TV designer Vern Yip has a new house plan: Being dad to 2 kids
ARNOLD WAYNE JONES | Life+Style Editor
STICKY FINGERS | Having children has helped Yip embrace the value of chaos — something he never did on ‘Trading Spaces.’
jones@dallasvoice.com
It’s a rainy late spring day, and Vern Yip is late for his personal appearance in North Dallas. It’s the kind of thing that — as anyone who has watched Yip over the years on home-improvement shows like Trading Spaces, Deserving Design and Design Star can attest — probably drives the persnickety, precise man insane.
Of course, that attention to detail is also what has made him one of the most popular and respected people in a reality TV industry that often values flash over substance.
Still, with the new season of Design Star about to begin airing, Yip is as enthusiastic as his collected demeanor will allow.
“We’re back in New York again,” Yip says of the upcoming season. “It’s a really, really good season. We walked into my favorite room ever in the history of the series. It’s a very tight competition.”
High praise coming from Yip, a direct and constructively critical judge who does not suffer fools gladly and which can sometime come off as curt. Well, only if you aren’t any good.
“I think I’m very fair,” he says with a touch of defiance. (At least one contestant from this season — Dallas’ Leslie Ezelle — agrees; see story on Page 34.) “For me, the person who wins this gets their own TV show! That is a huge deal.” And he wants to make sure the prize is deserved.
“We release you into people’s homes. When you design someone’s house, you’re dealing with the biggest investment they will make in their lifetime. I want to make sure you are fully capable of executing your concept.”
So what about clients who have horrible ideas and want you to make them happen? In true Type A personality mode, he says judgment must trump emotion.
“The homeowners are not designers. It up to you as the designer to get to the core, the essence of what they want,” he advises. (Interior designers, he explains, have to pass rigorous testing; those without such certification can only call themselves “decorators.”)
He is not afraid to hold others to his high standards.
“Back on Trading Spaces, if you were on my team, I was a task-master,” admits the compact, handsome and surprisingly energetic designer — though that last title hardly gives him adequate credit. Yip is a licensed interior designer and a practicing architect in addition to his hosting/judging duties on several HGTV series and his extensive charitable work and designing a line of products for I.O. Metro, a retail store with a branch on Alpha Road in North Dallas. And then there’s his latest job description: Dad.
Yip and his partner Craig Koch have two children through surrogacy — the most recent born just a few months before our interview.
“I’ve never been away from my daughter before,” Yip says upon his trip to Dallas. “I’ve always wanted children, to be a dad. It’s an integral part of the human experience. But it’s a balance of the personal and professional lives.”
And the new family is putting all his skills to the test: He’s in the process of putting a 2,400-square-foot addition to his own house.
Wait a sec: How does the notoriously fussy perfectionist with the exacting, geometric style adjust to the chaos that is a house filled with sticky-fingered babies?
“It has already made me a better designer,” Yip says. “Being a dad has made me more aware and loosened me up a little, which I like. I am very O.C.D. Kids make that impossible. You manage the chaos. It’s not like I like having toys everywhere, but it has allowed me to appreciate imperfection.”
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YIP’S TIPS: 10 SIMPLE DECORATING IDEAS
Not everyone can afford a designer — or get on an HGTV show. For the rest of us, Vern Yip offers these suggestions for making your space work for you.
Make your space a reflection of you and your personality; go eclectic! Design no longer has to be relegated to one style for an entire house or even an entire room. Your home should be a reflection of you and a manifestation of your unique personality. Since people are multi-dimensional, your home should be too.
Invest in quality items that will endure. Your home is not a set for a photo shoot or a place that should be off limits; it should be a special atmosphere designed to support the most important moments in your life shared with your family and friends. Invest in quality that will endure. Quality does not equate with price: Just because something is expensive doesn’t mean that it is of high quality. Likewise, just because something is inexpensive doesn’t mean that it is of poor quality. Great quality items at accessible price points can be found in the right places.
Pepper your space with unique pieces! Although the majority of your home will have high quality furniture that will likely be found in other homes across America, or even your neighborhood, look for a handful of furniture pieces that have a unique, hand-crafted quality that really sing to you. Items that have character and show the heart and soul someone put into making them often are wonderful conversation starters.
Don’t be afraid of big and bold. Scale is important in the overall scheme of a room design, so embrace a few bigger items that really can make a statement. Appropriately used, scale makes a room feel balanced and complete. If you fill a room with pieces that are all of the same scale, nothing will pop and the result will be bland and boring. Take a cue from Mother Nature who juxtaposes large trees next to small bushes. It will help make your room feel comfortable to be in.
Use color to stimulate and excite! Color is a powerful design tool and mixing in doses of color into a room can be an easy and fun way to update a space and make it feel like a real reflection of you. Paint is a wonderful way to inject color into your home, but don’t forget throw pillows, throws, rugs and curtains — all phenomenal, easy and often inexpensive ways to liven a room.
Mixing wood tones enriches a space. Many people feel that all of the wood tones in a room have to match; it simply isn’t true. Mixing woods in a singular space can make it feel rich, sophisticated and unique. It is true that sticking to general wood color areas helps pull a room together, so be cautious about mixing woods with tonally unrelated backgrounds (for example, cherry-red undertone doesn’t necessarily look great with maple-yellow). If you look at wood carefully, you will see all kinds of colors in the graining and background.
Invest in open and closed storage. You can never have enough storage! Storage keeps your home looking pulled together and functioning while life happens. Open storage pieces, like bookshelves and consoles, are wonderful for displaying objects and as designated surfaces for decorative pieces that make a home feel warm. A room full of open storage, however, doesn’t function very well because there is no place for the visual pollution to go. That’s where closed storage pieces come in: buffets, end tables with doors and trunks offer easy places to tuck away messier items that don’t necessarily deserve displaying.
Rugs and curtains finish a room! Rugs act as warm, grounding forces in a room while curtains finish off the vertical space flanking windows, adding needed visual comfort. Select your rug and your curtains before selecting your paint to ensure that your room comes together perfectly. The chances of finding a rug and curtains to work perfectly with a predetermined paint color are much worse than starting with a rug and curtains and selecting from the endless array of paint colors that are available. You can customize paint to curtains or a rug but not the other way around.
Every room should have touches of white and black. White is the reflection of all color and black is the absorption of all color, making these two colors the ultimate in neutrals. White and black will literally go with anything. Touches of white in a space will catch the eye and act as a highlight while bits of black will recede and add depth. Adding a little of each to every room through furniture, accessories, textile items and artwork.
Include all kinds of lighting. Recessed cans are great for providing overall illumination in a room, but they won’t complete a room on their own. Table and floor lamps are an important source of warmth and function that inject light at levels that recessed lights can not. Additionally, pendant lights are not only critical sources of light but also offer a chance to hang a floating piece of art.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition July 1, 2011.
