've been doing this for about 20 years, not the podcast, but designing. And so we do custom homes, remodels, interiors. And every week we share the design principles and mistakes and insider knowledge that we are using every day with our own clients. And we're not gatekeeping. We're just sharing everything we can. And it's fun for us to get together and do this. It's like a book club with interior designers.

0:35Our book club right here. It is. Yeah, we love doing it. And we just wanted to say welcome. We're glad you're here. If you want to see the work we're doing, it's on Alice Lane Home. That's our store side. We design, manufacture our own product. And we have a beautiful retail store in the Salt Lake City area. And then our interior design firm is at Alice Lane Interiors. And you can see the projects we're working on over there. Today, this is actually a question that we got from one of the listeners and they wanted to know about how to mix metals. This question comes up a lot. How do I mix materials, whether it's on the skeleton of my house, the woods I pick to the tiles I pick to those things that are fixed to the walls.

1:14But in addition, people always ask, how do I mix materials when it comes to the softer coverings, you know, the furnishings, the fabrics, the window treatments. And so we want to start to dive into this arena with you guys because we do get so many questions on this, but specifically today, it was kind of springboarded because people want to know how to mix metals. And so we're going to get into it. Yeah, we are. But first we're going to start with mixing flooring because very rarely are we going to do a home where it's just all wood floors throughout or all marble floors throughout. And so we're going to just tell you our favorite zones to do what in, because I think the most interesting homes are going to have a mix of materials underfoot.

1:52And we always start with the ground in interior design. So starting from the ground, up. Let's talk about how we mix flooring. Just on top of what Jess just said, we've done so many homes over the years and we've done so many different types of floorings and we've seen what's stayed and we've seen what's come back and what's mixed well. So four floorings, I know that everybody's like kind of left the white oak, kind of that pale arena and we're into darker. I just want to say walnut. Four wood floors, walnut stain is so beautiful. Whether that's on a walnut species of wood you say you love the grain of oak but you just take it to a walnut colored stain it has forever and always been timeless our first showroom had a walnut floor and everything looked good on that regardless of style regardless of pattern it always mixed well with walnut in general all of our current projects moving forward and honestly for the last couple years we have been trying to go toward this warmer deeper more probably more of a medium tone um just because you don't want going too dark on your floor on that walnut it will show everything you lived with a brazilian cherry floor in your first home and it showed everything you worked for your floor i did i mopped twice a day so going too dark is not the way to go so if you're a designer or you're thinking i'm going to go really really dark for contrast save it for a furniture piece don't do it on your floor yeah stay in that medium tone where you can kind of take advantage of some of the highs and the lows on the deeper parts and some even the blonder greens that are happening in a walnut because it's so much easier to mix other materials with that than honestly any other wood stain or species I've ever used.

3:25And you'll have no regrets. No regrets. Yeah. That's the million dollar advice of the day. If you stop listening now, you're welcome. That was a great podcast. I'll see you next Thursday. Yeah. Yeah. Go walnut on the flooring. So besides walnut being the answer for our hardwood that we are paying forward, let's also tell them how we're going to mix and where we're going to mix in other flooring? Well, usually for like the majority percentage of the home, we are using hardwood just because it's the softest. It's, I think it's the warmest too, visually and temperature wise. I think it's just more comfortable to stand on.

3:59So you're really going to have that in your main living spaces. Oftentimes it'll go into your kitchen. Where we start to introduce tile, which is a really, really fun game. We always try and get it in the entry. I love a tiled entry. So we'll try and get that in the entry. And I think that that's a good place to kind of catch the dust it's easier to mop tile is where you're going to want to stay in that arena and whenever we are doing a tile floor in an entry it's usually with three stones sometimes we'll do two stones but most of the time it's more fun when we can get a third one in there just for the complexity of the design and the mixture of the materials because then you can have more of a white marble with an interesting vein you can get a dark marble in there with an interesting white vein but then you can add the warmth or the green or the other thing that's going to give the personality to that little triage when you're thinking about that specific house and homeowner.

