With the ever-evolving COVID-19 pandemic still impacting people’s daily lives and routines across the world, folks are spending more time at home. What better time, then, to start watching a design-focused TV series that is informative, heart-warming, and/or aesthetically appealing?

Happily, there is no shortage of design shows to choose from during this period whether you’re more into stories about life-changing renovations or home decluttering and organising. Here, we’ve rounded up some of the most bingeable design-centric series on streaming services and cable now, with hopes that they will offer a small respite from an exhausting news cycle. Beautiful imagery aside, these series will remind you of the importance of these places we call home.

Dream Home Makeover

Dream Home Makeover just might be the escapist television you need right about now. Starring the wholesome and affable Shea and Syd McGee, this series documents the couple as they go about the task of giving sprawling homes the makeover of a lifetime.

In addition to showing viewers some gorgeous home transformations, Dream Home Makeoveralso brings fans right into Shea and Syd McGee's family life. The couple, who met in college, have two children, and have the kind of life I dream about! It just goes to show that some people really can have it all: the perfect home, the enviable job, the sweet spouse, and the adorable family. One of my favs!

Get Organized with the Home Edit

If you live for yearly planners, colour-coded sticky notes and labelled Tupperware, then Netflix's Get Organised With The Home Edit should flip your OCD organisational switch. Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin's ultra-specific organization aesthetic of clear acrylic and color coding has dominated social media for a while now, and in September 2020, they officially made their debut on Netflix.

On their eight-episode series, the women better known as the Home Edit venture into the homes of celebrities and everyday people alike, helping them not just declutter, but set up their pantries, playrooms, closets, and more in a way that makes the rooms easy to use and Instagram-ready. As many of you might know, I’m a raving OCD neat freak, minimalist, so I find this oddly satisfying to watch them group beauty products by colour or fold shirts with perfect precision. Seeing inside the homes of Reese Witherspoon, Rachel Zoe, Khloé Kardashian, Eva Longoria, Parks and Recreation star Retta, Neil Patrick Harris, Jordana Brewster, and Kane Brown is just an added bonus.

Tiny House Nation

Tiny houses, require big imagination! Tiny House Nation hosts, host John Weisbarth and expert Zack Giffin, implore us to consider major downsizing and rethink our relationship with space and possessions.

This new lifestyle craze has explorers, aspiring nomads and young adults trying not to live in their parents’ basements feel excited about the prospect of living mortgage and guilt free in tiny houses. This low-impact version of living has many people looking to downsize — in some cases, to spaces no more than 300 square feet. In this creative series we follow this two-man team as they travel across America to discover these innovative, ingenious small habitats and the creative people who dwell in them. And if these episodes inspire you to downsize in a big way, then Weisbarth and Griffin will show you exactly how to join the Tiny House Nation.

Grand Designs

On the eve of their 20th anniversary, this show is one of the most popular, programs in the UK. Now streaming on Netflix, Grand Designs, host Kevin McCloud walks with people as they work through the process of creating their home. From new builds or a major renovation, it’s always a project of major scope.

What makes Grand Designs worth the watch is its inside look at the process of creating a dream home. In new build episodes, McCloud visits the untouched site with the homeowners before ground is broken, talking through their vision. He visits the site again throughout the build and ends most episodes with a tour of the finished product. When we say most, it’s because each episode shows you the build process behind the curtain. When builds fall behind schedule, it may mean they don’t get finished before the show wraps up. This is the real deal. If you’ve thought about building your own home or taking on a major fixer-upper, Grand Designs can give you an inside look at the trials, tribulations and excitement of building and renovating.

Restoration Australia

Like a kind of Grand Designs with more trips to the library, Restoration Australia is a bit of a game changer in Australian renovation shows. Replacing the pressure cooker of time limits this show gives participants an ample two plus years to complete their projects.

Hosted by architect Stuart Harrison, he traverses the nation following homeowners who lovingly restore crumbling cottages and rambling pastoral homesteads, in a bid to rescue them from eternal ruin.

