BBC to launch revamped Changing Rooms

By Patrick McLennan
( What's on TV )
published

The BBC is planning to give home decorating a boost with a new version of Changing Rooms.

The Great Interior Design Challenge - hosted by Tom Dyckhoff, architecture and design critic for The Times - will see wannabe decorators doing up volunteers' houses with limited funds.

According to the Daily Mirror, show bosses are hoping it will make decorating as big as shows like The Great British Bake Off have made baking.

While Tom will present the BBC Two programme, architect Daniel Hopwood and ex-Good Homes editor Sophie Robinson will also be on hand to give participants feedback about their home styling skills.

Tom said: "Our homes are the most important, most intimate bit of design most of us ever experience. And there's a lot more to getting them right than a quick makeover, plumping a few cushions or popping to a well-known Scandinavian furniture store.

"I'm excited that The Great Interior Design Challenge not only changes people's lives - both discovering new creative talent and transforming people's homes - but at last gives real interior design the respect it deserves."

Changing Rooms, hosted by Carol Smillie (pictured), ran from 1996 to 2004.

 

Patrick McLennan
Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 


An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.