Inside the stunning 'Work in Progress' home of TV's Deirdre Coleman
Dee Coleman, interior designer, outside her home in Malahide. Pictures: Moya Nolan
A SNAPSHOT in time is how Deirdre (Dee) Coleman describes her dream renovation.
Yes, this revamped 1960s property in Malahide is the forever home and yes, the sleek spaces are glossy-magazine gorgeous, but the Tralee-born interior designer is taking the long view: “While this is very liveable and I love it and it’s very much a home — this is not finished, this is a work in progress, a snapshot in time."
A bit like life, so? We last spoke two years ago, as Castleknock-raised Dee was just weeks into her role as co-presenter on RTÉ 2 series .
And back then, I remind her, she’d said most interior designers’ houses would not look complete because “we’ll always have notions”.
Now, she says: It’s not a race to the finish — and my plans and aspirations are always beyond my budget. But what is the point of always trying to be finished?” I like her style.
Dee is now a familiar face to television viewers as builder Peter Finn’s co-host on the RTÉ show, with her fourth series as presenter airing from September 4.
She’s also a designer who stresses the importance of “getting the bones of a building right” — and spending the budget “the stuff you don’t see, the heat pump, the ventilation — something we didn’t really think about before, notes Dee. “We’ve all had to up our game with ventilation. My advice would be to get a specialist in ventilation if you’re getting a retrofit.”
The designer keeps it real and walks the walk when it comes to the people she works with, whether on or in the studio she co-founded, Collab Design Studio.
She is empathetic in the extreme and genuinely wants to seek out solutions that will work.
Again, I hark back to that chat in 2023, as Dee was imagining her future favourite space — and confided how she’d always wanted a window seat in her kitchen.
At first, she’d taken it out of the scope of work “because I thought it would cost too much”.
Luckily, she realised its importance. “It’s right beside a camellia tree, which blooms around the time of my children’s birthday. It’s like a piece of magic.” “We nearly lost the window seat in the battle of the budgets!” she says.
“I put it back in, and I’m so glad that I did. I absolutely love it. It’s cantilevered, if you don’t mind!” The perch is one of what she calls her “three vanities” in the open-plan kitchen/living/sitting room area, the others being a skylight and a double-sided fireplace. “All things that I really couldn’t afford but I did anyway — and I loved them all,” she says.
All three enhance light and openness, but the skylight and window seat in particular boost her home’s connection with nature.
Dee is a big fan of iophilic design and, in particular, the ethos of Oliver Heath, a designer whose approach centres on people as well as the planet, believing that “healthy ecosystems are key to creating healthy spaces”.
The sound and sight of rain through the skylight delights her in particular. “It is the connection to nature, it’s that rhythmic, natural, random, organic sound and view,” says Dee. “Nothing that mankind can build can replicate that. We have an instinctive need to be in nature, and I have plants everywhere.” In fact, watch out for Dee’s kitchen garden as it takes a starring role in an episode of the upcoming series of Home Rescue.
For many years, Deirdre had a successful career as a management consultant, but decided to change paths and follow her passion, retraining as an interior designer at London’s KLC School of Design.
Her epiphany came at a boardroom table as it dawned on her that her work “didn’t give me joy”.
“I never in my entire life got a balance sheet to balance,” says Dee. “At the time, I had a flat and I had just knocked down a wall in it with a sledgehammer.
"My friends would come to me to ask me for home DIY and design advice. And I loved that type of work. Also, living in London meant I had access to great courses. I was newly married and I said to my husband: ‘Look, I’d love to do this [interior design]’— kind of hoping he would talk me out of it, but he said, ‘You’d be great at that!’"
Dee enrolled at KLC School of Design, Chelsea Harbour and, on graduating, worked at a high-end Notting Hill studio, before setting up her own successful interior architecture practice in London. “Everything worked out the way it was meant to work out. Nothing I did before was wasted; when you get to reflect on it, it’s all good.” Dee met her partner in life, her Swedish husband Staffan Bergdahl, in London. “I had no intention of coming home [to Ireland],” she adds. But when their twin girls, Nancy and Alva, now 13 and starting secondary school, were born, that changed.
In 2013, the family — including South East London native Foxy, the now-16-year-old cat — relocated to Ireland, where Deirdre also lectured at the Dublin Institute of Design.
Looking at her home as it was being renovated wasn’t easy, she adds. “You’re walking into a bombsite and still paying a mortgage. I’ve done it with clients all the time, but this is the first time I’m doing it myself,” she says.
Then, at almost 50, Deirdre embarked on a new “invigorating” chapter as a television star.
Home Rescue: The Big Fix is a heartwarming mix of human stories and home makeover — a whirlwind of decluttering, teamwork and positivity — changing people's lives for the better by redesigning their homes, replacing chaos with order and rediscovering the things that really matter.
The team has just a few days to complete each makeover, so for designer Deirdre, builder Peter, declutter expert Aidan (and the super team of fitters, painters, chippies and clutter-busters) every second counts.
They bought a 1960s house that needed work. Soaring costs have pushed prices ever upwards. “We’ve scaled back on plans significantly to afford it — same as anyone else,” she says.
Looking at the property as it was being renovated wasn’t easy, she adds. “I’ve never done a renovation like this before — frightening is too strong a word. You’re walking into a bombsite and still paying a mortgage. I’ve done it with clients all the time, but this is the first time I’m doing it myself.” Work started in 2022, and Dee is candid about the highs and lows of such a mammoth undertaking. It also gives her an insight into the families she works with on . “I am in awe of people who can reach out and ask for help. I can admire them and I feel privileged to help,” she says.
“We’ve all been through tough times; you have to hang on. I understand how ‘on a knife-edge’ normality is for many people; [at one stage in my life] my mother was dying, my husband wasn’t well.”
As for working with her television co-presenter and crew, she adds, “We’ve grown together. 'Home Rescue' isn’t a normal job. And I would have gone in trying to make it feel like that. But I think now I’ve got a good sense of how to design to get the biggest bang for buck for the family without breaking the team, to ‘spare the horses’ so to speak and know how to reserve the energy for what’s really important to the family.”
Day one of the project on is “demolition day”, while the next three days are crucial, she adds. “The crew are gone by lunchtime-ish on the last day. That’s always a tricky handover and they’re destroyed with tiredness; they’ve killed themselves to deliver amazing joinery,” adds Dee.
“All the trades have been in and delivered their job, and now the pressure’s on me to deliver. Now all the pressure’s on me, hanging curtains and mirrors — I can hang a picture, but I still need Pete, and I still need him to be concentrating. Up to what it’s a shell, and every time I finish, I wonder: How did we do that? I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that. The build team, the people you don’t see, the declutterers — there’s an unbelievable spirit of willingness there. They work magic.”
Dee is invested in the struggles she encounters among the families she works with on the series. “You could not believe the stuff that went our way on one shoot — there was a whole other layer of positive energy and it was magic,” she adds. “It is humbling. Do you know what it is — it’s such a privilege to get such intimate access to people’s lives. You’d have to be in dire need to let a film crew and a designer into people’s lives. You wouldn’t do that unless the need was real. It was such a privilege this year. I felt energised.”
“If people are isolated and struggling, the gift of making people’s homes function makes their lives easier rather than adding stress.
“I think the fact that the budgets aren’t enormous, by any stretch, means it’s [what is done on the show] attainable. You certainly can’t do it in that time frame, but people don’t need to do it overnight, and I’m very proud as an interior designer that it shows the genuine power of design.”
- Collabstudio.ie
- Home Rescue: The Big Fix airs on RTÉ 2 on Thursday, September 4, at 9.30pm
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