The celeb home trends which are DEVALUING your house, with Jac Jossa’s bath & Stacey Solomon’s wall tape top of list

From Jac Jossa’s freestanding bath to the Beckhams’ log burner, these trends are popular on social media but not with house buyers .

Property valuer Jonathan Rolande from House Buy Fast tells Joel Cooper which Insta trends to avoid if you want to sell your home any time soon…

David Beckham’s fireplace looks good on Instagram but could knock thousands off the value of your home

FREESTANDING BATHS

While they look great on Instagram, having a stand alone bath like 28-year-old Jacqueline Jossa is not a hit with buyers.

Jonathan Rolande says: “As nice as these look in the right house, they are not practical for children – you get splashes from all angles because they are not up against the wall and they take up more space.

“Often we see now that baths have storage underneath. You don’t have that flexibility with a freestanding bath.

“People often have them in bedrooms, rather like in boutique hotels. While that might be quite nice for a honeymooning couple, it’s not very practical.”

GOLD TAPS

Gold taps are fine if they are in keeping with a Victorian theme, but otherwise the trend for ostentatious wealth is on the way out now

Gold fixtures like taps might be popular with stars like former Corrie actress Catherine Tyldesley, 37, but they should only be installed as part of a theme.

Jonathan says: “Gold taps are fine if they are in keeping with a Victorian theme, but otherwise the trend for ostentatious wealth is on the way out now.

“We discovered in lockdown that life isn’t all about materialism, so showing off gold-plated or gold-effect fittings is waning.

“There’s a reason chrome has been popular for 100 years and gold is a relative newcomer.

“And if you’re in a hard water area, the gold effect can quickly tarnish with limescale, so they’re a hassle to clean.”

TAPE-DESIGNED WALLS

One of the biggest lockdown trends has been creating elaborate patterns on your walls using tape and paint.

Loose Woman and DIY enthusiast Stacey Solomon, 31, is a fan, but the look can come across too personalised for the average buyer.

Jonathan says: “If you like it and you’re doing it to live in, fine, to sell – not so much. You don’t realise it with the naked eye, but these geometric straight lines can highlight that you have uneven walls or slopes, so you can create the impression that your house has got subsidence.

“People will look back on this trend in five years and say, ‘That is a 2021 house.’

“Normally trend cycles come in more slowly and leave slowly – closer to a ten-year trend cycle rather than a two-year cycle.”

Jonathan suggests investing in temporary wallpaper that can later be removed, or artwork that can be hung, instead. 

HOME GYMS

Kate Ferdinand’s gym looks good but buyers often fail to look past a room’s true potential if it’s cluttered with exercise equipment

A home gym can be an asset in a large property like 30-year-old Kate Ferdinand’s plush pad, but buyers often fail to look past a room’s true potential if it’s cluttered with exercise equipment.

Jonathan says: “If you’re in a five or six bedroom house and the gym is just one little room then that’s fine, but in a normal three bedroom house for example, get the gym into storage, get a bed in and show people the traditional layout.

“A lot of people decline even viewing a property because they turn their nose up at the pictures they see online.

BI-FOLD DOORS

Celebrities like Hollyaoks’ Jorgie Porter, 33, love them, but bi-fold doors can be seen as impractical or even a security risk by buyers.

Jonathan says: “Most of us have gardens that are overlooked in some form, so you’ll constantly feel like you’re living in a goldfish bowl with these doors, particularly in winter when lights are on, so people can see whatever you’re doing.

“There’s a security aspect as well – everything that you own is on display at a glance. There’s plenty of light pollution too that can fade furniture or shine onto a TV in the house.”

Experts at webuyanyhouse.co.uk also say that the doors can break easily and it can be difficult to get hold of replacement parts. 

LOG BURNING FIREPLACES

They may provide warmth, but log burning fireplaces – like 47-year-old Victoria’s Beckham’s – will create dust and can also prove costly when you factor in the cost of wood.

Jonathan says: “These are very impractical – there’s a reason why we invented gas central heating and electricity. When you have a log fire you’re constantly feeding it wood.

“The average one burns through them at a rate of knots. They’re not practical or economic. They gather dust – and everything in the room gets covered in tiny soot particles.

“And in urban areas you’ve got the possibility that pollution controls could soon be brought in, which would mean you couldn’t use them.”

KITCHEN ISLANDS

In most normal-sized houses kitchen islands can take up a lot of room and create a cramped look

You’ll often see an island in a celebrity’s spacious kitchen, like in 28-year-old Diversity star Jordan Banjo’s new pad, but in most normal-sized houses they can take up a lot of room and create a cramped look – something buyers are definitely not keen on.

Jonathan says: “A potential buyer would either not look at the property in the first place because the photograph would look cramped, or they would have to think, ‘Let’s remove it’.

“Removing them, because they’re plumbed in and might have a gas cooker in, is a horrendous job.

“You’re basically redoing the whole kitchen, taking floors up to move pipes. This could cost £10,000 – a huge deterrent to potential buyers.”

STATEMENT CERAMIC TILES

Want to theme an area of your home? Be wary as even popular designs can be off-putting for buyers who tend to want something more neutral to live with every day.

Jonathan says: “We can call it the Instagram effect – when people want flamingos on their tiles or similar. I hear it a lot, ‘Doesn’t that look amazing, but I wouldn’t want to live there.’

It’s fine for an AirBnb or a hotel, because it’s a real statement, but putting furniture down – what colour do you go with? It’s tiring on the eyes and you can’t easily put pictures up.”

PANTRIES

Thanks to stars like Chrissy Teigen, 35, super organised pantries have become one of lockdown’s biggest transformation trends.

But buyers will notice that they usually mean precious kitchen space has been taken away.

Jonathan says: “Pantries were popular until the Fifties when houses became a bit smaller and people got fridges.

“In a big house, they’re fine, but they can look very untidy – or they can look like a zombie apocalypse shelter. 

“And it will invariably take a corner out of a kitchen. It would always be better to have that space open, because people notice the floor space of the room.”

SWIMMING POOLS

Swimming pools are a safety risk for young families – people worry about their children

Surely an oasis of water in your back garden – just like 56-year-old Piers Morgan’s – is exactly what potential buyers want, right? Wrong, says Joanthan.

He says: “They are more popular than ever in people’s gardens but very unpopular with buyers generally.

“They’re fine in a multi-million pound pad, but anywhere else they are a safety risk for young families – people worry about their children.

“They’re also enormously expensive to heat and maintain and you lose a lot of your garden.

“I’ve dealt with properties where it has a £100,000 swimming pool and it detracts from the price because people think about the cost of filling it in.”