Last we week headed down to Channel 4 in London for the ‘Make Our House Your Home’ conference. At the event we heard great insight into the relationships we have with our homes, and we also heard from renovation expert Sarah Beeny.
In the first section of the conference we were shown some interviews from couples across the UK, talking about their homes and design inspiration. Many used sites like Instagram and Pinterest when looking for new and exciting ideas. They explained that even though they follow trends, they still want their homes to be individual.
Sarah Beeny interview
Sarah was asked about her career in property and how started out in TV. She explained that she was already a property developer and fell into her first presenting role on TV by accident. She went on to speak about her experience and the most common mistakes she’d seen people make over the years, the biggest being underestimating how much things will cost and how long a project can take.
Sarah was asked why she thought property programmes were so popular with the British public. She believes that after our families and friends they are the most important things in our lives, so it makes sense for us to want to make the best out of them.
The interview went on to the subject of her thoughts for the future. Her predictions were based on reducing the amount of energy we will use, and that we look for ways to cut down on the amount of cheaper made products we buy. “Use less > Buy less”. So instead of decorating every couple of years we may decide to keep our decors for a little longer and update the quality furniture we already have to try and reduce our carbon footprint. This idea of is one we at Plumbs feel quite strongly about, we’ve saved many sofas from the scrapheap over the years.
Mark Cochrane (Strategy Director, MediaCom)
In the final part we saw the newest products on the market for the ‘Connected Home’. These products all focused around being connected with each other and being able to control them using an app.
Some of the products that stood out were:
- The Nest Thermostat (which programs itself) https://nest.com/
- Canary (uses sensors to protect your home) http://canary.is/
