STAR DESIGNER HELPING GIVE MANOR NEW LEASE OF LIFE
That staple of 1990s TV Changing Rooms is making a return – with star designer and presenter Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen back at the helm. Here, he tells Joanne Ridout about squeezing back into his leather trousers 25 years on, his plans to transform a Welsh mansion and how he’s committed to the ‘naughty’ designer tag...
TWENTY-FIVE years ago, decorating and roomswapping show Changing Rooms first enthralled a TV audience of millions at the start of the late-1990s housing boom.
In the zeitgeisty Channel 4 programme, two friends, neighbours or family members swapped a room in each other’s homes to update in secret using a very creative decor scheme from a top designer, helped with the practical elements of the build by Cockney carpenter “Handy” Andy Kane.
Not only did it introduce a dash of fun to the staid world of DIY on the small screen, but it made a star of charismatic designer Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen.
Thanks to the creativity of the man known affectionately as LLB to his fans, viewers regularly saw multiple bold colour choices, strong patterns, lots of gilt and layers of sumptuous fabrics on the programme, helping to make it one of the forerunners of the raft of homes shows that continue to draw in millions of viewers to this day.
And 25 years from its first appearance, the show which ran from 1996 to 2004 is making a return – with LLB back as presenter.
A twinkle appears in the designer’s eyes when the subject of Changing Rooms is brought up during our chat.
But whereas most former viewers are thrilled at the prospect of the return, the first reaction of LlewelynBowen – who, as his name suggests, is of Welsh descent – is a heady mix of excitement and trepidation.
“I’m absolutely dreading it!” he says, laughing. “I was a young man when I did it last time, now I’m a grandfather who lives in the Cotswolds and drinks far too much gin – how am I going to be able to cope?
“The amusing thing is that they’ve had to employ two designers as the opposition – they feel that one person wasn’t adequate to cope with being opposite me, ha!
“So I’ve got Russell and Jordan against me from the 2LG studio.”
The duo of designers from this London-based studio might be going head-to-head with LLB, but their sophisticated designs, which feature accents of glorious colour, sumptuous fabrics, metals and matts and classic statement pieces, make you wonder if Laurence has met his match – the fight will surely be worth watching.
Changing Rooms relaunches on our screens at the end of this summer and the perfect timing of its comeback has not bypassed Laurence.
“It is an extraordinary moment of timing because the fourth of September this year will be the exact 25 anniversary of the first programme ever being broadcast and we will be on at the same time,” he says.
“So it really does just go to show that this programme was incredibly seminal for so many people. So many people have grown up with it, for so many people it was a very, very important part of their television landscape.
“Last time I did Changing Rooms I was 37. I’m about to do Changing Rooms now at 57, which makes me feel like, well, ‘am I a little bit too old to be squeezing myself into the leather trousers again?’ But I’m going to do it anyway!”
The timing of the return makes sense for other reasons too. More than a year spent in lockdown has meant the vast majority of us have spent more time in our homes than ever before. And many have taken on DIY projects in that time. Changing Rooms is surely going to add colourful fuel to the interior design fire burning in many people’s homes.
“So [in] the first lockdown, Britain spent £55bn on home enhancement – we don’t have the figures for the rest – and sadly not all of it with me, which is foolish I think, as they would have made themselves very happy if they had!” he jokes.
“The extraordinary thing is all of these varieties of flavours of lockdown have actually encouraged the British to become much more engaged with being a bit more individualistic about how they decorate in a way they haven’t done for about 20 years.
“I think for the past 20 years people have been so bullied by what other people might say, but now being stuck on your own [in lockdown] actually means you can make your own decisions.
“But it’s actually very interesting, as the whole thing has shifted away from the obvious stuff – the beiges, the understatement, the greys – and now people are definitely shopping at the higher end of the rainbow.
“But I think that’s a good thing, we Brits have always been great at eccentric decorating and I think that’s something we really need to encourage in ourselves.”
Since Changing Rooms finished in 2004, Laurence has been busy filming all over the world, most recently in Australia, from where he managed to get home before the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns began.
He says: “I’ve spent lockdown with my family, which was amazing. I was very lucky that I got back in time and I’ve just been spending an enormous amount of high-quality time with my low-quality family, ha ha, hope they don’t read this!”
But as LLB looks at the back of his wardrobe for those now infamous Changing Rooms leather trousers, he has other work to do too.
Laurence has joined forces with the charity Connect to Purpose in a very interesting proposal and possible project involving one of Vale of Glamorgan’s, if not Wales’, most outstanding historic buildings.