4:47I love a third marble. I do too. In there. Yeah. It's so fun. It's smart. Even if it's a liner or a dot or something, whenever you see like a London mosaics, there's multiple colors in there and they all are kind of muted, but a lot of them do have some color in it, like a cognac or like a little yellow, yellow something in there just as a peekaboo surprise that feels was quarried a million years ago. So when you are picking your marbles don't limit yourself to just two I would give yourself that third one because when you start to mix other materials with that you're giving yourself even more temperatures and veins and interest to puppy pile on top of when you're playing the pattern game yes other places to do that tile and the more times I think that you can play these little games of just adding variety to your floor plan is your entry I love tile little powder rooms bathrooms are obviously assumed just because it's wet in their pantries I love it when you see a tile patterned in a pantry where else do you love to see a tile pattern a laundry room if it's the main floor sometimes the laundry mud hall kind of blend together but it is your entry as far as a homeowner goes you're generally coming in from the garage and so I think giving yourself a really cute landing pad there but like you said if you're coming in with wet wellies on or snow boots or whatever it's really weather friendly I also just love sort of the click of heels when it comes to either entry, a back door or a front door.

6:09I think it's really, really lovely. Talked about wood, we've talked about tile as far as that flooring layer. Like you're going to, again, that foundation is going to allow for so much information, like patterns to be played on top of that. So probably the next thing that people ask about is how do I know when to mix cabinetry? Whether it's painted, whether it's a wood stain. and I think this is a good question as you go space by space by space and understanding your style some people have very few things that are staying great because they just love a painted they love a painted cabinetry and when I go through their Pinterest board and talk to them it's pretty clear to me I'm like okay they love a painted finish I'm gonna have to sneak some of these warm stains in through my furniture or through the island because they're gonna want an all painted kitchen.

6:56I think don't negate the stains happening at eye level. You're going to see that at ground level. I really do love seeing the stained cabinetry somewhere. I have one, even like my little tiny bathroom that has like the burl walnut. Imagine if that was painted. Oh, it'd be so flat. It'd be so flat. And it adds so much interest and drama and history to the space. And it adds a pattern. It does. The grain of it, you're actually able to see it when you're not painting over it right what about like in the kitchen you know we talked about flooring already yeah mixing stain grade with stain grade is there a rule or i feel like that's the difficult science right i think i think you're gonna always always go darker on your island than your floor because like suz was saying you want your floor to be that mid-tone because you don't want to have to mop it all day every day like i had to once in my life so if you go with that medium walnut stone then And you can get away with a darker, rich sort of library, beautiful, dark island.

7:53One little trick is to take one of the darker grains from the floor and use that as the colorway for your island. It's on the floor. It's not just this foreign dark color. You're seeing it in the grain, like the darkest part of the walnut floor becomes maybe that darker stain on the island. I think your cabinetry, as a rule, will be darker than your floor. Yeah. If you're going to be doing stain grade twice, we're starting to do more stain grade in primary baths. That is a really beautiful, rich, traditional look. And that looks really pretty atop stone floors. It's really common if you're going to do a white kitchen for people to want a stain grade island.

8:28I think that's more the norm than doing the white island today. So using that darker stain on the island than the floor is a really great rule. With that stain grade island, you get the opportunity to do a lot of furniture detailing on it. I think we've all saved this image. It's a burl like on the center of the panel and it's up on like higher legs and the whole rest of the kitchen is painted. And there's something just so furniture, the fact that it's lifted up just a little bit higher than everything else happening. And it allows you to see the, you know, the wood floor going underneath it.

8:59Relief to the kitchen because kitchens sit so heavy and solid that that island does give you that moment of high heel. Give it a little bit of relief because you don't have to have tons and tons of storage on the side panels. Right. So that's your job to do a trick. I did metal legs on the side of my island to give some relief to all of the weight of the kitchen. Do something interesting. And when you have to kind of do that problem solving of I'm going to lift my island. How am I going to lift it? What's going to be the support? What do you introduce? You introduce them at all. yeah you do or you introduce something else that's just going to again you're mixing materials and like that makes such a more dynamic interesting space where you can do that yeah so case in point your kitchen we'll get to those metals let's keep with cabinetry for now but i do think that's one of the ones that people have the hardest time with so we we are getting to that mixing cabinetry we love paint grade or full stone in powder bathrooms you guys the powder bath the pocket square of the whole home.

