Interior Design for a T.V. Set

Hello! So this blog has (obviously) been on a short hiatus. What happened? I went to China for a buying trip for work and got all kinds of busy. One of the things I have been busy with is designing a T.V. studio for a local daytime talk show- Fresh Living. 

What?!? I think I should stop and rewind because I am still pinching myself. So, with my job I get some amazing opportunities; one day, I got an email about the possibility of doing a trade with Fresh Living- we would furnish their studio and get advertising in return. It sounded like fun to me. I was invited to meet with the host Debbie and her producer Brittany at our closest store to see what would work for the set. We had a great time walking through the store finding their favorite items that would work for T.V. A few weeks later (after the signing of many contracts and lawyers mulling over the details), I was prepping the furniture for the install day. A few weeks after that I was on the show to introduce the set. Since I want this blog to be instructional, here are some tips I learned for designing for T.V.:

1.       Go Bold!!! The bolder the better- what you design for TV is probably too bold for a home. Go for high contrast, lots of patterns and colors.

2.       Try it on Camera- it is crazy how different the set looked on camera versus in real life. I brought in two rugs to try in the table vignette. One I would have chosen for a home- the colors weren’t as bold and blended in more with the chest. But the higher contrast one looked amazing on camera so that one won.

3.       Moire- sometimes when something has a small print, it will go fuzzy or moiré on TV and the print will look like it is in motion. For that reason, we didn’t choose the above sofa for the set (it was our second choice, but the subtle herringbone print wasn't going to film well)

4.       Comfort isn’t really a priority- at least for a talk show, they really don’t want to “sink” into a sofa/barstool- they wanted a firm seat so they could get in and out of that sofa/stool with a little grace

5.       Make a stop point- for every vignette on the set (there were three), there was a stop point for the camera- like a screen or a plant. That way, when the camera man hits that item when scanning the room with his camera, he knows that is the end of the set.

(me with the hosts of the show)

6.       Give it depth- something I would never do in a home is move all of the furniture a few inches out from the wall, but the director told me that this would give it depth on camera so that is what we did.

The whole experience was amazing for me and I feel really grateful that I got to be involved. Here are the links to the (1, 2, 3) three segments I did for the show. If you want to see more of my T.V. interviews, here’s the link to all of the media I’ve done. I’ve done a few segments now and have gotten better with time (the first few are still painful to watch). P.s. Professional photographs by Grant Heaton