Interior Design Masters: Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen describes Yorkshire-born contestant John Cooper as a 'tour de force'

Inspired by the idea of skipping stones on Lake Windermere, he chose blues, greens and greys as his colour palette for the walls. He painted the bunk bed red and created hand painted murals of the ordnance survey maps in the room’s alcoves.

Using his woodwork skills he built panelling for the walls and repurposed the legs of a charity shop chair into boot pegs. “A tour de force – really thoughtful,” Laurence says at the end of the first episode, which aired on Thursday.

Interior Design Masters, hosted by comedian Alan Carr, is back for a sixth series on Thursdays on BBC One.

The programme – judged by interiors guru Michelle Ogundehin and famous guest judges — follows 10 novice designers looking for their big break in the world of commercial interior design.

Working individually and in teams, the aspiring designers are given free rein to redesign spaces in line with the client's brief, and each week an unlucky designer is sent home. This year, the winner will land a hugely coveted homeware collection with department store John Lewis & Partners.

John 46, a married father-of-two who now lives in Stockport and describes his style as graphic bohemian, says he was encouraged to apply for Interior Design Masters by his wife, Agatha, but his initial confidence going into the programme was short-lived.

"I was nervous but I was really confident in my idea for the first programme,” he says. “I wanted to evoke this feeling of the Lakes and outdoorsiness. I wanted it to be a really functional and practical space as well. I was feeling really great about what I’d done.

"We then got the opportunity to see the other spaces and it was only then I stood there and said ‘oh my goodness, the standard is so high, these designers are so good. Then that little voice of doubt crept in and I really questioned, have I blown it?”

John had a creative upbringing in Yorkshire and was encouraged to draw, paint and make things by hand by his mum who is also an artist.

Inspired by watching BBC’s Changing Rooms in the Nineties together, they would wallpaper and redecorate the house and his love for interior design was born.

“My mum was always redecorating a room,” says John. “We would start at one end of the house and by the time we’d finished all the rooms we would start all over again. I grew up around that and it seemed normal to me.”

At art school he studied model making and moved to London to work as prop and costume maker for theatre, TV and film before becoming an architectural model maker. His 3-D models were exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Venice Biennale.

After meeting Agatha in Leeds and starting a family, the couple decided to settle in Stockport but with a lack of design jobs in the area, John decided to retrain as a teacher.

About five years ago they bought a Victorian doer upper and he put his passion for design and his practical skills into renovating their family home from scratch.

"It’s been a really fulfilling experience,” he says. “You do something and you just feel completely alive and you think ‘this is what I should be doing all the time’.

"Don’t get me wrong, I love teaching and it’s great to help kids fulfil their dreams but you’re not doing anything creative yourself. Doing up the house made me realise that I really missed having that creative outlet for myself.”

John describes his house as ‘quite traditional’. “The way I do my own house isn’t necessarily the way I would always design. I adhere to whatever brief I’m dealing with and the brief for my house is that it’s a Victorian house and I want to pay homage to that,” he says.

Subscribe now to our weekly lifestyle newsletter - sent every Saturday

"There’s a lot of panelling going on in the hallway and landings. I love classical Victorian style but I’ve taught graphic design for a number of years so I can’t help but bring graphic murals and imagery into there and play around with colours.

"I’m obviously pretty handy so there are a lot of things I’ve custom built myself, tiling, laying floors and so on. I also get a real buzz out of planning the space and creating this little world. Knowing that you can change it at any point is quite freeing as an art form.”

John describes taking part in Interior Design Masters as an ‘incredible experience’ where he learned a lot about himself too. “For me, the biggest lesson was learning not to set the bar too high or be overly optimistic about what i can achieve within a given timeframe, and also learning to be more flexible," he says.

Following his participation in the programme, John’s has decided to set up his own north of England interior design business. "I’m moving on from teaching. I’ve taught for almost 20 years and it’s time for me to do this,” he says. “It’s my home up north and to be able to create amazing interiors up here would make me happy for the rest of my life.”