9:56Yeah. It's so much fun to give yourself your own identity. It's going to flow with the rest of the house because it's your house, but you really can play with mixing materials in here. Oftentimes you'll have the tile on the floor. On the cabinetry, if you are doing a cabinet, this is your time to pull something that's inspired by a wallpaper or the stone. A lot of times you don't need as much storage in a powder bath. So a lot of times we are doing more old stone floating vanities. And so the wallpaper and the marble are what's going to influence that. But when you do have those things talking, then you're like, okay, I'm doing a viola.

10:29I'm going to pull that deep purple and I'm going to have that influence either. If it's not the cabinetry, it's going to influence my trim. It's going to influence my ceiling color. It's going to talk to something else because I've given myself the permission to do that because the vein is so interesting. How do I mix? Be bold in your decisions. Don't go for the plain marble, especially in these spots like a powder or spots that you're not going to be in for as long of a period of time those spaces will become your favorite and the pattern play and mixing will become all the more dynamic it's so much fun when a client is just like yep go hog on that on that powder they're like okay we're going with the pink marble you know let's do it you can paint the trim in here to pull out a color like we did in our capital heights powder bath we did pink trim this is your window casings your door casings your base molds that doesn't mean you have to paint your trim in the rest of your house pink you can isolate this to one room it has a door on it and when you open that door it should be so fun for your guests i'm glad that you brought up that powder because the field of wallpaper is green and then you have these herons that are in white and they have red in their beaks you don't naturally see a pink until you put pink next to it you're like oh it's the blushiness of that feather right there you know and so when you're mixing you can kind of dissect it to the I think that the common I might not see, but you love.

11:47I love the color pink. And so I'm going to pull that and I'm going to put it on my trim and I'm going to throw it up on my ceiling. And that's when creative mixing really as far as starts to take off. Just not going for the obvious color for the trim. Exactly. Sorry to interrupt. I just have to hurry and say how excited I am. The house collection has officially launched at alicelanehome.com. Or if you're local, pop in. You've got to see it in person. We have 18 pieces. Some of these are best sellers, just available in new fabrics and finishes that are in stock and ready to ship. We've got things that like our beloved Theo Sofa is now available as a sectional.

12:22We have a brand new dining chair called the Kelly, as well as the Kelly vanity stool. So, you know, that little cute seat that you're going to sit on when you do your makeup. This is the silhouette you want in your beautiful bathroom. It's called the Kelly. It's so cute. We've done it in this really beautiful high pile loopy pink wool. you're going to want it. We also have the Lucy Lucite shelf, a thick slab of lucite countersunk over two brass pegs with little ball ornamental details on the end. This is going to be perfect next to your vanity to load up all your perfume bottles in or really be cute above like a toilet to be able to put air fresheners on or a little candle.

13:01We also have the Phoebe Buffet lamp that is in Calcutta Viola. You're going to die over this one and two new rugs. Shop the collection now on alicelanehome.com. So that takes us to mixing wallpaper and paint because a lot of people think if they're just going to wallpaper the room, then they just leave all of the window casings white, the floorboards white, the ceiling white. They just think, oh, I just paper it. Guys, today we're mixing wallpaper and paint color, not just paint that's white. So really all things are considered. We're not just leaving those things unattended to. You kind of know yourself.

13:35Some people and clients will kind of be talking and there's I don't know if I want to like draw that much attention to the line of that baseboard but they're down for a color drench so you know yourself as far as this journey of mixing patterns and color and everything you just did in your living room that you like color drenched and you color drenched you painted it on the wallpaper yeah no your ceiling you popped off you popped off and did something different on the ceiling but your casing and your windows everything went the same color as your wall yep yeah I have wood windows in my living room and so I was like I have these wood mullions there's no reason why I have to leave these white I can paint everything so the baseboards when she says I painted my wallpaper I know that sounds crazy but I had grass cloth and I just knew the texture would be so pretty to put high gloss paint on top of the grass cloth there was no point in just taking off the wallpaper and just to paint my sheetrock high gloss so I really wanted to see what would happen I also feel like that's my job as a designer is to try things.

