My favourite room at home is... my living room. It’s a big open plan space that looks over the countryside. Everything can be done in there – somebody can be cooking, somebody else at the computer, listening to music or you can go out on the balcony. My youngest child has a climbing wall in there. It's where the whole family can be together.

I like interiors to be... comfortable, uncomplicated and artistic. It has got to be fit for purpose. I can't bare spaces that just exist to be photographed.

The best thing you can do with your interior... is to re-model what you’ve already got and buy yourself a sewing machine. I don’t like it when somebody says stripes or spots are in. The people in interiors are re-making stuff and thinking about the waste in the world. Much of the stuff in our house is old bits that have been remodeled

The coolest thing you can do is...  be creative with what you’ve already got.

Give your room an instant update with... wallpaper. It's a very affordable way of changing a room. With digital printing now, you can do giant wall prints which are easy and cost effective.

I would love to own... a garage where I could could plug in my car overnight and be able to travel at normal speeds without re-charging it again.

The current housing market situation... is the best thing that could have happened. We need a change where people and industries have to become creative in order to stop a housing economy based on buy-to-let and sub-prime mortages. People will be more choosy when they buy property when it [the market] comes back, which it will do. They’ll make developers give them what they want.

What will come out of it... is better housing and a more purchaser-focused product, with less of an emphasis on investment and less focus of borrowing beyond your means. Yes, it will hurt for a short while, but there’s not going to be people in massive negative equity. It's a small country and there’s a genuine housing shortage so we’re not going to see a price crash.

People are still... getting identikit housing which has come from the hand of somebody plotting to get as many houses on the land as possible. The majority still want an old house because they don’t like the new stuff that's offered to them. The housing that we’ve designed [HemingwayDesign] is an honourable exception to that – but it only scratches the surface.

My vision for Red or Dead... was to create the first affordable designer label; and to aim it at people like me and Gerardine who wouldn’t have had money or access to buy designer labels.

For a quick home change... loo seats don't cost a lot of money. When we built our house 10 years ago we fitted an acrylic loo seat with barb wire in it – and it didn’t hurt when you sat on it! It's like a piece of art.

In Britain today... people don't shout enough and aren't political.

I've always felt that... if you feel strongly about something you should shout about it. You end up with a better quality of life when people shout.

Eco lifestyle comes into... everything we design. All our sheds are made with renewable timbers and we use British firms for our wallpapers, ceramic tiles and clay.

In our home... we don’t really buy products. Gerardine normally designs and makes them. We’ve got solar panels doing the water and our own sewage plant. We subscribe to Green Energy, a sustainable power supplier – you pay a bit more and the money goes to actually getting energy from green sources.

Most of my anger is towards... housing development in the UK. I find it very offensive. At CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment) and at Building For Life (of which I am chairman) we did a national housing audit which revealed that housing built in the last five years is poor or mediocre.

The energy source of the future is... a combination of solar, wind, wave, tidal etc. And probably nuclear. No one thing is going to solve the problem.

If my house was burning down... I would grab my family. Everything else is replaceable. The only other thing I couldn’t replace is my vinyl collection, but I would get over it.

My top business tip is... that the biggest growth will come in people really thinking about products – how they are sourced, where they are from and who’s benefiting from them apart from you. Anita Roddick started this movement with the Body Shop, then organic food erupted and it will become the same with all products.