Home of the Year judge Amanda Bone says she never intends to offend homeowners when she criticises their homes on the show

Home of the Year judge Amanda Bone has said it is nothing personal when the show judges criticise finalists’ homes.

Amanda told Kathryn Thomas filling in for Ray D'Arcy on RTE Radio One yesterday that it was never her intention to offend any of the home owners during the series.

She said: “It is never my intention (to offend). I have the utmost respect for any of the homeowners and the homes that we went into. It was an incredible opportunity to get into these people’s houses.

“I suppose in one way I would be coming at it from a different point of view from a lot of people because as an architect, you’re educated through what’s called constructive criticism and that isn’t a negative – on the contrary it is a positive.

“It is about the idea of trying to improve everything. It is about progressing and making it look better and then as a practicing architect you have to be highly critical of your own work if you want to produce anything beautiful.

“As an architect we would see something (criticism) that’s positive that generates beautiful work and improves on everything so when I go into somebody’s home, absolutely not.

"I mean I was completely flabbergasted by the efforts and some of the houses I went into but also we’re in there filming over the course of the day and the show is narrowed down to a couple of minutes so a lot of what we’ve said might not make the cut at all.”

Amanda said she joined the show because she wanted to open up a bigger conversation around design and architecture.

“My aim when I went on the show was that I was going to be completely open, and I was going to be honest and just say what I felt.

"My aim was to generate a conversation, rather than just go into a home and go, ‘hmm, lovely’ but to actually maybe think about things more and generate conversation about architecture and design and have more in-depth discussion.”

But she also admitted that when she was first asked to do the show she was “really apprehensive”.

“And then I just sat back and thought about it because I love being an architect. I love my profession but at the same time it can be a very stressful and laborious job.

“So I thought well here’s my chance to use what I know and to have a bit of fun and particularly given the year that it was, I think very few people can put their hand up and say they had fun during the pandemic.”