With no competition or prize money offered and the historic, dilapidated houses already up for restoration by their owners, this show is more of an organic viewing experience. It’s a much-needed reprieve from the fast furniture and renovation for profit mentality.

Holiday Home Makeover with Mr. Christmas

If you're like me and you're counting down the days until this god forsaken year is well and truly out of sight and out of mind, this might be the relief you’ve been searching for.

This new Netflix original series stars interior designer Benjamin Bradley (aka Mr. Christmas), as he gifts deserving families with the best present of all: a holiday home makeover! Bradley, a seasoned designer and founder of E & Co. Home Interiors, pair his design chops and penchant for all-things Christmas to provide clients with some very merry, yet extravagant makeovers for the season. As he notes in the trailer, "We're going Christmas balls to the wall!" and there’s no such thing as too much holiday décor.

Much like St. Nick himself, Bradley arrives at each recipient's home with a bag chock full of lights, garlands, and tons of tinsel! Then, alongside his team of "elves" he gives each home a festive facelift.

As a serial minimalist I found it OTT and difficult to watch. For the die-hard Christmas decoration devotees, this series will no doubt make you feel warm and fuzzy inside as you watch families receive magical Christmas makeovers as Bradley provide tips and advice in order to help us all take our home decorating and traditions to the next level.

Holiday Home Makeover with Mr. Christmas drops on Netflix on Wednesday, November 18, 2020.

Cabins In The Wild

Every cabin has a story to tell, and Contestants transform humble cabins into luxurious glamping tourist accommodation in this unique take on a property renovation show. Set in Wales, engineer Dick Strawbridge and his co-presenter, master craftsman Will Hardie follow eight teams from across the UK who compete weekly to design unique custom cabins, inspired by the local landscape, traditions and myths and complete with king-size beds, en- suites and wood burners. The finale, Strawbridge and Hardie designing a ninth cabin themselves.

If you’ve ever dreamed of getting back to nature by owning your own little woodland getaway, this one’s for you.

The World’s Most Extraordinary Homes

Some homes just connect to their environments in a spectacular way, whether they're built into the side of a cliff, nestled in a forest, perched at the top of a mountain or hidden under the earth. Award-winning architect Piers Taylor and actress and property enthusiast Caroline Quentin explore the range of incredible architect-designed houses in extreme locations around the world.

The World’s Most Extraordinary Homes fuses the aesthetic pleasure of beautiful architecture with the decadence of world travel, visiting unconventionally designed homes in places as far-flung as Norway, India, and Portugal. In each episode, viewers will gush over the inventive spaces that make each house a true one-of-a-kind home.

Selling Sunset

Luxury LA properties, fake friendships, real beefs: this spiked stiletto heel of a series makes for hideously compulsive viewing. With plenty of drama to rival Real Housewives, this Netflix reality show follows realtors at The Oppenheim Group in Los Angeles.

The real meat, though, is the fake friendships and real beefs of the women who work there: Chrishell, the All-American, wholesome, wounded lead; Christine, a Cruella de Vil/Katherine Heigl crossover who is TV’s perfect villain; Heather and Mary, on the surface too nice for this but, by the sheer fact that they are there, proving that there is something dark lying within them; Davina, a quiet agent of chaos; Maya, far too straight-shooting and normal for this sort of thing. The chemistry between them – hot, cold, licked teeth behind rictus smiles – is close to alchemy.

But even if the two-faced backstabbing bitchiness is not your thing, it is worth tuning in to check out the gorgeous multimillion-dollar properties featured on the show. There’s the modern Hollywood Hills behemoth viewers saw being constructed during season one, which ultimately sold for a whopping $35.5 million, and numerous other chic homes, such as the traditional property where agent Mary Fitzgerald and her husband Romain Bonnet tied the knot.

Are these good people? No. Are they likable in any way? Rarely. Watching Selling Sunset is like smoking a cigarette: you know it’s poison, damaging your health for ever. But does it feel good to resist it? Or does it feel good to give in?