The Room to Improve presenter chats about sustainable alternatives to heating our homes, filming the next season of the show and the tweaks he's made at home.
When Dermot Bannon picks up my call, he's in the car en route to a job, one of many the architect and presenter is juggling as part of the next season of Room to Improve, due back on our screens in January. I joke that it must feel like another back to school season.
"You think I'd know better, wouldn't you?" he quips.
"What are we, season number 17. But it is very much like back to school. Yeah, and the same panic, the same stresses, and we probably should know better at this stage."
Keeping the inspiration muscle working and the head clear is key, he says, to keep the show on the road. "I am the person who, once the project is over, the deadline is done, and you start onto the next one, you breathe a sigh of relief, and you take your foot off the gas a little bit.
"Because of that, then it allows you the time and flexibility to dream up something. That's the magic bit. That's the bit that I love."
He adds: "Life is too short for it all to be about deadlines. You have to give yourself a little bit of magic at the beginning of every project where you can really enjoy it."
Room to Improve has become a metric by which Irish society can be judged in many ways - whether based on the design choices made, the kinds of budgets available or the audience reaction to said choices - and Bannon and his team have been careful to adapt the upcoming season to where applicants actually are in their lives and finances.
"[For] the first time in a long time, we have done a project where we haven't put an extension onto a house. It's just reworking and reusing the existing layout", he says. "We've got a really nice cross-section of projects from people who are, I say downsizing, they say rightsizing.
"The shift has been back towards maybe smaller projects, more regular houses, semi-Ds and all of that. It's responding to what the audience would like to see and what they can relate to."
Sustainability and value for money has become more of a focus for homeowners looking to future-proof their homes, which is also how Bannon came to work with WillowWarm, an Irish company creating carbon neutral briquettes made from compacted willow.
"I love putting a stove into a house", he says. "I think that in an open planned space, when you light the stove, turn off all the lights, it's a way of gathering people around it. I don't know what it is about the fire, but people put down devices and stare into the flames."
Finding a way to keep that tradition alive while also not harming the planet had been a struggle for the architect.
"Most people buy a bale of briquettes on a Friday evening, it's lashing rain, you want to have the stove, it's a bit of company, it's a bit of warmth. You want to have a glass of wine, watch a bit of TV, throw the feet up, and they run into a garage, and they'll just throw whatever's the handiest into their boot."
If that sounds like you, Bannon suggests trying the more sustainable option: "They might all do the same job when it's in your stove, but they're not all doing the same job for the environment."
"We have to make a shift in how we do things."
When it comes to bolstering your cosiness at home, Bannon says start by ensuring that the basics of how your home operates are in good shape.
"There's a hierarchy", he says. "The first thing you should do is look at your installation, that's in your walls, your floors, your attic space. After that, it should be your heat source, that's how you generate heat. And then it can be down to things like thermostats and radiators."
As for what heating system to opt for, Bannon recommends a heat pump, saying that while an oil boiler is "at best 90% efficient", a heat pump is "400% efficient" and sustainable as it draws heat from the air outside the home and uses it to heat inside.
If you're redesigning your home, Bannon suggests thinking about layout and how people use the space:
"For a lot of people now, they're knocking down walls or creating open-plan spaces. But be really careful how you're designing your living area in an open-plan space, because think about the routes through the room."
If you're not able to knock a few walls or have a large open space, creating soft and cosy spaces with blankets, curtains, cushions, and rugs is a surefire way to keep the heat in. Take inspiration from hotel lobbies, he says, in placing armchairs and sofas together to create a cosy nook.
As for himself, Bannon has been making tweaks to his own home now that he and his family are settled a few years post-renovation.
"We have a really cool area just above our kitchen counter, which is a tall wall. And I did that to get light into the kitchen. And I always wanted to put something up there. So I designed a little planter box, and now I have plants trailing down that wall, and I love it. And if I had done that on day one, I'd be used to it at this stage.
"I always thought it would be great to get everything finished, but actually there's a real value now in having little bits and pieces left to do because you get that little spur of energy to design something and do it."
Nominate someone in a Random Act of Warmth this winter to win a WillowWarm winter hamper on WillowWarm.ie and tell us about their warm-hearted ways.
