Try it on for size: could you live the showhouse life? What would it be like to live the dream life in a new home and to stay overnight in Glendale, where the designer’s inspiration comes from the imaginary occupants and their lifestyles . Gemma Tipton
W hen designer Eily Roe is creating her showhouse schemes, she starts by dreaming up characters. “I see the house, the location and the potential buyer, and I give them a personality. They nearly have names in my head.” We’re sitting in the grey-shaded kitchen of number 1 Glendale, just on the outskirts of Delgany, drinking wine and assessing the house’s strong points. I have been invited for a sleepover, which makes a certain sort of sense, as how can you really tell what a house is like until you’ve woken up in it? Roe, and Dave Kelly, who works for the Wood Group, a family-run company building homes for three generations, point out the finishes, little touches and attention to detail that they say characterise Wood Group homes. “Women buy with their emotions,” says Roe. “They walk in, and if it feels right, they go with that. Men for the most part acquiesce. If you get the gadgets right, they’re happy too.” Number 1 is a very nice house indeed, and I agree that the limestone fireplace in the livingroom is well done, and that the coving is clearly classy. I’m not so sure about the low-hanging pictures of fruit, or the silvered kidney-shaped ornament that turns out to be a seashell. But they are pretty much standard showhouse stock, where it strikes me the brief must call for a tricky mix of witty, generic and inoffensive.