Plas Llanmihangel, near Cowbridge, was listed as a Grade I historic property by Cadw back in 1952 as “one of the finest and most complete early gentry houses in Glamorgan”, boasting a wealth of mesmerising original features, some dating back to the 14th century.
It is currently on the market for £1.3m, and the charity is fundraising with the aim of buying the manor house and turning it into a safe and tranquil retreat for disadvantaged young people and their families from across south Wales, plus a vibrant community hub where members of the public can visit and stay too.
Help and support offered to families will include personal development coaching, health and wellbeing therapies, education and creative arts, as well as opportunities to commune with nature in the surrounding countryside and play their part in the conservation of the manor.
The charity also intends to share the unique historic home with the wider community by offering bed and breakfast and holiday rental accommodation for public use – delivering wellbeing retreats and open days and holding an annual medieval festival of arts.
Laurence admits he totally fell in love with the house more than a decade ago, filming its fairytale Gothic glory for the BBC series Hidden Houses of Wales.
He says: “The thing about Plas Llanmihangel that makes it so extraordinarily special is it’s kind of like a time capsule, not just for Welsh history but there’s so much of Britain to it as well – it is such an extraordinary survivor.
“The fact that it is so out of the way, the fact that it is still so beautifully nestled in this bosomy incarnation of nature makes visiting it an incredibly attractive experience.
“Architecturally, it is quite a spectacular little building – it’s not overgrand, it’s not over-pompous, it’s not over the top – actually this is somewhere that is very fitting for purpose, but you just can’t move without breathing in centuries and centuries of history.
“One of the things I’m very, very keen on is for us to be a lot more creative about how we use our heritage. I think, particularly at the moment, it’s very easy to see a structure like this and then envisage it as a series of oligarch duplexes or maybe flog it to Kylie Minogue.
“But actually one of the things I was so attracted to this project about is that this was a building that was created for display – for people who wanted to advertise the fact that they were at the top end of society, but actually what we want to do is reincarnate this space for everybody.
“We want to give it an innate kind of democracy which makes it completely accessible but – and this is absolutely crucial – we want to make it relevant.
“It’s something that places like Italy and France do better – they can reincarnate their heritage into something that is fitting to the time that we exist in now and that is exactly what this project is all about. It’s making an old building funky and about now as well as about then.
“One of the things I really want to bring to the project is this layer of creativity, so rather than just make a space which is for protection, which is for creating somewhere for our ultimate end users to feel safe and feel nurtured, I actually want to make this a much bigger thing to be almost like an arts and crafts brand.
“So I want everyone involved in this place now to actually be given an opportunity to use creativity – whether that’s craft or whether that’s hotel and leisure, whether that’s hospitality, whether that’s catering – as a way of giving themselves a new start with a skill that can lead them into other directions, but along the way that skill itself becomes something incredibly attractive.
“We’re doing something here that’s not just about social responsibility, not just about charity, it’s also about creating a, if you like, lifestyle experience that we feel you’re going to find very, very attractive.
“I love this idea that in a few years the Plas Llanmihangel style, the way that we do things at Llanmihangel, will be such a powerful brand that other people will want to do it as well.”
Excited by the prospect of what the historic house could become in not only transforming people’s lives but also being a hub for the community who can visit and enjoy the spaces too, Laurence is bringing his decades of professional interior design creativity and skill to the project.
He says: “What I would love to do is to create a real sense of destination, not to be the usual ‘tea and wee’ heritage experience, but actually something that feels much more scintillating, much more exciting, much more fashion-forward.
“It is a great structure, it’s the sort of structure that I really enjoy – it’s quite brutal, it’s quite ‘roughty toughty’ and I think it would take an awful amount of finessing but, yes, I absolutely intend to hit it with the LLB stick, oh yes indeed!”
But before LLB can start getting creative with that design stick, there’s the matter of filming for the Changing Rooms comeback, which starts imminently.
Laurence says: “What I find most amusing is that, certainly for the last 10 years, I’ve been making programmes all over the world which are essentially descendants of Changing Rooms, the great- granddaughters of Changing Rooms, in America and Asia and Australia, and to now go back to doing the thing all over again is exciting.
“I love the fact that Channel 4 want it to be very design-orientated – we’ve got a lot more money and we’ve got a lot more time. We’ve got a lot more expertise.
“But that doesn’t mean that I’ve got a lot more taste – I’m still absolutely 100% committed to being the naughty one. Even after all these years – you would’ve thought I would have learnt by now.”
And we wouldn’t want it any other way, Laurence.