Interior Design Masters: A bella win for Scots-Italian

Perhaps it’s the link to Banjo Beale, a previous winner, but Interior Design Masters with Alan Carr has always seemed like a cool cousin to our own dear Scotland’s Home of the Year. Sure, it has moved down south, loves an expensive wallpaper, and its house is definitely worth far more than ours, but we’re all one big happy television family, really. 

But even in the happiest families, there are winners and losers. After eight weeks and plenty of experimentation with paint colours and MDF, it was time to choose a victor. At stake was a contract with Next to design a range of homeware with the winner’s name on it.  It’s a serious prize, and past winners have gone on to work in the business or, like Banjo, make design shows of their own. 

From a field of ten, two remained - Lia Gold and Sophie Newlands, or Glasgow v Stoke-on-Trent if you wanted to be competitive. Scottish-Italian Lia, now based in London, learned her DIY skills from her dad, while Sophie cited her mum, who switched careers to interior design later in life, as her inspiration. 

The final took place at Longleat Estate, where the two hopefuls each had a cottage to decorate over three days with a £7,000 budget, two carpenters and three decorators. 

Both women were known for their maximalist style, with Sophie wild about animal prints and Lia big on botanicals, including dried flowers. (Yes, apparently those dust traps are in vogue again. It will be potpourri next.)

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Given their broadly similar tastes, the two cottages could have turned out the same. Lia, however, decided to swap the dining room and sitting room, making food and entertaining central to her holiday cottage. She had earned plaudits throughout the series for creating spaces to entertain in, but it was still a bold move, even more so when she added an arch, the biggest build in any final to date. 

The go-big-or-go-home attitude was working for Lia. In the main bedroom, she finally managed to use a tapestry-like wallpaper she had admired for years but could never afford. One relatively small wall cost £500 to paper, but it was beautiful. 

Sophie’s bold move was to decorate her dining room walls with map-like illustrations of African nations. When Carr likened the first one to a patch of damp (it was, in fact, Namibia), the writing was on the wall for that idea. Out came the paint roller. 

It has been five years since Carr took over presenting duties from Fearne Cotton. He has made the show his own, largely by cheering on the designers, telling daft jokes and wearing any curtains lying around. He sets a fun tone while taking the contestants’ hopes seriously. 

The usual last-minute dramas over missing wallpaper and fabrics resolved, it was time for judges Michelle Ogundehin and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen to do their oohing and aahing and choose a winner.  Sophie was praised for her layering of colours and prints, but it was Lia’s elegant, welcoming style that won the day - and the contract with Next.