He designed the boldest, brightest Big Brother house yet, but Patrick Watson is more of a magnolia man.
How would you describe the concept of Big Brother 6 house design?
The brief was always to be aspirational and yet not wildly practical. So it looks great, but the housemates soon found out that there was nowhere to hide. In terms of the aesthetic of the house, my original concept was led by Californian architecture – open spaces and clean lines. The end result is a long way off from that sort of stuff but that is where my inspiration came from.
The ‘evil’ theme of this year’s Big Brother meant that the interior had to be claustrophobic and oppressive. Yet on camera the house looks spacious and airy. How did you manage that?
One of the reasons the house looks so big are the cameras – positioned in high corners, they’re bound to give the impression of more space than the housemates feel when they’re sat in the middle of the room. I also used a fairly basic trick of the trade. If you look at walls of the house there are mirrors everywhere. There are floor to ceiling mirrors in the shower room and around the Diary Room, and smaller mirrors hanging on most wall space. The main reason for this was to instill in the housemates the idea of having nowhere to hide.
In a regular house, mirrors can do wonders to open up a space. As a general rule, don’t have mirrors immediately opposite doorways or entranceways, that’s just basic Feng Shui; instead have large mirrors, two by three metres, hanging directly opposite one another. They act as huge picture frames for rooms. Corners and near windows are other good locations to hang a mirror in order to exaggerate space.
The Big Brother House changes dramatically each year. Do these changes reflect what’s happening in the design world as a whole?
I’d say so, yes. The very first Big Brother House was pretty neutral with straight lines and not too cluttered. The House is still based on this clinical design but it has moved into the iPod culture – one where neutrality and minimalism coexists with vibrant, bold colours.
What's your own home like? What design concepts, if any, do you apply to it?
I, like a lot of people these days, decorated my own home with a view to selling in the not too distant future. With this in mind, I’ve kept it clean and uncluttered, fresh and modern, despite it being in a Victorian conversion. I’ve achieved this by using neutral colours. But by neutral I don’t mean everything’s painted magnolia – my walls are a neutral canvas of whites or creams, while I really go to town with a piece of wow furniture than I can take away with me.
The Big Brother House is a hodgepodge of bold beautiful colour schemes. This might be a bit much for the average home – how can people adapt this concept?
Colour schemes work best when they are kept to one neutral colour (paint companies manufacture hundreds of different neutrals – whites, greys, creams, beiges) and one accent of colour. In my own home, for example, I have York White on all four walls of the bedroom, and have painted the chimney breast bright red. This concept works well with one alcove, or even one whole wall being coloured with paint or bold wallpaper.
The Big Brother House designer reveals the tricks of the trade:
Keep colour schemes to two or a minimum of three colours.
Combine a neutral canvas with a splash of vibrant colour on an alcove, chimneybreast or even one whole wall.
Create the impression of more space by hanging large mirrors directly opposite one another; but avoid mirrors opposite entranceways.
Keep spaces clutter free with neat lines, but don’t be afraid to update this ‘clinical’ look with bold splashes of colour.
See your walls as your canvas, and what goes on within them as your playground – splash out on a piece of wow furniture.
