This iconic British '90s home makeover show is making a comeback and Twitter is wild for it

'Changing Rooms' is back!
 By 
Rachel Thompson
 on 
This iconic British '90s home makeover show is making a comeback and Twitter is wild for it
Changing Room's Linda Barker, Carol Smillie, Andy Kane, Anna Ryder Richardson, and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen at the NTAAwards in 1998. Credit: Alan Davidson/Shutterstock

A lot of beloved TV shows really need to remain firmly in the past. But there's an exception to that rule: the universally adored British makeover show, Changing Rooms.

BBC's Changing Rooms graced our screens from 1996 until 2003 and though its run was limited, its memory lives on in our minds. After the best part of two decades away, the iconic show is returning to our screens on Channel 4 and will be helmed by the ultra funky designer from the original show Laurence Llewelyn Bowen, alongside presenter Davina McCall.

For those who aren't familiar with this legendary British show, allow me to change your life. A DIY home improvement programme, designers would "transform" — and I use that term loosely — a member of the public's home. Some of the designs were really and truly out there, and garnered some very dramatic (sometimes painful-to-watch) reactions. And frankly, you couldn't look away from the catastrophic television you were watching.


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Take Linda Barker's teapot disaster back in 2000. The designer decided to build a floating shelf unit to house an extensive collection of antique teapots — the pride and joy of the owner of the flat. Well, you can probably guess where this is going. After positioning the teapots on the new floating shelves — and adding a row of rather heavy books — the designer and her team went home. The following morning, they returned to the flat to see an almighty mess — all of the teapots were broken into smithereens and strewn across the floor. The shelves had buckled under the weight of the books, destroying the entire collection of teapots. Handy Andy, the show's handiman, walked through the broken mess of teapot pieces and yelled "Jesus Christ" in disappointment. 20 years later, journalist Amelia Tait recently revisited the devastating moment and interviewed Clodagh, the woman whose teapots were destroyed. Time, it would appear, does not always heal.

Keeping the same format as the original show, each episode will see two sets of homeowners in the same neighbourhood renovate each other's homes to whatever design they fancy. Anything goes — and I really do mean anything. In the good ol' days, the finished renovations looked pretty, err, out there. We're talking trees suspended upside-down from ceilings, a floor-to-ceiling zebra print room (including zebra print painted ceiling, walls, and a zebra bedspread), and inflatable plastic chairs (which were having a bit of a moment back then).

"There’s no room for beige in our homes and, just as it was in the '90s, Changing Rooms is once more the homestyle antidote to Britain’s blues (and greys and taupes, and even Magnolia)," said Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen in a statement. "It’s taken quite a lot of coaxing to get me under the Changing Rooms banner once more, but nothing like as much coaxing as it’s going to take for me to squeeze those leather trousers back on."

Naturally people on Twitter (myself included) couldn't contain their enthusiasm for the return of this exceptional show.

At present there's no confirmed air date. But for now, we can just revel in the excitement that Changing Rooms is back!

Rachel Thompson, sits wearing a dress with yellow florals and black background.
Rachel Thompson
Features Editor

Rachel Thompson is the Features Editor at Mashable. Rachel's second non-fiction book The Love Fix: Reclaiming Intimacy in a Disconnected World is out now, published by Penguin Random House in Jan. 2025. The Love Fix explores why dating feels so hard right now, why we experience difficult emotions in the realm of love, and how we can change our dating culture for the better.

A leading sex and dating writer in the UK, Rachel has written for GQ, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Stylist, ELLE, The i Paper, Refinery29, and many more.

Rachel's first book Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into the Bedroom And What We Can Do About It, a non-fiction investigation into sexual violence was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.

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