14:32So it was a perfect ground to mess around with. And it turned out really great. But being able to paint your windows is a power move. And I love that I did it. I love that I didn't leave them white. I was like, I'll probably regret this in 20 years, but I'm down for it. I really want to try it. And I think it looks so rich as a result. And after that too, I ended up painting my mantle. I couldn't leave that white either. You really had to take the baby out with the bathwater. Everything had to go and you had to commit to all of it. I will say by leaving anything white, your eye will automatically go to there.

15:03If you have a dark and you have a white, your eye is going to go to the white. And so unless you're trying to highlight it, you've got to let it melt with everything else. And so I had a neighbor that stopped by and she was like, oh yeah, of course you have to do the mantle. Before I get my roots dyed, she's a brunette. I see this white part. She's like, it would be like leaving your roots. If you left your mental, you can't unsee it now, right? We had to commit to dyeing the entire head of hair. I couldn't leave any roots in this room, and we completely went for it and then popped off on the ceiling with a really beautiful peachy high-gloss shade, and it was so fun.

15:38I think really committing to things is what we're doing right now in the mix and not leaving anything just white. It feels undone. It's so true. If you look at past rooms or something where it's not quite done, we've done this with a couple projects that we've been in the process of where we hadn't necessarily attached a color to the ceiling, I know better. I think we should paint it blue. I think we need to go blue on your ceiling. Otherwise it's just going to be a glory for no one. Yeah. And it's not that much more money to get some paint color on there and it's going to pay you back. Yeah. Make you so happy.

16:07I'm so glad for mixing and we weren't necessarily going to talk about ceilings for a great deal of time, but I'm so glad that you painted your ceiling and your living room. Oh yeah. Me too. It was completely necessary. I know we've talked about you're running down the mat and you're going to do a full tug and you have to commit to it at the beginning of the mat that you're going to run and go for it you can't halfway decide if you're going to do it or not and so it feels really good to stick the landing on something like that I know we're talking about wallpaper and paint my sister just wallpapered her laundry room and she was just in the mood for a change all of us experiences we're like I'm going to just wallpaper my powder bath right and then you think that you'll be done but once she got the wallpaper rep were like but wouldn't your laundry room be so epic if we hit the ceiling with like kind of a pinky orange note and all of a sudden you're like yes now it's coming to focus this is feeling like an outfit yeah it's not just feeling like you were bored and you wallpapered this room and then nothing else was considered once you paint the ceiling right and then she's like well i need a new light fixture now and then you get up the new light fixture everything starts to feel considered and this just doesn't feel like a lazy remodel that you were bored in your house and you wanted to throw some paper up, you know, on a Saturday night really feels like you hired a designer.

17:22A lot of people can do even right now with the current wallpaper that you have on your walls. You're not ready to do that. But your ceiling is white. What should it be? What could it have been? You should paint it. Yeah, I think that's a great way to introduce this. We're in this era of decorating where we're mixing obviously tiles, patterns, more, you know, audacious stones, hardware metals or mixing actual fabrics right now is your time to shine why are we remodeling we just wallpapered it i'm just painting the ceiling painting the ceiling and you're going to paint your trim yes right you're going to hit those baseballs might as well stop it some more that's right i love it let's talk about mixing lighting plumbing and hardware this is where the metals are going to come into play and i think this is where most of the big questions lie We love an antique brass.

18:12We love a polished nickel. That's probably where most of our mixing is going to hang out. And we love them together. Your antique nickel is a warm version of silver. It's not chrome. You cannot picture chrome when we're talking about this. So your antique brass and your polished nickel are going to hang out really well together. On kitchen plumbing, we typically always lead, it depends on the client, but we almost always lead people to polished nickel. The idea of replacing a faucet just seems ridiculous. Also, you know, you're going to have a microwave in the room. Your range hood is probably going to have some shades of nickel involved in it, right?

