George Clarke

How to decide on the right style, fabric and colour of window treatments in your home is a tough decision and can make or break the look of a room.

I'm very traditional and have some great accessories on my desk at home by Tom Dixon.

I love stationery and writing sets.

There's nothing more expensive than messing up building and DIY projects.

What upsets me is when people spend decent money on a project which isn't designed properly from the beginning.

I see window treatments as not just the icing on the cake but one of the ingredients going in the cake when you're considering the design of a room.

Although they're often associated with period properties, shutters look the part in all types of homes and I love them!

Your choice of window dressing is all about the three Ps, privacy, practicality and personal style.

Feeling safe, comfortable, warm and secure in our homes is fundamental to our feeling of wellbeing, whatever the age, style or size of our property.

Often parents have equity or available funds in the bank, while sons and daughters have the energy and enthusiasm to build their own property. So parents may be able to fund a multi-generational home, while the younger generation make it a physical reality.

My favourite way to dress a bay window is with shutters.

Bay windows are big and beautiful and will open up a home far more than a normal window. There's more glass on show and the shape projects across three planes. This lets in so much sought-after sunlight and offers excellent views up and down the street - it's why bay windows are so popular.

Heat escapes through windows - even more so through wide ones. So it pays to add extra layers of insulation at wide windows to help keep the warmth inside.

There are times when I go around England and I'm horrified by the pebble-dash houses with plastic windows against the coast.

Anyone can become homeless, and thousands of people grow up in homes that just aren't good enough. Working with them reminds me every day, just how blessed I am.

My grandfather Edward was a great inspiration to me - my ultimate hero. He bought me a book with a glossary of architectural terms. From architrave to ziggurat, I tried to memorise them all.

I'm always on the go, so just being at home and doing nothing is heaven.

I'm not much of a gardener really. I'm hopeless, so I don't really get involved with it that much.

Every time I go into a vinyl-floored bathroom I feel I'm in a hospital, care home or weird institution. Or a really cheap hostel somewhere.

I'd love to have a wine cellar.

It may seem like a wacky idea to have a vertically rotating house, but the whole point of a prototype design is to challenge our preconceptions and strive for greater innovation.

I sometimes feel housing should be non-political, like the NHS, ring-fenced and protected and not a political stick that's thrown around.

We should be building houses like we build cars - controlled environment, huge amount of research and development, high levels of quality control.

As Restoration Man, I am pretty obsessed by history, and the more people know about London's history the more they'll appreciate the place and how incredible it is.

I've got quite a big family up in the North and have lost too many people through cancer.

To me, Sir David Attenborough is like royalty.

I never use the 'C' word - which for me is 'Celebrity.' I don't want to be a celebrity. I want to be a good architect. I want to make and craft really beautiful programmes that people love watching.

If it wasn't for Durham Cathedral I probably wouldn't be an architect. I was taken there when I was about seven and I couldn't believe that someone built it 1,000 years ago.

When my kids were younger they hung out with joiners and electricians, but if I asked them what they wanted to be now, I don't think they'd say architects.

We do have some beautiful houses in Britain, but we do have some pretty ugly ones as well, and I always think that every house has the potential to be amazing.

I don't want to get into any politics about it but I just think if we are a nation that is all about expensive houses and affordable houses and not caring about people who are genuinely in need, then everything starts to fall apart.

A lot of the stigma attached to council and social housing comes about because we are building such a low number, they're going to people who are really struggling, so therefore people say do you know what, that's the worst in society.

Draught excluders at the front door make a huge difference as does covering an old Chubb lock key hole. That stops the whistling wind come in and as we know from being North-Easterners that happens a lot.

You can't lay bricks in the snow or rain. We still use wet plaster on walls which might not dry for a week if it's frosty. The way we build houses today is unbelievably inefficient. Ridiculously inefficient. Gas technology has moved on, but building is still in the dark ages. We still build houses the way the Romans did.

I love really creative thinking that can make the ordinary extraordinary.

At 16, I left school and started work as an intern in a local architect's practice.

My grandfather was a builder. So as a kid I hung out with him on building sites during the school holidays - long before health-and-safety regulations put a stop to that.

My favourite TV show is 'Peaky Blinders' - it's off the scale.

I try and buy most of my homewares from independent 'makers.' I like things that are crafted by hand and made in the U.K.

I've got a place in Ibiza and that feels like home from home. But I love to go to far-flung, adventurous places.

I'm 6ft 3in and I think people think I'm around 5ft 10in.

For me, one of the most flattering things in the world is for parents to write to me saying their children want to be architects.

I think even when 'Restoration Man' came about I made a conscious decision that we wanted projects that were as affordable as possible.

In the U.K. we are shed mad and the level of inventive design and eccentricity is an entirely new world. I love it because the humble shed is like an escape.

I don't watch any TV all week because I'm working. So at weekends, I'm always playing catch-up on box-set dramas, usually several at once.

No disrespect to Kevin McCloud, Kirstie Allsopp and Phil Spencer, but that's the last thing I want to watch when I get home.

There are also a lot of really, really good developers out there - people like me who have done this for years who really care and really want to do a good job.

The reason why I agreed to do 'Flipping Fast' was because obviously there is a lot of property development that goes on out there which is cheap, badly done and not high quality.

I've actually been refurbishing and developing property since I was in my early 20s, and probably not a lot of people know that. And it's something that I'm really passionate about.

I was researching amazing spaces across the world and one project blew my mind - the glass igloos of Finland. There are 65 of these structures set in 1200 acres of pine forest.