How Grand Designs Became the UK’s Most Popular Home and Property Show

There’s hardly a shortage of property shows airing on UK television, from BBC’s ‘Homes Under the Hammer’ to Channel 4’s ‘Building the Dream’.

However, the single most enduring and popular real estate show in the UK remains ‘Grand Designs’ which is another hit from the C4 stable and one that has blazed a trail for similar programs to follow since its inception back in April 1999.

Interestingly, a recent poll reaffirmed Grand Designs’ status as the best and most popular UK property show. We’ll explore this below, while asking why the program has enjoyed such sustained success?

How Popular is Grand Designs?

The poll, which was carried out by Hammonds Furniture and canvassed the thoughts of 2,000 UK adults, used a combination of popular opinion and Internet Movie Database (IMDb) ratings to calculate a score for selected shows.

The results placed the longstanding C4 show, which is fronted by former theatre designer Kevin McCloud, top of the ratings, with fellow Channel 4 hits 'A Place in the Sun' and 'Escape to the Chateau' trailing in joint second.

More specifically, 33% of respondents revealed Grand Designs to be their favourite property program, with this slightly lower than the 39% who preferred Homes Under the Hammer. However, Grand Designs ranks considerably higher on IMBd with an average score of 8.5 out of 10, affording it a more impressive overall score.

Escape to the Chateau scored similarly on IMDb, but scored much lower in terms of popular opinion. Escape to the Chateau also fell short, although this show did at least prove to be the most popular online with approximately 74,000 monthly Google searches conducted (Grand Designs averages around 33,100 each month).

Of course, Grand Designs is the oldest of these programs and something of a trailblazer in the genre, which may explain its immense popularity.

In fact, more than 200 episodes of the show have been aired since the spring of 1999, with A Place in the Sun debuting the following year and Homes Under the Hammer first viewed in 2003.

Why is Grand Designs So Enduringly Popular?

The survey also sought to understand why viewers watched these property programs, with this shedding further light on the particular appeal of Grand Designs.

For example, 51% of respondents claimed that the process of seeing a property renovated from start to finish was the main reason that they tuned in. This is also a crucial element of the Grand Designs format, with McCloud meeting the homebuilders to discuss their project at the beginning of each show before tracking their progress over time.

A further 32% said that they watched property shows for design inspiration, and Grand Designs definitely excels in this respect.

For example, the most recent Grand Designs series featured an innovative self-build project at Graven Hill, which saw an entire street of people follow their dreams of building bespoke and unique designed homes.

This project could well inspire similar sites to spring up throughout the UK, and there’s no doubt that Grand Designs is a major source of inspiration and insight for anyone who aspires to build their own home.

A further 28% of respondents also watch real estate shows because they like to learn about architecture, with Grand Designs providing genuine insight into the practicalities of construction projects and various building techniques.

It also places an emphasis on the materials used during such projects, providing an immersive learning experience across a wide range of different property types!

The Last Word

Ultimately, appraising the appeal of TV shows is a subjective endeavour, but there's no doubt that some transcend public opinion having been established a universal cult sensations.

This category of programs includes Grand Designs, which blazed a trail for other property shows to follow and yet remains the single most popular program in the real estate genre!