With a career that regularly takes him around the world, peering into the homes of the wealthy, the inventive and the foreign, you might think that Dermot Bannon's measure for what works would be a little more sophisticated than ours. 

Ireland's favourite architect and host of Room to Improve was on The Late Late Show last weekend to promote Dermot Bannon's Incredible Homes, which returns to RTÉ One next week. The four-part series will take him further away from home than he's ever been, as he jets from London to Australia. 

So it was a surprise to hear him share his intense passion for - of all design marvels - the Irish kitchen.

When asked whether he felt Ireland could teach other countries about design, Dermot immediately put forward a case for the Irish kitchen as one of our greatest potential exports. 

"There’s nothing like an Irish kitchen. I think that’s something I love about Irish homes. Even in the homes that if you took a photo of it, you’d think that place is for the scrap heap."

Winning the hearts of Irish mammies the country over, he added "I don’t know how we manage to make the most incredibly warm, inviting, homely kitchens."

His passion was abundantly clear as he said ""I’m obsessed with kitchens! Actually, nearly in every Room to Improve episode it’s the one room that we focus on the most" - surprising no one. 

He believes our ability to craft a welcoming kitchen comes from our social background, saying "I think we have something very special in a very social way". Surely our national gift of the gab has a role to play in how we host guests and bring our loved ones close to us. 

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This even persists when our personalities seemingly wouldn't allow it. 

"Even in the kitchen where I grew up - my mum will kill me for saying this - she was really shy. She still is. So dad built a shed right up outside the back window. Anyone who knows Room to Improve knows that’s breaking every rule in the book!

"But there’s still a warmth in the house," he added.

As interior design becomes even more of a fixation for people, spurred on by everything from Pinterest and Instagram cleaning accounts to property pages and shows like Room to Improve, there seems to be a mad scramble to homogenise interiors, even if this means stripping it of what makes a home a home.

Bannon seems aware of this when he says "I'd hate to see us lose that". 

"Sometimes when you go into people's houses and they stick in the island unit, because they think that's what we should have in it."

His advice? "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater." 

"I think we have something very special. I’m constantly obsessed with looking at how it evolves, and making really contemporary modern spaces that are big and bright, but also don’t lose that ability to embrace a whole family."

Dermot Bannon’s Incredible Homes airs on RTÉ One, February 10 at 9.30 pm.