The final three get a chance to shine with an individual challenge this week. Their goal – design a room in a glass house based off their own show concepts.

• Did you miss Design Star this week? Be sure to catch up with this week’s full episode.
• Heather Armstrong loves the designs but hates the bad jokes.
• David Bromstad loved Emily’s glass house.
• Candice reviews each of the contestants rooms
• Emily can’t seem to get her hands out of her jacket in this week’s Caption This
• Vote up to 10 times a day for your favorite contestant.

Come back each week for Heather, David and the rest of the designers as we get closer to crowning the next Design Star.

Casey
Red is a magical color that commands attention and here, as both backdrop and subject matter for Casey’s minimalist art gallery, it does just that – elevating the impact of the neutral elements in front of it. I also love the intimacy that the draped ceiling creates in the glass box and Casey’s exaggerated use of scale with the pendant fixture and floor mirror. However, I feel this room reads as a series of vignettes pushed up against the perimeter rather than being one cohesive room. There are plenty of tasty bits here but as a whole it still leaves me feeling hungry.

A much larger area carpet with furniture placed on it, rather than around it, is an obvious but effective way of creating and anchoring furniture into a conversation grouping. Likewise, the function of the pendant is to anchor and punctuate elements under it – a large round drum table, three times the diameter of the pendant, would have been the perfect companion to the light fixture and provided a strong focus for furniture to gather around. Unfortunately, the rustic stump does neither.

Finally, as much as paint is a powerful tool for updating and repurposing a tired piece, I would like to have seen Casey think outside the box a bit more with her repurposing idea – deconstructing and reinventing her chair, lamp and frames, rather than simply spray-painting them.

More from Candice

After enjoying some of Aarón Sanchez’s cuisine, the designers are then challenged to design rooms inspired by the dishes they ate. But there’s a catch – they must redesign a room using only the existing furniture and materials!

• Did you miss Design Star this week? Be sure to catch up with this week’s full episode.
• Heather Armstrong thinks Michael is going to confession after this week’s challenge.
• David Bromstad warns the competitors that this is a design competition, not a faux finish competition.
• Candice and Genevieve review this week’s apartments
• -The Judges’ Recaps: Casey & Courtland
• -The Judges’ Recaps: Emily & Michael
• Look out for Vern’s feet of fury in this week’s Caption This
• Vote up to 10 times a day for your favorite contestant.

Come back each week for Heather, David and the rest of the designers as we get closer to crowning the next Design Star.

Vern’s Thoughts
In pulling together a dining space out of old furniture, Michael and Emily showcase how sharing a vision as a team can really pay off. Although they are responsible for individual elements, Michael and Casey pull their individual contributions together to create an overall cohesive dining room space. The gray, green, black and white palette effuses a current and polished look evocative of today’s design trends.

Emily creates an amazingly original pendant shade, repurposing plastic flowers and taking them from tacky to refreshing. The wallpapering of the back of the china cabinet — followed by the insertion of objects painted in bright green, yellow and white — transforms junk into treasure. Michael takes dated angel figurines, smashes them and glues them to an oval mirror frame, coating the whole creation in slick black paint. The end result is stunning, textural, bold and a wonderful showcase for his ability to reinvent materials, elevating their otherwise negligible design contribution.

This team knows when to pull back and when to push. Balancing the glossiness and slickness of their decorative objects, they take a simple piece of burlap material and lay it out on the table as a nice foil for delicate dishware. A combination of formal chairs and a bench circling the dining room table make it a little unexpected and edgy. On this challenge, Emily and Michael clearly demonstrate that they are talented and not afraid to think outside the box.

More from Genevieve

Vern’s Thoughts
Repurposing existing furniture, Casey and Courtland are given the task of transforming a dated dining room space into something with real design panache. Casey smartly repurposes a side table, converting it into an upholstered ottoman with a found rug. The end result is high-end in appearance and representative of much of what is happening in design today. Her window treatments also are beautifully made and contrast nicely with the brick wall.

