It's no longer necessary to trawl through chic furniture shops in Temple Bar to find "the look" for a thoroughly modern house. Everything from designer taps to the latest cushion colours can be seen fairly painlessly by visiting some of the houses and apartments on view on Saturday afternoons. Among the waves of people passing through properties, a good percentage will be style-searchers with no notion of buying.
Publicity can be a mixed blessing for estate agents. Lisney had an almost unmanageable 140 parties through a very glamorous Stillorgan house last weekend. Its Dun Laoghaire branch recently showed 80 people through a restored Sandycove house. A good percentage of these people were interested only in where the marble floors were bought and who made the curtains and cushions. One intrepid viewer even brought her husband back for a second look - to get his opinion on the floor.
One particularly stylish renovation job on a Dublin 6 period house attracted a coterie of admirers, some of whom overstepped the mark. One viewer was discovered half-way underneath a double bed trying to decipher the name on the label of a designer throw. Another was using a Farrow & Ball paint chart to match up the colour of the drawingroom walls.
"It's like a three-dimensional Homes & Gardens magazine. People do up houses beautifully and it's perfectly natural to want to look at the real thing," says Geralyn Byrne of Sherry FitzGerald, who is more understanding than most about year-round house viewers.
New properties are at the coal face of the latest design techniques. For example, take Abington, the millionaire houses in Malahide where Parkway launched a second showhouse with a fair-sized splash last weekend.
The price tag for the larger houses was £2.2 million (€2.79 million) and viewing is by appointment only. Because viewing was restricted, Gunne Residential showed the house to about a dozen parties on Saturday. No-one was discovered sneaking a look at the sofa labels.
THE interior at the Abington showhouse is on a retro-1970s minimalist theme, all thick-pile cream carpets, leather breakfast stools and brushed steel accessories.
Some good ideas at Abington wouldn't cost too much to copy. A very simple stone-flagged bathroom has a tall plain glass screen on the walk-in shower and frosted glass has been used to edge the sink.
Another clever feature is a set of four perfectly-spaced matching mirrors in the entrance hall. A faux stone finish on the walls adds a French country look. The meditation room - something no fashion-conscious house should be without - has a huge statue of Buddha to aid concentration while reclining on the soft leather massage bed.
People who are "just looking" may not be a complete waste of time, and talk around a dinner party table about a marvellous interior could well be the inspiration for a sale. "People coming to admire are better off being open about it," says Geralyn Byrne. "After all, they love property almost as much as we do."
