This week's episode of the Apprentice was honestly my idea of absolute bliss. I'm so incredibly jealous of these people; being given a £13,000 budget to design a luxury hotel room would be an absolute dream! I thought both teams designed tasteless, low-rent hotel rooms, both felt immature and impractical.
I feel both teams made a real error in their choice of themes; the girls chose Golf as their theme and the boys went with a British Travel theme. By choosing a straight forward theme like this you can so easily create a cliche, themed room which doesn't fit the luxury brief. Before choosing a theme I feel the teams would have benefited from setting a short list of key values to bare in mind when designing and buying. An obvious theme isn't a necessity in a task like this; if anything, choosing such a blatant theme is a bit of a cop out. For a luxury room, I feel an obvious path to take would be luxury textiles; it's so easy to choose a small selection of key, quality pieces to fill a tastefully decorated room.
The candidates failed to consider the orange carpets covering the room floors; these should have influenced their colour palettes. Both teams' ideas have the potential to be successful; the boys would have benefited greatly from a refined colour palette and a stronger sense of direction. Designing a room isn't "We're making a British Travel themed room, we should put Big Ben on the wall" you need to understand the feel of the room and remember the brief. When looking at a British theme, on a budget, for a one of task on the Apprentice, it seems obvious to choose simple colours like a neutral base for all of your walls, maybe adding a tasteful feature wall if you're feeling adventurous. The boys splashed out on expensive furniture but it was in-cohesive and felt so childish, especially next to the primary coloured walls.
For the Golf themed room, creating a rich room filled with leathers and velvet in deep luxurious colours and using rustic metals and dark wood, to create a room so luxurious its guests won't question the hotel's quality. Surprisingly, I didn't think their idea of using a gold bag and clubs as a feature piece was a bad idea; but it was executed terribly. A dark brown, vintage or vintage style golf bag, on a stand would have looked tasteful. I'm thinking some heavy curtains to balance out the fire place and a whisky cabinet; people are coming here to have a relaxing time after all.
Another simple option would have been for the teams to go for an all white, clean, elegant room with a key statement colour to tie in the carpet and any wood/metals used. Then they could have focused on getting some cool, functional additions for the room.
Another very easy option is to go all out comfort and really prioritise getting a statement bead a multiple layers of gorgeous, luxurious bedding. Adding large, well made arm chairs, a vintage, dark-wood chest filled with faux furs and tartan blankets and filling the fireplace with logs would have created a warm British feel but in a more tasteful, subtle way.
There were endless possibilities on this task and although I appreciate this is not their area of interest or expertise, I feel the opportunity was wasted on the contestants. Hopefully Lord Sugar will read this and hire me instead.
