Arlene McIntyre of Ventura Design Group wants to help you redesign your home.
The woman who reimagined Luttrellstown Castle and worked on the Rose and Lavender cottages and town houses at Adare Manor, is the go-to decorator for celebrities such as Vogue Williams, Pippa O’Connor and Millie MacIntosh. She has also collaborated with fashion designer Paul Costelloe on his furniture range. Having done all that, she is now set to front a new television series which will be screened on RTÉ One in the autumn.
And she wants your help. In the six-part series, Designed for Life, McIntyre, also one of the reigning queens of showhouse fit-out, wants to help homeowners who have been planning a refurbishment with their decor, layout, storage and colour problems – people with the budget already in place to pay for the work.
She wants you to get in touch, and from your applications, six home-owners will be selected to feature in the show. These will have access to McIntyre’s counsel to try to remedy their homes.
No request for help is too big or small. It could be a new curtain and window treatment, or serious storage solutions to help a big family keep a tidy house, she explains. McIntryre will first design and present the suggestions to the lucky homeowners, tapping into her wide teams of expertise to execute them. These include bespoke furniture makers, master joiners and colour experts who will create the custom looks.
While she’s confident that together they’ll be able to turn it around quickly, just how she will find the time to film the series is anybody’s guess. As well as running her decorating business with two showrooms in Dublin (one in Ballycoolin and another in Deansgrange), she has a London store at Chelsea Harbour, while her latest venture is a newly-opened space in Quinta, Portugal, targeting Irish, American and German clients. “It’s all happened very organically,” McIntryre explains.
She’s also partnered up with sister company Ventura Property, a new estate agency headed up by Barry Feenan, formerly of Knight Frank, that she and the Ventura Design team will offer staging and refurbishment advice through.
Arlene's new TV show will be produced by Indie Pics, who already make Ear to the Ground, Style Counselllors and Big Week on the Farm. If you want to find out more, then email design@indiepics.ie or call 01-7088183.