Courtland also does some very smart design work, creating two uber-sleek sconces using parts from dismantled lamps and copper piping. The conception and creation of a plank dining room table also adds a nice textural quality to what was an otherwise bland piece of furniture. The infusion of bright orange into the space, however, was a serious misstep that cheapens the overall atmosphere the team is trying to create. Although textural wall treatments are a strong suit of Courtland’s, this color was completely off-putting and did not work well with the existing brick wall it intersects. A soft white or neutral, along with added texture, would have worked beautifully with the white chairs and brown furniture dotting the room, balancing and lifting the heaviness of the brick walls.

The team also seriously wastes time painting a brown wood china cabinet a slightly darker shade of brown. White would have worked beautifully here as well. Overall, there is real creativity on display in this room and both Casey and Courtland show us that they are talented in a plethora of ways.

Read Genevieve’s Thoughts

This week the designers had to draw inspiration from their food baskets and design a kitchen worthy of a Sears photo shoot.

• Did you miss Design Star this week? Be sure to catch up with this week’s full episode.
• Heather Armstrong wants to give Alex a hug.
• David Bromstad wanted some color this week.
• Candice and Vern review this week’s apartments
• -The Judges’ Recaps: Italian Basket
• -The Judges’ Recaps: French Basket
• Emily attacks the camera with her wild scissors in this week’s Caption This
• Vote up to 10 times a day for your favorite contestant.

Come back each week for Heather, David and the rest of the designers as we get closer to crowning the next Design Star.

Vern’s Thoughts
This kitchen is not only styled beautifully, it exudes the charm and character of the inspiration basket chosen. Of the elements they had to pick from in the basket, Alex chose a wine corkscrew as his individual inspiration. In describing his item and why he chose it, Alex denotes that the cork screw is functional and a kitchen should be, too. For us, this is a completely weak argument and fails to draw from the vast potential in an item like that. Kitchens should be functional in any case. Functionality should be taken for granted when asking a designer to pull a kitchen together for you, so we were extremely disappointed to hear Alex describe the corkscrew in such a lackluster manner. It would have been wonderful to hear him talk about the celebratory moments that happen around the uncorking of wine or even the confluence of a beautiful, organic shape and complete, practical function in a single item. With such limited inspiration mined out of his item, Alex is left with manifesting his item through the layout of appliances and a light fixture. Unfortunately, with a design series as a prize, this does not cut it.

Casey, having selected a loaf of crusty, French bread as her inspiration, fares much better. The warmth, texture and comfortable familiarity associated with her bread are clearly telegraphed in the backsplash, flooring and countertops throughout the kitchen. Even the wall color suggests Casey’s influence. There is no question that Casey understands how to translate her inspiration into the design of a space and it is truly wonderful to have seen her progress so much throughout this competition.

In Michael’s case, he chose escargot as his personal inspirational item. There are few things more French than escargot. His snail shells are both iconic and beautiful, showcasing Mother Nature’s design skills at her best. The color and texture of these shells are also evident in the kitchen, but Michael loses us a bit when it comes to the styling of the space. There are too many items littering the countertops for a photo-shoot scenario. With a complete overabundance of items, it’s difficult to get the impact of anything that he has chosen. Many items detract from the French theme, including jars filled with pasta and a cupcake tree. It would have been nice to have seen éclairs, macaroons or even some quiche to suggest the iconic nature of his item. We know that Michael has a very skilled eye for editing but it did not come into play on this challenge. Overall, this is a beautiful kitchen with incredible flavor and styling that demonstrates that our contestants are not only talented, but also competing hard for the title of next Design Star!

Candice’s Thoughts
This team has done a great job with this kitchen’s material and finish selections including the scale, pattern and color of the backsplash, counters and flooring set off by the simplicity of classic, white Shaker-style cabinets. I love a few of the unexpected touches seen in the styling — leaning layers of art and elevating food to a sculptural level makes this kitchen look lived-in but not contrived. As much as I like the classic pendant fixture over the island, the tall vertical shape of the fixture doesn’t relate to the long island below; two fixtures would have created a more balanced look. Lastly, as much as I appreciate the idea of an additional prep area at the island, a contrasting dark wood finish on the island would have provided an element of unexpected contrast and been the ticket to creating a dynamic, eclectic and casually contemporary kitchen.

