Design Deep Dive: Q&A with Alpenrose Design’s Mary Register

We are thrilled to present an enlightening interview with Mary Register, the creative force behind Alpenrose Interior Design. As an experienced interior designer and founder of Alpenrose Interior Design, Mary is enthusiastic for bringing life to old spaces, gaining efficiencies, and designing spaces that excite people each time they walk in. In this interview, we explore Mary’s inspirations, her journey throughout the design industry, and the exceptional projects that have shaped her reputation in the Chicagoland area. Read on to gain some helpful insight from this accomplished veteran in the world of remodeling.

Q: You have a background in both design and construction remodeling. How did you get started in the industry?

A: I knew I wanted to be in the design/architecture world since a very young age and decided to get a degree in interior architecture. I ended up finding that there was a construction management degree at the same college, so I pursued both and so I graduated with two degrees and then went into construction directly after college. It paid more, you go where the money goes, and I enjoyed it.

So I started with construction right out of college for about eight years and did a mix of fieldwork, management work, and scheduling for apartment buildings and small commercial properties. I did a Class A Office Building and a car dealership renovation and then mainly stuck with apartment buildings for the last couple of years. The scope of the projects ranged from $10 million to $45 million. By the time I was finishing up that segment of my career, it escalated quite quickly to managing the $45 million projects, having a team under me, owning and managing the budget and schedule, and having owner meetings.

It really was quite a ramp up, but it was awesome and I learned so much through the seven or eight years about the construction side. As of 2023, I stopped construction to start my design company out of Chicago. I wanted to get back to a smaller scale, something that I felt more personally driven to. I could relate to the homeowner. I could talk to them. It’s just a smaller scale and more personal. So sticking with residential design is how I pivoted into that. Now my focus is all about design. Anything from designing and furnishing one room to designing an entire remodel to designing an entire new build. This is the scope I typically work in now.

Q: So you have pretty much experience across the board in every aspect of remodeling and design How does this help you relate to the homeowner?

Part of my business structure now is project management through the whole construction phase. I can come in and meet the homeowner, help them find the GC or architect, and guide them through the entire permitting process. I’m essentially the designer, project manager, and also an owner’s rep for my current business.

Q: How do you define low, mid, and high-quality products when it comes to plumbing, fixtures, tile countertops, or cabinets? What would group each into its category?

A: We’ll start with plumbing fixtures. For example, I know everyone loves Amazon and they have a lot of inexpensive things. But if you go on there to get plumbing fixtures, they are so cheap because the actual internal mechanism is plastic instead of copper. If you choose a copper or a nicer type of faucet, all of the insides of the faucet are copper and metal, and it’s just a much better product that will last you a much longer time.

So there’s a reason why the plumbing faucets and fixtures can be cheap. It’s because the internal stuff is just very cheap material.   From the outside, it might appear to be the same product, so you think “what am I paying for,” but it makes sense. It’s what you can’t see that really adds the value. As for quality of cabinets, there’s the actual material that is made out of and the style of the cabinets, both of which change the price. So the cheaper end, the particle board cabinets, just stay away from those. If you can get plywood cabinets, those are the better quality. And then as far as the style, the difference in how the door fits with the cabinet changes the price.

With countertops, quartzite is the most expensive, and the midrange would be granite. It depends on the owner’s preference. If they want to sit hot things on it, or if they don’t want to worry about stains, if they want low maintenance, then maybe go for a quartz or a granite. If they want the colors and the design style of the marble then they’ll have to deal with the maintenance, so it really becomes client-specific on countertops for the quality. The lower range budget for countertops would be something like Corian Solid Surface. It’s a manmade that’s durable but it just doesn’t have the finessed look of maybe a marble, so really client-dependent too.

Q: Could you elaborate on criteria that you’d use to discern a quality product from a product that’s not so great? For instance, if I’m looking at installing tile throughout my home, is there any kind of tile that I should stay away from, If I have children or pets, that would be less durable than a different kind?

A: Yeah, the only thing that comes to mind right now, for tile specifically, is slip resistance. This is a code requirement, and if you’re doing tile throughout your house or in a bathroom, anywhere where tiles are on the floor, it has to have some sort of texture to it. It can’t be the really shiny flooring because that does not meet the code for slip resistance.

As soon as you put that tile on the wall, it doesn’t have to have that texture, but any floor tile needs to have some sort of texture to meet code. Porcelain is zero maintenance and it’s amazing, so that’s really great for showers! Porcelain comes with a variety of textures to allow you to use the same material on the floor and walls yet still meet code.

Q: How important is durability compared to aesthetics? Since you have a background in both the construction and the design side, you’re the perfect person to ask this. Where do you find yourself compromising most?

