Design Tips From Vern: Season One

When faced with visual clutter (beds lining the walls), take a simple design approach to balance the complexity with some visual ease.

Challenge 1: Townhouse to Your House
For their first challenge, the 10 designers had to turn an empty townhouse in New York City into their "home away from home." As one of the judges, here are my tips for some things they did right and wrong and how you can apply them to your space.

Choosing a light-filled color to remove the castle mural is an obvious choice for this, and any, master bedroom.

Challenge 2: Designing to Sell
For their second challenge, the remaining nine split into three teams of three and challenged to design rooms in a house that's been on the market for eight months! Here are some things to keep in mind when re-selling your home.

Adding shiny metal plates to the sofa arms creates visual weight and detail to an otherwise plain piece of upholstery.

Challenge 3: "Wild Card" Design
Since everyone is now on a completely level playing field, the challenge becomes demonstrating how much "outside the box" thinking you can do with limited time, budget and resources. Beautiful and well-designed artifacts can exist anywhere and it is up to the remaining eight contestants to showcase their creative talents and personal style by re-imagining non-traditional home decor items in inventive and new ways.

Homeowners Kelley Woods and Tom Jerige are thrilled when they see their new kitchen!

Challenge 4: Designers' Challenge Kitchen Makeover
The kitchen is truly the center of the home and where most families spend the most significant amount of interaction time. Because it also has the most number of working components and appliances, some of the key things to keep in mind when renovating this room are quality, durability and layout. A great design in a kitchen amounts to only half the battle since this room receives the most wear and tear of any space in a home. Execution is critical here and should not be compromised.

A little red goes a long way and painting an accent wall red while keeping the rest of the wall neutral showcases this color perfectly.

Challenge 5: Designing With Color
Color is one of design's most powerful tools and the challenge for our remaining contestants is to demonstrate their understanding of color and how to employ it most effectively in four, almost identical studio apartments. Although one's initial reaction may be to use the assigned color choice all over to boldly communicate the designated hue, sometimes color is most powerful when its used sparingly.

Designing for dual functions allows a folding dining table to be moved for dancing in the middle of this living room.

Challenge 6: Create a Dream Room
Finally! We are down to our last three designers and all of them have tremendous design talent. For this challenge, each designer is given the task of helping people who are deserving of great room makeovers and transforming their lives by transforming their spaces.

This is a great example of blending elements from different eras and styles to create something amazing.

Challenge 7: Glass Houses

This final challenge, located in Manhattan's beautiful Bryant Park, was designed to showcase the abilities of our two remaining designers to literally and figuratively "think outside the box." Given identical 12' x 16' glass rooms, replete with pitched glass ceilings, David and Alice were allowed complete freedom to let their imaginations roam in order to showcase their best efforts and demonstrate to America why they should be HGTV's new Design Star