Grand Designs’ Kevin McCloud reveals feature houses don’t need

The show first aired all the way back in 1999, and a quarter-century and nearly 200 episodes later, Grand Designs continues to inspire countless individuals to pursue their dreams of creating the perfect home.

A special 25th anniversary episode of Grand Designs aired in September, while a new series of the Channel 4 show is underway.

But there is one feature that McCloud said has come up regularly over the 25 years of Grand Designs that is a pet peeve of his and is unnecessary when it comes to building your dream home.

Kevin McCloud reveals feature houses “don’t need”

In an exclusive interview with Kevin McCloud we asked if there was one particularly annoyance or pet peeve that came up regularly on Grand Designs, and he had no hesitation with his answer.

McCloud said: “It’s size. It’s the size thing where people think ‘I’ve got the money so I’ve got to build something big’.

“Why don’t you build it slightly smaller and make it more beautiful? Why do you make it more sustainable, zero energy, or even, actually energy positive?

“Why don’t you just save some money, put it somewhere else and build a smaller house? Because you don’t need that big.”

When do you need planning permission?

The Grand Designs legend continued: “But when people do build large houses, they don’t know what to do with them anyway. They sit in the corner of this giant room they put the telly on, or their on their mobile phones.

“They’re in this digital, virtual space which lives inside this machine, right? Not the real world, not the real space.

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“They’re just wandering around the room going ‘I like that corner’. No, they’re on their bl***y phone all the time.

“And then they put in more bathrooms than they will ever use, a massive cost and it’s nuts.

“So I say to all of my contributors, and everybody laughs when I say it, but it’s true, that they could go live in a hotel for a night, or go live in their caravan for another night, and I would shrink the house by 25% overnight and they would come in the next day and they would not notice.”