Here's What Happens To Homes On Interior Design Shows If The Owner Hates The Makeover, And Wow, It's Not What I Thought

In a recent episode of behind-the-scenes showbiz podcast The Rest Is Entertainment, a fan asked co-hosts Richard Osman and Marina Hyde: “What happens if the makeover [on an interior design show] is awful? Does the production company pay to put it right?” 

It’s a good question, as in shows like Alan Carr’s Interior Design Masters, some people hand over their businesses to TV competition show participants for a total design redo. 

Luckily, none other than Alan himself answered the question on The Rest Is Entertainment ― explaining: “Sometimes, the people who own the shops or the hairdressers’ or the hotel room really hate what [the contestants have] done.” 

OK... so, then what? 

Then “what we do is we go back, we paint it back to how it originally was, so no one is offended,” Alan revealed.

In 2021, a Reddit post that asked people who’d been on TV home makeover shows to share their experiences revealed the phenomenon is international. 

One contractor who’d worked for an American home makeover channel said: “The homeowners picked some fancy Moroccan tile for the floors at some upscale NYC boutique and the host of the show decided it would look better without grout... which went about as well as you’d expect.“

As with Interior Design Masters’ disgruntled shop owners: “Filming wrapped, and we were called back out a few weeks later to replace the fancy tile that immediately chipped and became dangerous with some boring tile. Had to sign NDAs, etc.”

Still, some people said not every show follows up on design grievances

Some Redditors who wrote into the thread claimed that in their experience, the design looked great on screen – but crumbled once the cameras left, without getting fixed. 

One person said: ”[The redesign] looked so pretty, they decorated it to look like a fairy woodland with huge tree murals on the walls and a nights sky of stars hanging from the ceiling. But it held up really badly, all the murals on the wall peeled off and it looked bad pretty quickly.” 

And yet another site user confirmed that the effect was mostly for the cameras, and in their case, they weren’t offered a fix ― “It was a super intense three weeks of filming and the redesign looked great on camera. In reality, it was literally things stuck together with staples and tape.” 

The redo took two weeks to repair, they said.