Vern’s Thoughts
With only two members on this team, Courtland and Emily have more room to inject their personal inspiration items and one less voice to have to run group decisions by. For his personal inspiration item, Courtland selects Parmesan cheese from the basket. Parmesan has so much flavor, depth, color and personality so it is easy to understand why Courtland picks it. In translating the Parmesan to the kitchen, he defaults to his faux-finishing skill set and succeeds most of the way. The walls have a wonderful textural quality reminiscent of the cheese and warm up the space significantly. It would have been nice to have seen a deeper color to really capture how bold the flavor of the cheese really is. Something bolder would’ve also gone a long way to inject the walls with a richness that would’ve removed the hints of blandness that seep into their team design. The rustic nature of the floor and the chalkboard are nice touches that demonstrate a real understanding of the overall feel of the basket that was chosen.

In Emily’s case, she chose garlic as her personal inspiration item. Garlic is so flavorful, aromatic, bold and sophisticated and we see hints of these characteristics throughout the kitchen. Emily’s garlic manifests itself through a tile backsplash with striations that remind her of the exterior of unpeeled garlic and fabric covers on the island stools that echo the shape of garlic. It would’ve been wonderful to have seen fewer but bolder accessories on the counter to reference the boldness of garlic’s flavor. Emily is a photo-shoot stylist by profession and we expect her to excel in this realm. At the end of the day, I would have liked to have seen more from these two very talented people. They both have access to an endless well of creativity and this kitchen design could have used a few more flavorful items that represented both of their items as well as their basket. The air of banality lingers around this final product but there is no denying that they completed their assignment and captured much of what their basket is all about. The combination of both modern and rustic elements in this kitchen design is a nice balance and this team succeeds in many ways. There is no question that both Courtland and Emily are eager to win.

Candice’s Thoughts
Sometimes a wood floor and wood cabinets can come off as too much of a good thing. In this kitchen Cortland and Emily have done a masterful job in selecting the cabinetry and flooring. The flooring is balanced by the uniformity of both the tighter grain and the distinctly lighter tone of the cabinetry. The backsplash tile color picks up on the cool tones of the stainless steel appliances, although I do feel it comes across as a bit bland. A darker tone of gray would have had more impact and a smaller-scale tile would have been more suitable for such a small area.

As much as I like the idea of distinguishing the island from the rest of the kitchen, the color choice seems random without any other visual links throughout the room. I was expecting much more from Emily on this challenge as finishing touches and styling are right up her alley. Unfortunately, rather than artful groupings of items, I feel a lot of the accessories are simply lined up and placed without any thought given to the relationship of color, scale, form or texture. Finally, in a space where design really is in the details, the lack of handles or pulls is a lost opportunity to inject some color or shine, ultimately leaving this space a bit lifeless if not totally functional.

This week we took a trip with Donald Trump, Jr.

• Did you miss Design Star this week? Be sure to catch up with this week’s full episode.
• Heather Armstrong guessed the losing team from the beginning.
• Candice and Genevieve review this week’s apartments
• - The Judge’s Recap: Stacey, Tom and Courtland
• - The Judge’s Recap: Alex, Casey, Emily and Michael
• Tom buddies up with Stacey in this week’s Caption This
• Vote up to 10 times a day for your favorite contestant.

Come back each week for Heather, David and the rest of the designers as we get closer to crowning the next Design Star.

Candice’s Thoughts
Although this living and dining room reads as more complete it suffers from some of the same faults as the Blue Team’s suite. You cannot sit comfortably, or lie down and see the view from the chaise, making it a curious choice for such an important area of the room. A better choice would have been two small arm chairs with a small, round 30”-high table between. The lightweight chairs could easily be turned either outwards to enjoy the view or inwards to become part of the conversation grouping with the sofa.

This space borders on utilitarian and as a whole it lacks the sense of luxury that the Trump brand stands for. Where is the excitement that can be created with color, the drama that can be created with overstated scale and the glamorous feeling created through layers of texture? The most luxurious element in this space is Alex’s handcrafted pillow which, although beautiful, is a case of too little, too late.
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