When renowned interior designer Sara Cosgrove joined the judging team for Home of the Year, she did so with a hefty dose of experience.
Not just as a designer with decades of career highlights under her belt, from interning with John Rocha and becoming the head of interior design for Harrods under Mohamed Al-Fayed, to designing five-plus star houses and for Bruce Willis.
Rather, Cosgrove, who owns and runs her own company, Sara Cosgrove Studio, had spent years on the other side of the television, judging the homes as an impassioned viewer.
"I mean, I spent how many seasons sitting on the sofa going, I can't believe Hugh gave that a seven. And suddenly you're in the room", she laughed.
When we catch up about her second turn as judge on the hit show, which returns tomorrow night on RTÉ One, she marvelled at how much diversity she had seen in just two seasons, and 42 homes. And of course, that's just a taste of what could come: "Hugh had a 200th show when we were shooting and I was like, oh, my God, you've been in 200 bedrooms!"
"You're constantly being challenged", she continued. "So things that you think you like might be as good in real life or ideas that you're like, that would never work when you see it in person. So I think creatively, it's quite an inspiring show, both for the judges but also the viewers."
Cosgrove has a wide breadth when it comes to design jobs, having worked on everything from Holiday Inns to super yachts. Each one has imparted the same lesson, one that she brings to the show: "What you really realise is that good design is good design, no matter what look it comes in."
"I always feel like good design is almost effortless", Cosgrove added, "Because they've got the lighting right, they've got the acoustics right, they've got the view right. But often the most effortless interiors are the most considered and well-thought-through.
"On the flip side, for me, no matter how much money someone spent, if it feels like a total mishmash of ideas, like it wasn't a common design thread throughout the home, it just won't work for me."
Another lesson learned from designing everything from the extremely luxurious to the familiarly every day is that good design is "all about, ergonomics, it's about the technical".
"If you're designing a super yacht, you can only have a certain amount of weight on board. You can't just choose whatever you want. You've got to cheque in with the engineers. Say, I want to put in an oak table, you have to get the weight of them. You've got to check them and then they approve whether you can have them."
Understanding the traditional rules is essential if you're going to break them with style, she said. "I always use Picasso as the example. If you look back to Picasso as a teenager, how he painted, you would mistake him for Leonardo Da Vinci. It was classical, the proportions were incredible, but because he was so perfectly trained, he was able to then go to Cubism and completely turn the art world on its head.
"And I think design is the same. I don't think you can go mad with design if you don't understand the fundamentals. If your sofa doesn't fit up your stairs or fit in your door, it doesn't matter that you went for a big flowery pattern or a minimal leather three piece suite."
As for the new season of the show, Cosgrove said it was defined by "a lot of really clever design". "What I loved was there was a few homes this year that what you saw was not what you got", she added.
Naturally, this led to more than a few tussles between the judges, as many of the homes were so well-executed that there was almost too much to debate over. Speaking on her dynamic with Hugh and Amanda, Cosgrove said: "There's a lot of respect between the three of us, even if we completely disagree with each other."
"Funnily enough, we agreed less than we disagreed! We're there in a position because we have the experience and sometimes our experience is very different. Often it's stuff that would be very important to me would be less important [to them]."
She added that "because the scoring is anonymous, we don't find out what the other judges have given it, it means that you're honest about what you're giving irrespective of what the other judges think".
As for whether there's a certain common design thread or ethos among HOTY contenders that separates them from the rest, Cosgrove is emphatic that there isn't.
"You're not ever comparing homes. You are just, in that moment, the judging, that one home, because you cannot compare a cottage in Armagh to a suburban semi-d to a barn in the middle of the countryside. There is no commonality there.
"It's like humans. None of us are the same, really."
Not one for trends, Cosgrove is especially conscious of sustainability in design and her own work, which she hopes to see more of in years to come. "None of us can avoid environmental impact of what we do. And I think we all have decisions to make when we're doing our homes. It's about choosing a paint that is less toxic to the environment and if it's less toxic environment, it's less toxic for us as humans."
Mindful consumption is a main focus for her and can be easily worked into many design projects. "Before you go and buy something new, is there something vintage that could be upcycled? Adverts is amazing in terms of going online. It's just to pause, it's to think about the circular economy before you start to buy something brand new.
"I would say that it's less design trends, more sort of societal trends are becoming more and more important in terms of interiors."
Watch Home of the Year on Tuesday at 8:30pm on RTÉ One.
