Britain’s best homes! Identikit £250,000 new build is transformed into a cosy countryside retreat – as £600 kitchen makeover and a ‘bathroom of doom’ renovation are also honoured at awards

DAILYMAIL.COM • 1h ago

By JOWENA RILEY, LIFESTYLE REPORTER Updated: 00:09 22 Oct 2026

An unexpected ‘wild card’ entry has just secured the title of Britain’s Best Home at the uFurnish.com Home Awards: a £250,000 new-build property lovingly turned into a cozy countryside retreat.

Tucked away down a quiet Somerset country lane, the home was transformed by Jade Fish, a busy mother of two working in Police HR who never imagined making the finals, let alone beating four other stunning homes to win the grand prize.

The prestigious accolade was handed out by Deirdre Mc Gettrick, the CEO and founder of uFurnish.com, an AI-powered furniture search site that lets shoppers compare prices in real time across more than three million products from over 100 retailers, from John Lewis to Dunelm.

Another 18 winners took home titles, including NHS psychiatrist Orima Kamalu, who bypassed a bumper £60,000 quote to overhaul her kitchen for a mere £600.

Joining her was former TV design contestant Ben Irurzun, who saved £2,600 by flipping 84 IKEA drawers into a stunning antique-style cabinet for £400, and Emily Barratt, a Lancashire mum who fired her plumber and tiled her own ‘bathroom of doom’ herself.

Jade, who bought the winning property with her husband eight years ago, said of her new-build with oddly shaped walls: ‘I feel I’ve created the home that best reflects me, my surroundings and my personality. It’s homely and inviting, fresh but cosy.’

The judging panel for the uFurnish.com Home Awards, which is in its third year and attracted 1,400 entrants whittled down to 90 finalists, included interiors journalist Barbara Chandler, TV presenter Max McMurdo and Interior Design Masters designer Nicki Bamford-Bowes.

Deirdre Mc Gettrick, who launched uFurnish.com, said: ‘These awards celebrate real homes and the people who make them, and this year’s winners show what you can do with a bit of vision, a lot of graft and, in one case, a £100 worktop paint kit.’

Nick Toteda, London | Instagram @nicktoteda

Nick Toteda and his partner Ant wanted a bathroom that felt like a living room, so they hung curtains instead of a glass shower screen, added cornicing and ran Mandarin Stone tiles floor to ceiling around a huge window. They put in two sinks, but four years on, ‘we still both use the same one’.

Their four-bedroom Victorian house in Clapham Junction, London, had stood empty for about ten years when they viewed it in 2022, with trees growing inside and rotten joists. Halfway through the build they turned the spare bedroom into the bathroom, which their builders hated.

Emily Murray, London | Instagram @pinkhouseliving

When Emily Murray’s two sons hit their teens, she turned the top floor of her Edwardian house in Dulwich, London, into a bedroom suite she could escape to.

Behind one door there’s a sitting area, a terrace, a mirrored wet room and the bath she’d always dreamed of, based on a room at Babington House in Somerset but in a softer pink.

Emily, a journalist and author whose boys are now 13 and 16, has renovated the house twice in nine years. A former gymnast, she took up athletics in her 40s and is now British age-group champion in triple jump and long jump.

Emily Barratt, Lancashire | Instagram @our_big_renovation

Emily Barratt’s seven-bedroom house in Lancashire had just one bathroom, so rather than lose a bedroom she squeezed a new one into the top-floor space that once held two water tanks. She calls it ‘the bathroom of doom’.

Her plasterer cried on the first day, and two months into a job that was meant to take a fortnight, her plumber still hadn’t done the first fix.

After ten weeks Emily, 41, sacked him and tiled the floor and walls herself. ‘I was like, “I’m done with trades”,’ says Emily, who has 198,000 Instagram followers. It was finished a fortnight later.

Ben Irurzun, West Midlands | Instagram @bygonebenagain

Ben Irurzun built the antique-style apothecary cabinet in his kitchen from IKEA drawers for £400, when a real one would have cost around £3,000.

The former Interior Design Masters contestant turned 84 Moppe drawers, some bought second-hand on Facebook, back to front and fitted them into a wooden frame stained to look old.

He found 84 matching handles at an antiques centre, printed vintage French labels and topped it with marble from an old fireplace hearth. It took three or four days.

