Netflix’s Queer Eye is a little slice of the world we’d like to live in. Full of positivity, acceptance and bringing everyone around you up, it’s a confetti bomb of pure joy in the sometimes overwhelming world of 2019.
Series Four came out in the summer, and it was recently announced that a four–episode special season called Queer Eye: We're in Japan! is set to be released on November 1, 2019. Hooray! We can’t get enough of The Fab Five being utterly wonderful and transforming lives through their guiding pillars of Culture, Food & Drink, Fashion, Beauty and Interior Design.
However, if you watch each episode veeeeery closely, you might notice that some members of The Fab Five seem to have more to do than others. Interiors expert Bobby Berk, for example, manages to redesign an entire home from scratch in the time it takes Food & Wine guru Antoni Porowski to boil a potato (no shade Antoni, we are literally, genuinely in love with you).
Bobby Berk is a kind of interior design tornado; a modern day Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, but without the flouncy sleeves, commitment to MDF, or refusal to listen to any of the homeowners wishes about what they actually like. We took a look at Bobby’s impressive transformations to see what we can learn about redecorating a space in a few quick moves.
Storage is everything
You too can be this happy with the addition of an open wardrobe.
We’ve said it once, we’ll say it a thousand times more: storage is everything. Bobby Berk knows, the only way to a tidy space is to bump up the amount of places you can hide all of your junk.
Think you don’t have enough space for storage? Opt for open shelves or wardrobe rails like the room above and your closet can double up as a wall hanging.
2. Paint your kitchen cupboards
If it ain’t broke… just paint it.
Don’t have the time or money for a full kitchen refit? Bobby gets you (he has just a week and $20,000 for his entire home renovations, most of which goes on paying his contractors to work faster than is humanly possible).
The quickest way to revamp your kitchen is to paint your cupboards. Almost every episode a lick of paint transforms a tired kitchen into something sleek, modern and inviting.
3. Contrast
When life gives you lemons… call in The Fab Five and have lemon drop martinis.
You’re not seeing double – this dark cupboards technique is something we see time and again on Queer Eye. And there’s a good reason for it.
We often see Bobby painting cupboards dark or tiling with deep hues, while keeping counter tops light. He explains why: “When you’re picking out different materials for a room, you always need a contrast to draw the eye around the room. I like doing darker floors and lighter things on top because it draws the eye upwards”. Duly noted.
4. Pick an accent colour and roll with it
Bobby has limited time to plan out colour schemes, so he often picks a colour from an existing item with sentimental value and rolls it out across a room.
This beautiful example was the transformation of an actually quite fabulous seventies home with avocado green carpets that the owner inherited from his grandmother. The carpet and chintz went, but the avocado colour scheme stayed in a heartwarming nod to the home’s previous owner.
5. Keep it personal
I think we all have a little dust in our eyes…
Rather than homogenising the houses he decorates into slavishly chic design studios, Bobby makes sure to keep and even bring to the fore personal items. He’s created tables out of church pews, sewn cushions from deceased parent’s shirts and engraved a toy chest with a young mother’s handwriting.
By making sure these pieces are incredibly personal and beautifully designed, he creates spaces that are individual without feeling like shrines to times gone by.
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