A: Yeah, that’s a great question because ideally the client has enough money to get the durable product that looks nice too, and have those combined. But the budget has to be there for that to happen. If the budget isn’t fully there then I would prioritize the high-traffic areas and high-use areas. So in the kitchen, I would definitely up the quality of the cabinets and then the flooring in any of the main spaces to make sure that is pretty durable.

And then in the smaller spaces, like a powder bathroom that doesn’t get used too much, we could go more for lower quality and high design. Because powder bathrooms are known to be the fun room where you can do whatever you want, it doesn’t always have to be 100 percent functional and costly.

Q: I see, for example, nowadays people like to do a statement wallpaper or stuff like that in their powder rooms.

A: Yeah, or a very dark powder room, dark paint, dark colors and have one small, very interesting light fixture. You can really flex with that powder room with something like that. I would still install good quality plumbing because water leaks cause so much damage and they’re expensive to fix. You really want to invest in high-quality (or at least mid-quality) items when it comes to plumbing, lighting, and electrical because if something goes wrong, that’s where you’re going to have to spend a lot of money on the back end to fix. You might as well put the money up front and make sure you get a good product so you don’t have any issues in the back end.

Q: For our homeowners who are on a budget, could you get some tips for selecting high-quality products that are still affordable and where to find those?

A: What do I honestly tell them? To hire me! I can take them to a showroom that has multiple things we can buy at a discounted rate (think items that are a couple of steps above Home Depot quality). We source from Floor and Decor and get some really nice tile at a great price , or a showroom that I use has flooring, tile, countertops, cabinets, carpet, rugs, and curtains. Basically, going to one place with me and selecting most of the things from that place will give you far better options for discounts in the grand scheme of things. Trying to combine items and purchases is helpful.

Q: Are there any cost-effective ways to enhance the quality or appearance of lower-end materials? Are there any tips for incorporating those fixtures or materials to make them look a little more high-end? Or is it kind of just like you buy cheap stuff?

A: Let’s take a living room/dining room area, for example. Something that I can guide a client with is where to spend their money. If you’re doing a living room/dining room project, replacing the light fixtures, maybe doing some built-ins, new furniture, new curtains. I can help guide you on how to spend the money. Like for the curtains, we can get those off Amazon, and they look nice if you want to put money into a nice sofa instead. Or, for example, suggesting putting money into built-ins or heavy-duty dining chairs so you’re not buying something that’s gonna be creaking when you’re sitting there.

I can help decipher what to put your money into and where to get cheaper alternatives so that you’ll just look at it and you won’t be able to tell a difference. Something that you won’t touch, that’s just a visual, can almost be a cheaper item. Something that you touch and use a lot, that’s probably where you want to spend your money more. If you go to a restaurant and you sit in those chairs, those chairs are very sturdy. You’re like, “I wonder how much money they paid for these chairs!”

That’s like hundreds of dollars per chair depending on what restaurant you’re going to in Chicago. You can go in and tell that this is a good quality, sturdy product. It’s not realistic for someone to spend buku bucks on every single thing that’s going into their home, and that’s another reason to hire a designer like myself. There are some things that I would feel comfortable getting off Amazon (curtains), there are some things that I’d feel comfortable getting off Wayfair, but I’m not going to get chairs off Wayfair. I’m going to get maybe some cheaper decor from Wayfair.

Some designers are like “don’t touch these certain websites, never buy from this place,” but realistically, if you’re doing a large space, you can buy certain things from certain websites to save money, and that’s a very realistic way of doing it.

Q: So you’re not the design police?

A: No! I am definitely the more like budget-friendly designer. I would love to buy everything from The Mart, of course. But realistically, people can change such small things in their home just to live better, and my goal is to help them live better in their homes by just changing a few things. We’re not trying to break the bank here. The world is tough right now, the market’s tough, and inflation’s high. People can’t spend money on some of this stuff, so me coming into their home and helping rearrange and change out some things also brings me a lot of joy too and I feel like I can meet a lot of people in that area of design.

Q: You make a very good point in saying that bringing a designer does ultimately save money. I think a lot of people will be surprised to find that actually in the long run it’s saving thousands of dollars versus you trying to design a home yourself, not getting the right materials, not sourcing the right things, and ending up with stuff that breaks in 5 ten years.

A: And then trying to do it yourself, it’s way more stressful. You don’t know if it’s going to come together, something comes damaged, something’s late, something’s more gray, something’s more cream. You spend all this time and it still doesn’t look quite right and you often can’t figure out why if you try and do it yourself. Hiring a designer, even as a consultant, is something I highly recommend.

Q: Looking kind of at the industry, are there any recent technological advancements that stand out to you as being more attractive?

