BBC axes Changing Rooms

Makeover show Changing Rooms has been cancelled after eight years on the air.

16:26 27 August 2004

Makeover show Changing Rooms has been cancelled after eight years on the air.

The series that pushed people like Carol Smillie, Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and Linda Barker into the limelight will cease to be shown after its current autumn run, but it does have four special episodes planned for early next year.

Proving considerably more durable than many of its designs, the show began in 1995, when unknown designers Llewelyn-Bowen and Barker teamed up with former Wheel of Fortune co-host Smillie.

The series made household names of them all, as well as "Handy" Andy Kane and Anna Ryder Richardson.

"Changing Rooms has been decommissioned. It has been on for eight years and has done amazingly well in that time," said a spokeswoman from the BBC.

"There will be some specials in the future, but it is too early to say what they will be like."

At the height of its popularity, it would regularly pull in 10 million viewers.

Llewelyn-Bowen commented: "I've been so enjoying it but it does feel as if Changing Rooms has done the job it set out to do.

"It was an institution and changed the way people looked at their homes.

Its success was also not limited to these shores - with the show being aired in more than 20 countries worldwide.