Creative thinking keeps Linda Barker busy

Health and fitness are a big part of Linda Barker’s life. She practises yoga and is careful about what she eats and it shows.

She looks much younger than her 49 years, a career advantage in the TV industry, which is notoriously ageist where women are concerned.

Not that the entrepreneurial fine art graduate turned interior designer relies solely on the telly for work.

Changing Rooms may have thrust her into the spotlight and she is still busy with a host of programmes including 60 Minute Makeover, but she still works on her own projects

She writes columns, is designing a hotel interior, has her own range in Matalan and her own homeware website, www.reallylindabarker.co.uk

“I’d really like to expand that into retail one day and open a shop. I have lots of ideas,” says Linda, who is married to Chris and has a daughter, Jess, 18.

Her tweets – see her Twitter link on her website www.reallylindabarker.co.uk – reveal what a busy bee she is.

She has just completed a course in raw food at a restaurant in London, is planning a charity trek up Kilimanjaro and is gearing up for a starring role at the Ideal Home Show, for which she intends to do “lots of crafting”.

“Making things is massive at the moment and I’m pleased because I love it. I’ll be putting on some demonstrations at the Ideal Home Show.

“Making things is something I have always done myself and the attraction is in the satisfaction you get from something you have made yourself and the new skills you learn along the way. It may take longer than buying it off the shelf and might even cost a bit more, but you end up with something that has integrity.”

Her latest projects were recycling last year’s diary pages from her Filofax by covering an old wine box with them, and she’s just been taught how to water gild.

Her creativity is being put the test on her new home in London. She and Chris have downsized in the capital, so they can make their Yorkshire property a main home.

Linda grew up on the family farm at Shelf, near Halifax. After Bradford Girls’ Grammar School, she did a Fine Art degree, and, after a series of jobs, including working as a barmaid and an air stewardess, she moved to London where she began her career in interior design; decorating friends’ homes with paint effects.

She later became a stylist for a number of magazines, including House Beautiful. It was this work which led to Changing Rooms and celebrity status. Her getaway from the spotlight was her second home in an East Yorkshire village, which was for holidays and weekends, and although it spent a brief spell on the market a couple of years ago, she has decided to keep it.

“We’ve just got permission to extend it, which is good because that’s where we want to be for most of the time. I love being there. It’s close to family and it’s close to the Wolds and it’s not too far from the Three Peaks. I love walking,” she says.

Her Yorkshire home features the warm, natural look for which she is best known. The interior is a mix of old and new, with antique and junk-shop finds sitting alongside reproduction, painted furniture and products she sources for reallylindabarker.co.uk. The flooring is mainly seagrass and there are mirrors and candles everywhere, along with coral, sea shells and porcupine quills.

At the moment, she is concentrating on the kitchen in her new London home, which she is fashioning from a collection of old school desks.

“I got them from a reclamation yard and a joiner is converting them for me,” she says.“It’s great fun and much more exciting than buying a new kitchen.”

Linda Barker is hosting the Ideal Interiors section at this year’s Ideal Home Show at Earls Court, March 11-27. Tel: 0844 415 4144, www.idealhomeshow.co.uk