Grand Designs host Kevin McCloud has opened up on the big mistakes people make when they are designing their homes. Speaking exclusively to Express.co.uk in advance of this year's Grand Designs Live, the iconic Channel 4 presenter said people need to inject their homes with "life" and described the desire to make a house look like a showroom as "nonsense".

He told us: "There are two or three (mistakes) we all know, most of the websites deal with the common ones - budgeting and spreadsheets and the rest. Getting three quotes in. But I think actually asking for help is a really big one. People don't ask for enough help. We're all arrogant enough to think that we can do things ourselves without asking for professional or expert help. That's important.

He went on: "I think one other thing is that pitfall of avoiding this idea that you're doing this to please somebody else - your mother, your neighbours, your friends. You're not doing this to please anybody else. It's not for anybody else, but for you and your loved ones.

"So therefore, make it autobiographical. Make it of them (your family). Make it of you. Do not make it seem as if it's some kind of contemporary furniture showroom. That's all nonsense. You need to make it yours. You need to populate it with books or furniture, objects, stuff, things, possessions. Your life, no one elses.

"I'm not interested in beautiful absolutely perfect homes the architects display on their websites, because what they do is they go into the house before it's occupied and they bring their own furniture. They bring three sticks of furniture, a wood burner, set it up and make it look amazing.

"That's because they're not living in it. But that's not how we should be living. The most interesting homes are those which are full of life," he explained. Kevin also pointed out that any help people might need or advice they want about a design dilemma is available for free at the upcoming Grand Designs Live.

He revealed: "[Advice] is there to be freely offered. You can go and get it for free. These are people who give of themselves freely. That demonstrates that there is a generosity of spirit out there in construction to share that knowledge," he said.

While the expert advice is a staple of the show, Kevin also revealed this years show, which runs in ExCel London from May 2-5, has had a shake up. The broadcaster revealed: "It's to be very different to last year's show. We've completely reorganised it and kind of atomised it.

"We identified what people's areas of interest are, what the things are that love - historically, things that people love with the show were the theatre and the Ask the Expert centre.

"So we've made four theatres and four Ask the Expert centres. We've multiplied them, and we put each Ask the Expert centre next to a theatre to make a hub, and then put experts in and around, and then sort of made a centre of excellence with a few exhibitors and very much targeted around the theme," he revealed.