‘On the TV show we have to do everything in two days,’ he says, ‘so I learned everything very quickly.’

Kerry Davison, Newcastle | Instagram @houseofchi

Kerry Davison’s garden on the edge of Newcastle was designed for parties, and her dad did all the work for nothing. Raymond, 72, a retired engineer, rewired it for a hot tub, put in new drains and fitted the panelling indoors.

‘My dad should be getting this award,’ says Kerry, 41. Her Instagram fans tell him he looks like Harrison Ford.

Kerry, a mum of two, bought the new-build four years ago for £370,000. When the patio doors open, the dining room and garden become one space, and guests spill out to the hot tub and hammock.

Suzy Broome, South Yorkshire | Instagram @suzybroome

Suzy Broome laid the tiled path to her bright orange front door herself over a single weekend, and passers-by still stop to admire it. She chose green, orange and yellow tiles to suit her Victorian house in South Yorkshire.

When she moved in, one side of the grey double front door was rotting. Her father-in-law built a new one, and Suzy stripped the other, fitted an antique knocker and brass handles and painted both orange. She has tiled floors and walls in every home she’s lived in, but had never tiled outside before.

Lara Bezzina, Northamptonshire | Instagram @lara.bezzina

Lara Bezzina fell for her partly Georgian house in Northamptonshire the moment she opened the front door, so the hallway had to give the same welcome.

She and her partner spent weeks laying the diamond-pattern marble floor themselves, built a bench and covered the ceiling rose in gold leaf. ‘It makes me very happy to come home,’ she says.

Lara, who manages a council housing team, bought the four-bedroom house four years ago and has renovated it every evening and weekend since, converting the cellar too. She hopes to finish next year, and admits to decision fatigue.

Tamzin McGillen, Bristol | Instagram @tamzinmcgillen

Tamzin McGillen’s winning office is a converted garage split down the middle, with pink florals and pink chairs on her side and green, wood and a piano on the other, tied together by matching desks.

An interior and textile designer, Tamzin moved into her Bristol house during lockdown in 2020, when every room was grey, and has since filled it with colour right up to the wallpapered ceilings.

A year ago she left her job as a school textiles technician to set up her own design business, and her Instagram following has doubled this year to about 105,000.

Maxine Austin, Cambridge | Instagram @maxine.home

Maxine Austin, 38, won for showing her 180,000-plus followers what renovating a 1970s house really looks like with four boys under six: DIY squeezed in around the children, childproof paint and second-hand furniture.

‘With kids it takes away the preciousness,’ she says. ‘I don’t have time to worry about the sofas.’

Maxine, who works in marketing, bought the four-bedroom house near Cambridge with her husband eight years ago.

It needed more work than anything else they viewed, but a project was the only way they could afford the area. Her prize is a £1,000 Cox & Cox gift card.

Peter Irvine, County Antrim, Northern Ireland | Instagram @thewhitehome

Peter Irvine’s winning kitchen in County Antrim has wooden cupboards, whitewashed walls and a stone sink, with a long wooden table in the middle so everyone can eat together and plenty of room for guests.

Natasha Landers, London | Instagram @untillemonsrsweet

Natasha Landers’ dad told her the living room looked like an art installation, before she had even hung any art.

She wanted to try colour blocking without just painting the chimney breast, so she did the ceiling and cornicing in a light bronze green and ran a stripe of colour from ceiling to floor and across the shutters.

A gallerist and collector, Natasha has lived in her Walthamstow home in east London for 25 years and now hires it out as a filming location. The green sofa is an IKEA one she had for 15 years before having it re-covered.

Lisa Weaver, Hertford | Instagram @lisaweaverhome

Lisa Weaver dreaded the day her son would need a ceiling hoist. ‘They’re always ugly things,’ she says.

When he grew too heavy to carry upstairs, she pictured him floating across his new downstairs bedroom like a jellyfish, and turned it into an underwater world.

Her son, seven, has a rare genetic syndrome she says only one other person in the UK has. Lisa, a mum of three from Hertford, had the tracks made in dark jade green against an aqua ceiling and sewed sea-creature covers for his electric headboard. ‘Doing his room is almost a love language for me,’ she says.

