I had an inspiring and invigorating house call from my favourite Scotland's Home of the Year judge
This telly celebrity came trotting up my garden path
It’s Monday morning, and Danny Campbell is in my living room sipping a double espresso.
He is wearing a black T-shirt, white trousers and black Crocs, in his signature style, and he compliments a Portuguese ceramic bird that’s on my wall.
“Is that one of Anna’s?” he asks, in reference to his Scotland’s Home of the Year co-presenter’s range of lucky swallows that she sells.
Sadly not, but I make a note to invest in one of Campbell-Jones’, as a pal for my original.
This is rather surreal, but Campbell is here to provide us with some design ideas, as he recently became the head of inspiration for Sterling Home. He’s helped them compile their online Style Index, which is full of canny tips. They asked me if I’d have him over to visit, and I nearly bit their hand off.
My husband is pleased, too. So he can participate, he let his work know that he’d be briefly signed out of their online chat, as he had a SHOTY judge coming over.
“Is it Bongo?” asked one of his colleagues, getting Banjo Beale’s name very wrong. I tell Campbell this, and he laughs. “At least they didn’t ask if it was Donny”.
This is all well timed, as we’ve been in our Leith house for exactly a year. When we first moved in, we did a bit, but now we’ve stalled. I need a fresh pair of eyes.
Campbell knows his stuff. Obviously, he’s the architect guy on SHOTY - he finished filming 2027’s series back in April this year - and owns HOKO architecture. He also tells me he’s just invested in some space in the Barras in Glasgow, where he’ll be working on a design project.
“It's the first kind of plot of land I ever bought, so I'm gonna do something weird with it,“ he says.
I ask if it’ll be residential or commercial, but he hasn’t quite decided.
We gave him the grand tour. If only he knew how much cleaning we’d done in preparation. Thankfully, he’s never critical, but is talented at gently giving you fresh perspective.
For example, in the living room, he outlines a smart method for thinking.
“Ignore the big picture for a second, and think about the key parts of the brief. The first part is the frustration brief, so like what frustrates you in this room the most, do arguments happen when you fight over space? When people come into the room, do they stand a bit lost? And then you can start to use those problems as opportunities to fix things,” he says. “ The next thing I'd look at is the aspirational part of the brief. You were saying that in your last place you didn't entertain much, so maybe you aspire to have people around and have a more social communal space. Thinking about how you actually want to live, that's really key, because then you can actually gear the home up to accommodate that. The final one is the emotional brief, so how do you want to feel? Grounded? Energised, creative? Calm? Nostalgic? And that can change throughout the home”.
Ah, clever. I already feel like I’m coming unstuck. Campbell has a few more specific suggestions, too, like making a focal point of my other half’s late granny’s Thirties cocktail cabinet, and creating what he describes as a “moment”.
In my husband’s home office space, a bromance starts to bloom. My beau is loving the advice, because this room has become something of a dumping ground.
Glasgow School of Art graduate Campbell’s got amazing spatial visualisation skills, so he suggests reconfiguring the room so my other half has a window view, and maybe even building a mezzanine so there’s room for a spare bed.
“One of the benefits of having high ceilings is that you've got all that vertical space. I mean, storage should climb rather than sprawl. If it sprawls, it kills your usable space very quickly,” he says. God, he’s good.
He also suggests having a projector in this room, rather than a telly, as those black boxes tend to suck the life out of a space.
In our kitchen, he recommends building in a window seat, to create another “moment”.
Actually, my other half suggested that a while ago, and I shut him down. It hits differently when Danny says it. Campbell and my husband also agree on the idea of banquette seating. These guys. He also thinks we should think about the lighting in this room, and get the main lamp to hang over the kitchen table. Agreed.
In the main bedroom, he suggests tactile textiles, like a rug, or macrame wall hangings, for a cosy ambience. Those are definitely going on the list.
I feel a bit embarrassed showing him my home working space. I have a cluttered secondhand bureau, and a clunky-looking office chair that belongs to The Scotsman so cannot be dumped upon fear of instant dismissal.
“But is it comfortable?” Campbell asks, and adds that he likes it, “because it’s honest”, and he also seems keen on my bright orange fake Anglepoise lamp.
He asks what I’d save from a fire in this room, and tells me about a couple of low-fi things that his three boys have made him that he loves. I opt for the framed photo of my dad as a chubby-cheeked toddler, and Campbell suggests using that as inspiration. Perhaps picking out some of the tones in the picture, or maybe I could just create a display of objects that mean as much to me.
Our home visit is up, and it felt like a therapy session. I ask Danny, if we make those changes, will we definitely appear on SHOTY. He doesn’t look too sure. Apparently, they get thousands of applicants. Oh well, even without that incentive, I think we are ready to make a few changes.
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