I was watching **Changing Rooms ** on BBC Prime and one of the couples in the shows hated the design, I mean hated it. The presenter said he would organize to put the rooms back as there where.
IIRC, in the US version, the couples don’t have this option. My question is does the BBC version really change them back or is it what the presenter says to see if they can live with it or not?
I’ve never heard that they put the rooms back as they were before, but I have heard that the standard of decorating etc is pretty poor and most of the people involved will redecorate for themselves within a couple of months.
Unless they’ve changed things in the last couple of years CR doesn’t offer the option of restoring the rooms to their original state. In many cases that’s impossible because they’ve torn out features (carpets, cabinets, sometimes walls) or have repurposed items. I seem to recall seeing a special about the show on BBC America several years back about some couple who threatened a lawsuit over the redesign but I’m not finding anythign about it on Google. So maybe there was a lawsuit or a threat and they made some change to the show as a result.
I saw the “special.” The couple who complained were semi-punks with garish taste–evident in rooms they’d already decorated. Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen produced a theatrically dramatic yet elegant room, which they proceeded to slag. They got lots of publicity & a free makeover from someone else. The re-made-over room was hideous in the extreme, with murky earth tones everywhere. However, the wall treatment impressed me; it took many tabby cats a long time to spit up enough hairballs to cover the whole thing.
That couple instructed the decorator of their “friends” room to ignore their evident taste–subtle, with pine furniture. However, Graham Wynn couldn’t produce an ugly room if he tried. The result was lovely & the “tasteful” couple agreed.
The special explained that the “crew” includes more people than we see on the screen. (I already suspected!) However, the homeowners & designers do work very hard & the whole thing is finished in two days. And there are no “makeovers.”
Apparently, the last (British) Changing Rooms was done in 2004. Yes, I’m a fan!