Orima Kamalu, Bristol | Instagram @alittledetached

Quoted about £60,000 for a new kitchen, NHS psychiatrist Orima Kamalu and her husband Joel, a GP, did it themselves for £590.

With a four-year-old and a baby to look after, they learned everything from what Orima calls ‘the University of YouTube’.

They fitted MDF Shaker-style doors, painted the units black, retiled the walls and painted the worktops over a weekend with a £100 kit. ‘A lot of people said, “Are you really going black?”‘ she says. ‘I’m not going to say it’s like a brand new kitchen, but it looks so much more like us.’

Pandora Maxton | Instagram @pandora.maxton

Pandora Maxton’s York home changes with every occasion. The tablescaper and interior stylist who calls herself ‘Mrs Christmas’ has been obsessed with the festive season since childhood – and nothing has changed now that she’s a mother of three.

Each year brings a new excuse to create a big, bold tree to serve as a joyous Christmas centrepiece, whether bedecked with dried hydrangeas, tiny disco balls or Ralph Lauren-style deep red ornaments.

Pandora, who has 199,000 followers on Instagram and has already appeared in House Beautiful’s Christmas issue, also teaches wreath-making and makes her own advent calendars and sacks. At Halloween her table is filled with tiny pumpkins and spooky candles, and last Easter she made a wreath of tiny hand-painted eggs.

Laura Hall, Merseyside | Instagram @thehexagonalhouse

Laura Hall plans every room in her Merseyside home around colour, using it to set the mood and pick out details people might miss, from a window recess to the stairs and ceiling. Even as a child she insisted on unusual colour schemes for her bedroom.

A mum of two, Laura started her Instagram when the family began renovating around 2020 and, at 38, changed career to create interiors content full time. Followers often tell her that her posts have given them the confidence to be braver in their own homes.

Astrid Dolan, London | Instagram @astriddolan

Two months after her husband died suddenly in January 2025, Astrid Dolan started work on her two daughters’ bedrooms, and those rooms have now won her the public vote. ‘It became my therapy, my safe space,’ she says. ‘It helped me turn some of my sadness into strength.’

Astrid, whose girls are now six and three, decided to stay in her London home and make it a proper home instead. She worried people would think she wanted sympathy when she began sharing her grief on Instagram, but her account is now a community for widows, single parents and anyone going through a big change.

Furniture Village | furniturevillage.co.uk

Furniture Village won Best Furniture Retailer and says it is the UK’s largest family-owned furniture retailer, with 59 stores, 16 fulfilment centres and 1,364 staff.

The Best Garden winner, who has asked not to be named, uses her garden as an extra room, with fairy lights, sofas and packed flower beds.

Best Home – Jade Fish, Somerset | Instagram @oursomersetnest

Best Bathroom – Nick Toteda, London | Instagram @nicktoteda

Best Bedroom – Emily Murray, London | Instagram @pinkhouseliving

Best Before and After Transformation – Emily Barratt, Lancashire | Instagram @our_big_renovation

Best DIY Creation – Ben Irurzun, West Midlands | Instagram @bygonebenagain

Best Entertaining Space – Kerry Davison, Newcastle | Instagram @houseofchi

Best First Impressions – Suzy Broome, South Yorkshire | Instagram @suzybroome

Best Furniture Retailer – Furniture Village | furniturevillage.co.uk

Best Garden – Winner has asked not to be named

Best Hallway – Lara Bezzina, Northamptonshire | Instagram @lara.bezzina

Best Home Office – Tamzin McGillen, Bristol | Instagram @tamzinmcgillen

Best Interior Content Creator – Maxine Austin, Cambridge | Instagram @maxine.home

Best Kitchen – Peter Irvine, County Antrim, Northern Ireland | Instagram @thewhitehome

Best Living Room – Natasha Landers, London | Instagram @untillemonsrsweet

Best Nursery or Children’s Room – Lisa Weaver, Hertford | Instagram @lisaweaverhome

Best on a Budget – Orima Kamalu, Bristol | Instagram @alittledetached

Best Seasonal Styling – Pandora Maxton | Instagram @pandora.maxton

Best Use of Colour – Laura Hall, Merseyside | Instagram @thehexagonalhouse

Overall Public Vote – Astrid Dolan, London | Instagram @astriddolan

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