Sarah Beeny: 'I'm terribly mean, so I'm a very good bargain hunter'
As part of our interview series, My Happy Home, Sarah Beeny talks bargain hunting, paintbrush hacks and being an 'inconsistent gardener'.
Sarah is a renowned property expert, TV presenter and writer, best known for fronting Channel 4's Double Your House for Half the Money, Help! My House is Falling Down, Restoration Nightmare and Property Ladder. Her first book, The Simple Life: How I Found Home, launched in August.
In November 2020, Sarah, along with husband Graham Swift and their four sons, swapped London life for a new start on a 220-acre, semi-derelict former dairy farm in Somerset. As documented on Channel 4's Sarah Beeny's New Life in the Country, the show followed the family as they began landscaping work on the farm, building their dream home and planting 1,000 young trees to improve biodiversity. Fast forward three years and the family has achieved what they set out to do: create a stately home bursting with character.
What makes you happiest at home?
SB: Lots of things. I love my greenhouse, pottering around and planting things. There's something about nature in the garden that makes me very happy. But also, what really makes me happy is when everything's tidy and you've got clean sheets.
When we're not here, it's much better. We've got the wonderful Stacey, we call her 'saint Stacey', who comes and helps us out. If she comes when we're away, I always think we need to move out once we come back. When we're not here it's flipping brilliant. That's what makes me happy.
Tell us about your childhood home
SB: My parents were self-sufficient, which isn't that possible, to be perfectly honest because you still have to go and buy things. You try to be self-sufficient but they had a good go at it. It was a little cottage in the countryside, surrounded by woods and a river. It was idyllic in many ways.
We had lots of animals, including goats. We were meant to drink goat's milk, but I didn't like it so they turned it into cheese instead. I didn't like goat's cheese either because it's disgusting, then they got all of these chest freezers full of goat's cheese.
It was lovely though. Looking back, it was a little bit Enid Blyton I suppose. There were not many rules and we were a bit free range.
When you get home, what is the first thing you like to do?
SB: I normally make a cup of tea. I'm slightly obsessed with tea. I also say hello to my dogs. I have dogs and cats who I really love and they're normally all bouncing around unless they're with me. I've got this really lovely Everhot cooker in the kitchen, so I tend to sit on that when I come home.
Which room do you spend most of your time in? How did you decorate this space?
SB: Probably the kitchen. It's a bit boring because it's a work in progress. When we designed the house, we wanted to be able to get outside. We had a house in Yorkshire for 20 years which was listed. Where the kitchen was you had to climb out the window, which was kind of annoying.
This kitchen has got doors all around it. It's a big, very light open space with amazing views, but Graham and I always say it's a bit empty. It sort of works fine, but I think we want to warm it up a bit.
We built this house from years and years of saying, 'the perfect house has this, the perfect house has that', then we decided to build our perfect house. We had a library in Yorkshire so we built a library here. It's got thick carpet. We very nearly lit a fire – it wasn't actually cold, I just thought it would look and smell nice.
Describe the view outside your bedroom window
SB: It looks out across the farm. We planted masses of trees in the field so the hope is that it will be parkland when it grows. We're really lucky. What I love is that you can see everyone coming down the driveway. I can sit up in bed — we've got a really high bed — with my cup of tea and stay there until someone arrives. I'll look out the window, read my book and finish my tea. It sounds like I'm obsessed with tea, which I am.
What would we find in your bedside table?
SB: Probably nothing. We're about to redo our bedroom because we never quite finished it, we always saved to do it last. I never put anything in my bedside table, which is really rubbish.
There might be a torch in there actually. Last year I had cancer and when I couldn't sleep I got this clip-on torch so that I could read a book. Otherwise, you look at your phone and end up on some horrible social media nastiness. I'd rather read a book but didn't want to wake Graham up, so I had this little torch.
What is the best decorating advice you have ever received?
SB: I used to wash up the roller and paint tray every night when we first started developing properties about 30 years ago. We were hands-on. We then got a decorator in and he put his roller in a plastic bag so the air couldn't get to it. He took it out again the following morning and I was like 'oh my god!' I would spend an hour every night washing up the paint tray.
The thing I love about something practical is that you don't know it until you know it. And then you wonder how you didn't know it. Then you think how did you manage to get away for so long without knowing something so perfectly obvious? You can also put paintbrushes in clingfilm so you can use it the next day.
What is the best home bargain you’ve ever snapped up?
SB: I'm a real bargain hunter. I'm terribly mean, so I'm a very good bargain hunter. I really like house clearance auctions, although I get very carried away and end up with way too much stuff I don't need. But I've had so many bargains – if you go to auctions, you can often find something for about £10.
I've picked up lots of lovely glazed light fittings at auctions. Often, they just need a little bit of love. I've got a fantastic friend who rewires lamps. I often go and drink tea and talk to him – £10 for a box of slightly broken lamps; that's quite a good bargain I think.
Think three times before buying something new. Is there any way you could achieve the same thing from a charity shop? Every time you are buying something new, you are fuelling the consumer sort of engine, whereas you're not if it's secondhand.
What is your most treasured possession at home? Why is it so special?
SB: Obviously that's after animals and people. I'm terribly sentimental. I've got masses of things that are really treasured – I've got a ring which my mother had, it was given to me after she died. It's silver with a brown stone and probably worth nothing. It's also maybe my photos. That's a bit predictable, isn't it? Photos are really, really important to me.
What would top your list for the worst decor trend?
SB: There are so many irritating ones. I really hate a feature wall. I find them really frustrating. I've also got a bit of an allergic reaction to writing on the wall, when people write 'love' or 'family'. I'm not a big fan of that. I'll probably alienate loads of people by saying that because everyone has them. It's like an instruction. Why am I being instructed to do something? You normally have 'toilets' or 'fire exits' but then people have 'love'.
We also live in this era where everything is knocked through. The dream was to live in an aircraft hanger but people don't think about acoustics. It's all well and good having an empty space, but if you put 25 people in, no one can hear a thing. I think those and too many hard floors – I don't like hard floors in bedrooms, I think a bedroom is a place for carpets.
Are you green-fingered?
SB: I'm not as green-fingered as I'd like to be. I'm trying to be green-fingered, but you need a lot of commitment. I'm as bad with my planting as I am with my children. I'm very inconsistent as a person. I'm an inconsistent mother and an inconsistent gardener, which is not what gardens like. They like consistency. I'm a little bit all over the place. If I could just be a bit more consistent, I'd be a much, much better gardener.
I do love houseplants. I'm sort of frustrated because you go away for a week with work or maybe four or five days, and then they're all dead. The relationship between houseplants and our family is not great, but outside is easier because God waters them.
If you could have a snoop around anyone's house, whose would it be and why?
SB: Probably everyone's home. One thing I've learned is that we're all kind of the same, on the outside. It's like Instagram — you judge the inside of your life with the outside of someone else's. When it comes down to it, everyone's homes are kind of the same.
Sarah Beeny is currently working with Affinity Water on the Save Our Streams campaign.
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