A: Some of the materials are leaning more towards a maintenance-friendly. Large format tiles with small grout lines are easier to clean than small tiles with lots of grout lines. Grout’s just a nightmare to clean! So getting bigger tiles with smaller grout lines assists with maintenance. I would say in the lighting world there are quite a bit of improvement in lighting and audio. There are new speakers that go behind the drywall and you can’t even see that they’re there [check out our blog all about about home audio with OSA Integrated Soultions here]. And then all of a sudden sound is coming out of the drywall. Speaker placement in a home…they always look ugly and no one likes them. So concealing a speaker behind the wall is amazing.

I could probably speak for an hour about lighting. Especially about different kelvin temperatures of lights and what type of light to use for a spotlight vs. a task light for art display, or whatever you’re trying to use the light for [learn more about ambient vs. task lighting here]. The different color temperatures of the light should change based on the task. There are a lot of different types of lights and colors and ways to control all of that. You can set up timers for all of that to be automated now and I think lighting has come a long way in the last couple years.

Q: Are there any emerging trends that you find that consumers should be wary of? It’s current now, but will likely go away in the next five years.

A: Definitely the gray. Everything Gray is going out. People are calling it the Millennial Gray where, EVERYTHING is gray. Of course, you can still have gray items in your home, absolutely, but we’re combining those with more taupes and more warmer colors to warm the space up versus just everything gray. Then the stark white kitchens with white cabinets, white countertops, and white backsplash used to be very clean and refreshing and now it’s seen as a little sterile, so people are actually going back to wood cabinets in a medium to a dark wood stain in combination with a painted cabinet.

Whether it’s the upper cabinets being painted and lower cabinets are wood, or the island is wood, they’re changing up some of the cabinets and going back to wood grain, which was what we had prior to the all-white kitchen.

Q: It’s funny, these trends circle around. I wonder if in like 10 or 15 years we’ll see another white kind of whitewash kitchen trend or what that will have evolved into…

A: I’m sure we will see the white come back, because everything will come back, but in a slightly different way. So my best example of this, is growing up, we’d have white refrigerators in the house and in the garage. Then stainless steel refrigerators came in and everyone’s like “oh, these are so fancy,” but now they’re coming back with white refrigerators in a very modern style. Literally everything comes back around just in a different way, like wallpaper. Wallpaper’s coming back around now too. It’s not your grandma’s floral wallpaper anymore that’s a strip around the ceiling. But wallpaper is coming back very quickly and in very cool ways. So everything comes back, it’s just a matter of how it will be tweaked when it does come back.

Q: I feel like even the Millennial gray was like an overcorrection. Remember like the rooster kitchens and like the Tuscan kitchens?

A: So now we’re going back to the warmer Tuscan-feeling kitchens, but no roosters.

Q: Do you have any advice for homeowners prior to embarking on a design or renovation project?

A: Yes. I have quite a few. Let’s see, I’ll start with one. The Timeline. The timeline will always take longer than expected, even from the design and permitting phase, it’s months we’re talking about. And then months of construction depending on what the remodel is or new build. If it’s a new build, it’s going to be many, many months. So understanding and doing a little research on the timelines and having correct expectations is critical for the homeowner to do and understand.

It may take 6-8 months for the design and permitting process to go through. If the client has lots of changes, or if the client can’t make decisions very well, it’s going to take even longer, so don’t have very quick expectations on the timeline and do a little research on that on your own. And then as far as budget, this one’s always a challenge because someone may think that they have $100k for a project… Well, you actually have $80k dollars for the project, because you need 20% in contingency that you don’t touch until you need to touch it.

That will keep everyone happier. Having a contingency and knowing that things will go wrong and you’ll have that money when things do go wrong, that is crucial to having a successful project. In my mind, money is a sore subject for most people. If you have to come to them like “Yeah, we need 8 thousand dollars for XYZ,” they already have that set aside. It’s less of a heartache to be like “We already have that money, this is what it’s used for, we’re going to use it here.”

So expectations on the timeline, having your budget as well as contingency, and then spending time with the designers and architects to have them get to know you. It’s crucial for me, as a designer, to get to know the client, how they live their life, and how they want to live their new life after the remodel. It’s really important to know someone if you’re trying to design for them because they’re going to be living in that space every day.

Contact The Design Professionals At Arete’ Renovators

At Areté Renovators and Alpenrose Interior Design, we believe that every space should reflect the unique lifestyle of its inhabitants while embracing the evolving trends in home design. Whether you are considering a renovation project or simply looking for inspiration, we’re here to help bring your vision to life. Don’t hesitate to reach out for a consultation—let’s create your dream space together! Connect with us today to start your journey toward a beautifully designed home.