Taste means never having to say you’re sorry.
Not for putting a stripper pole in a Mormon couple’s Las Vegas boudoir, or taking cues from live nude models to gussy up a bedroom in Austin, Texas.
“Trading Spaces” interior designer Doug Wilson has done these things and others to beguile and bedevil the folks at home, and while most of his designs have been successful, some, um, not so much.
Remember “Crying Pam” Herrick, the Puyallup, Wash., woman who ran out of the room upon seeing the modern facade covering her beloved brick fireplace? Surely she’s due an apology from the man many consider the show’s bad boy.
“I never apologized for that room because there was nothing to apologize for,” Wilson said. “It was a well-designed room. I made it warm and inviting. And you know what? When I get out in Middle America, people applaud me for that room.”
So there. Snap.
Wilson really isn’t a villain, he just plays one on TV. He even sounds like a nice guy, attributable to his Illinois farmland upbringing.Wilson moved to New York in 1986 to study theater. There, he learned how to ham it up as a villain, along with studying set design and construction.
After learning from renowned New York designers and creating spaces for some of the city’s most famous, he tried out for “Trading Spaces.”
Wilson and his co-stars–including Vern Yip, Hilda Santo-Tomas, Genevieve Gorder, Frank Bielec and Amy Wynn Pastor–have changed the way we look at our barren walls, ratty furniture and home accoutrements.
“I think this show is encouraging more and more people to put color on the wall,” he said.
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The show’s rules are simple. Two homeowners, two houses. Each picks a room they’re willing to turn over to their friends and a “Trading Spaces” crew. The teams swap houses and for 48 hours work with the designers and $1,000 to transform the room.
Some room redos have been questionable, but the show’s success is not.
“Trading Spaces” has propelled tiny cable channel TLC into a top 10 network. At its peak, 6 million viewers were tuning in; today, a Saturday premiere pulls in 2 million to 3 million viewers.
What matters more than the craze, however, is how the show transformed our idea of nesting. Where we once resigned ourselves to eggshell, we’re now thinking swaths of bright paint. Instead of throwing together a hodgepodge of furniture pieces to park our keisters on, we’re encouraged to pull a room together under a single theme.
That’s what Wilson is hoping, anyway.
Doug’s don’ts
Doug Wilson didn’t want to share many design tips for fear he’d impact sales of his book, “Doug’s Rooms,” which is due in the fall. He did share a few basics:
– Don’t make your home look like a furniture-brand showroom.
– Don’t clutter up your rooms or your walls with too many pieces.
– Don’t go too strong in your color choice.
– Don’t keep that ugly ceiling fan in your room. “I don’t hate ceiling fans, but if they don’t fit the overall design of a room, they stick out. That’s a bad mistake.”
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Edited by Curt Wagner ([email protected]) and Kris Karnopp ([email protected])