Click through the photo gallery above to see the winning home.
With 21 exceptional homes thoroughly dissected and weighed up over seven weeks, the winner for Home of the Year 2024 has finally been revealed.
After whittling the impressive entries down to just seven finalists, it was Shane Murray and Marty Campbell's rich and bold renovation of a 1920's terraced house in Dublin that won the judges over.
Speaking over Zoom from their green tiled kitchen after scooping the prize, Shane revealed that it was always a personal ambition of his to apply for the show.
"Once we had bought a house, I said, I want to go on Home of the Year. Now, I probably didn't think it was going to be this year. I didn't think it was going to happen so fast. But yeah, I suppose it just snowballed. Marty will tell you, once I decide to do something, I generally do it."
As Marty added, "There's no better deadline than a film crew coming to your house to get things done!"
Opening your doors to not just a film crew but three highly experienced, highly vocal judges would put anyone off sleep for months, but the couple insist that they knew what they were signing up for and so were largely prepared to stick to their guns.
"We thought the feedback was fair", Marty said. "We actually took the points on board, particularly what we call 'TV-gate', where you had referenced the TV being hung too high."
Shane, meanwhile, admitted that when applying for the show he didn't consider the "practicalities" of having someone judge your home.
"It isn't everybody's taste. It's Marmite, so you either love it or you hate it. So I suppose we were worried then of what the comments would be, but I suppose we were pretty happy then when we watched it."
When it came to making their bold design choices, Shane - who studied interior design in college - admitted that he was the "driver " of most of them. "Obviously, if Marty hated something or he really didn't like it, we would then not do it. But in general, I suppose he's happy if I was happy."
Marty was quick to add how much he "would take confidence" in his partner's choices, saying: "When Shane wanted to discuss his vision of particularly the ground floor, I was all in. I trusted that decision. And as a couple, we share similar tastes."
The couple were inspired by the show's focus on personality, and saw how much their vision for their home aligned with that. "When we went for this home and we'd said this was the home for us, we knew there was a big opportunity there to stamp our personality on this home."
That meant certain non-negotiables like Marty's idea for a bar for entertaining and Shane's insistence on having two ovens. "I think that was the essence of our design in the home. We're going to live here. It's going to be how we use the home", Marty said.
Their style was heavily inspired by travelling and specifically by staying in hotels, which brought a sense of luxury and comfortable throughout the space, from the elegant bathroom to the coffee station in the bedroom.
"It makes staying in hotels less of a novelty", Marty joked. "We're like, you won't find another hotel that has a better bed than us!"
Family also played a huge role in creating their dream home, as Shane's dad stepped in to help with much of the labour and hard grafting. "We weren't overwhelmed too much with the actual work because we had him to give us advice and steer us in the right direction", Shane said.
The couple has come away with plenty of lessons too, Marty said. "I think we learned what not to do through in the building process and the design process and obviously what we can do. I think we're taking a lot of confidence out of it."
It's not surprising, then, that the pair have oodles of advice for would-be home renovators. "One of the main things that I wasn't great at was making the right decisions about things quick enough or in the right order" such as lights and sockets, Shane said, adding that his dad would have typically done those jobs.
His biggest takeaway is to "plan everything, draw everything, write everything down". "You can't plan enough", he added.
A crucial piece of advice Marty shared was to "just be confident and trust your own taste, your own wants, your vision for your home because that's really important".
As for what's next for them, it's the attic renovation for more all-important storage.
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