18:47Yeah. You might have a stove that's in the silver family. You know, there's going to be silvers happening in the room anyway. So that's why I just think anything utilitarian, hit it with nickel. Everything decorative, let's start to bring brass into play. and if you can on your hood put some brass straps if on your nickel hood and that's where the mixing begins yes and then you have permission to start to play and riff off of that when you're talking about all the appliances and kind of that more silver stainless look the fun thing about the polished nickel because sometimes clients will be like well like it comes in stainless should I do that and I'm like no because the polished nickel it just feels a little bit more like high end jewelry you know it just has that warmth and I love I love a polished I love being able to make it shine wipe it down you buffer it with your little micro cloth whatever and it looks new how about it comes in brush nickel show you brush nickel i'm like no never you're gonna do the polish because you can always make it look my mom cleaned houses oh she hated nothing more than a brush finish she could never make it look beautiful but she could always make a polish nickel even a chrome a polish something she could always make that look good and that felt so good to her mind so i grew up knowing that and if you've lived with these things you know how like you can like restore it immediately and it's so so so beautiful and again the warmth of polished nickel it's just so much easier to mix metals with the golds look more expensive everything looks more expensive next to polished nickel hill we're dying on yep forever that's exactly right ever when it comes to your hardware you have permission to use brass hardware with the polished nickel plumbing but you have to be careful with brass finishes this is where not all brasses are created equal i hope and pray you're going to throw down on your lighting you're gonna spend a lot of money on those fixtures that's the right thing to do that's the thing that's hanging at eye level over your island it is the money maker it is the scene so that is the brass that you're going to have all other brasses bow down to you order that lighting and then you check your hardware against the beautiful brass lighting that you ordered because you don't want to get a brush nickel anything i don't know what are some of the issues that you're seeing with i think the unlockered brass for me i just updated my bathroom hardware.

20:57It came in so, so yellow that I ended up doing a little apple cider vinegar vapor situation where I just sort of took it four years into the future and it had some burnish on it. And then it felt really rich to me and it knocked some of the yellow off. You've really got to go with, what are some of our favorite hardware brands that do brass really, really well? Classic brass. Everything is made out of brass and they have so many different options. They have ones that if you are I've we've had clients they're perfectionists and they want it to look the way it looks today they want it to look that same way in 10 20 years they don't want to see a living finish I love a living finish you love a living finish so I imagine even though you kind of accelerated the age on your in lacquered brass it's going to keep doing cool stuff yeah and it'll just get keep getting more and more and more burnished which again you kind of know yourself so as you're navigating this mixed metal game are you perfectionist do you want the same finish now forever and always or are you okay with the artistry of a living finish and it kind of changing and getting shinier or something over time like there's a magic in it well and classic brass offers lots of different brasses and so you you'll be satisfied no matter where you are on the spectrum of brass loving you're going to find something that feels really good in your brain honestly the thing that you're looking for and the thing i when clients will send me a link they'll be like what about this you'll be like if you zoom in on the finish of that brass does it look like it was painted on with a brush do you see a linear brush mark real brass doesn't do that it's probably going to chip off or it's going to wear down it's going to like show its true colors in just a little bit because it's not real brass the ones that are the most authentic have several types of brass that's i think a good trust fall for a hardware company going back to lighting like jess was saying i think there are a lot of lighting companies out there that will say brass you know fixture but it's really stainless steel with like a brass finish on it i mean they're not great finishes anyway but they're hard to pair with other things so if you can make sure your lighting the material is real brass starting there i think everything starts like kind of playing well with that lighting better it's easier to make decisions moving forward i remember actually my mom's best friend in california she had all gold plumbing she had you've seen it we've ripped designers you ripped them out you could see the scratching on it really kind of anemic acidic gold that was really i don't know i was doing something underneath it it wasn't it was something It was chrome-plated or something, you know?

