Wheat Ridge–based writer Kathryn O’Shea-Evans traces her eye for interiors back to age eight, when she persuaded her stepdad to paint her bedroom’s ceiling like the sky, à la Michelangelo. She turned that love for inspiring spaces into a career: She’s worked as a contributing editor at House Beautiful since 2018, and her byline has appeared in the Washington Post and the New York Times.

But the self-proclaimed “indoorsy ski bunny” found her favorite writing project yet in Alpine Style (Gibbs Smith; September 10), a coffee-table book that combines two of O’Shea-Evans’ peak interests: mountains and style. While the compendium’s images of high-elevation interiors span the globe, Alpine Style also features stunning properties close to home. We spoke with O’Shea-Evans about what sets the Centennial State’s mountain style apart and how it has evolved in recent years.

5280 September 2024
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Editor’s note: The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

5280: What makes Colorado’s high-country aesthetic unique?
Kathryn O’Shea-Evans: The design scene here is a little more pragmatic, and I mean that in a good way. We’re not doing embroidered silk wallpaper in the mountains. We can walk in with muddy boots and it’s fine. There aren’t a lot of decorative embellishments. It’s less fanciful, which puts the focus on the amazing [mountain] views.

What’s your favorite Centennial State project in the book?
I really like when designers embrace the local, whether it’s the colors of nature or the history of a place. One of the houses in the book is in Telluride, where [local guidelines require new buildings to visually cohere to] the area’s original gold rush cabins from over 100 years ago. It’s a supermodern home, but it has the same roofline as an old shanty. It’s new but also stuck in time.

Book jacket
Alpine Style steps inside mountain homes and hotels all over the world. Photo by Sarah Banks

How is alpine style evolving in Colorado?
When I first moved here, in 2017, [the preferred style] was very midcentury modern. I think now people are including design elements from different eras. [Designers and homeowners] are starting to embrace a more layered look, bring in more colors, and take more chances.

You mention in the book that you have a vacation home in Bailey that you run as a short-term rental. What design elements did you use to give it a sense of place?
In the kids’ bedroom, we made a bed shaped like a cabin. We also brought in colors from the evergreen branches outside the windows—so a lot of cinnamon browns and greens. In one room, I tore up a vintage Colorado guidebook from the 1960s that I found at a vintage store for $3 and framed it in shadow boxes. It looks really cool without being too on the nose.

How did you choose the properties in Alpine Style?
When you’re a design writer, you see the same stuff again and again, so I looked for things I hadn’t seen before. Like, there’s a mudroom in the Berkshires that used a vintage ski lift as a chair and a chalet in Montana that has a canopy bed with little birds carved into the iron—mountainy, but subtle. I looked for projects that made me say, “Wow, I would do that in my house. I want to live there.”