23:24And so that is the game that you're playing. Do you want to rip this out in X-Many years? Or is it like the things we're teaching you right now will hopefully resolve in not having to do that? Because you're going to love it forever. And they're long-lasting and they are timeless. Yeah. And real brass, if you're the right type of person, the longer you live with it, almost the more character. Better it gets. Yeah. And it'll get darker spots and shadowing in the grooves and the folds and things like that. Oh, now it's getting really antiqued. Your hardware is going to keep doing its thing. And it's going to get really, really, really good.

23:54And I think you're just going to love it forever, forever, ever, and always. Yeah. I remember like back in the day, we were talking about this the other day, when we had the showroom in Orem and we had this book and it was called Advanced Style. Probably still being published. Great. And Advanced Style. And it was just pages and pages. The coolest, chicest, like older women, beautiful older women. I would say in their 80s and 90s. 80s and 90s. But they were all white hair. Yeah. Just gray hair. Silver locks. All the things. big sunglasses yeah but just as far as just idols I'm like I want to be like that someday I want to be a silver cat and I want to wear whatever the hell I want but not one of them had one color metal sitting on them they had collections of jewelry and necklaces they were dripping in just like their own point of view and it was so cool and I'm like a beautifully well styled home that's lived a life mixes its materials it mixes her metals they're wood grains and they're not trying to stay and that's when we would compare it to a starter home they would always have like a brush nickel the builder always is going to put that brush or a matte black

24:58time stamp and pinch that era of your life when i'm like you could start living that advanced style right now you know and start building and collecting and curating on top of that it's a strong foundation right and it's so fashionable it's so fashionable gosh i'm gonna If I had that book somewhere. Yeah. I'm going to look that up. Yes. We need to. Anyway, advanced style. On the short list for mixing lighting, I'm just going to make an absolute rule for those that are trying to make it really simple. Okay. Are you ready? Everything is going to be a note of silver. All your appliances, your plumbing, your hood, except you're going to add brass straps to it.

25:38The only things that are going to be brass that you're going to mix are your light fixtures, your hardware maybe your bar stools might have a note of it on there i don't know if you're going to do a toe kick on your island a metal toe kick that's really cute and brass some like little strapping feels like an old hotel yeah integrating it because you're getting crazy or if you're gonna put metal legs on your island that's gonna be beautiful and brass so good yeah everything else is nickel yeah if you don't have all those fancy things the only things you're gonna do in brass are just your lighting and your hardware your kick-ass frame on your great art that's the jewelry.

26:12That's how you're going to mix it in. You don't need a brass faucet, guys. I'm so sorry to say it. We just, we don't need one. There's very few instances where we've done it. It's a swan and it's ridiculous. I'll get behind it, but that's it. Yeah, in the powder bath, for sure. Yeah, I love it. Guys, I hope that helps as you're thinking about mixing metals and wanting to have advanced style to keep it really interesting. Those are kind of the hard rules that we always play by. I wanted to tell you guys about a free design service that we have available. It's called home furnishing design. This is for those of you that are looking to do furniture for your home and you're ready to make decisions.

26:47Our designers are available to help you find furniture to get that perfect size rug and do that sectional math for you. Space plan your house in an interesting way. And the best part is the service is totally complimentary. So you can spend your entire budget on furnishings free room. All you have to do is go to our website, go to that design services tab, fill out the form, and a designer is going to reach out to you within 24 hours. I'm so excited for you. You're really going to be living your best life for sure. You'll be ready by the holidays. So for Thanksgiving and maybe even Halloween. So get started on that.

27:19And if you guys are loving the podcast, be sure and click follow on your favorite listening platform. And while you're there, leave us a review. We love to read those at the beginning of our podcast meetings. If you guys have any episode ideas that you wish that we would cover, send those to dearalice at alicelanehome.com. And we'd love to hear from you. Be sure and follow us on Instagram at alicelanehome and Alice Lane Interiors to see some behind the scenes of our projects, product launches, and more. Thanks so much for tuning in. We'll catch you next time.