The Big Picture

Executive produced by Jessica Alba and Lizzy Mathis, Honest Renovations is a feel-good home renovation series that follows the best friends as they surprise parents and help overcome challenges in their homes. Each family’s needs and personalities are unique, making the show a non-cookie-cutter experience. Alba and Mathis aim to create a flow that works for each family. The show focuses on finding balance and flow in family, career, and self. While it’s a work in progress, Alba and Mathis emphasize the importance of making time for oneself and savoring the present moment.

Executive produced by Jessica Alba and Lizzy Mathis, the feel-good home renovation series Honest Renovations follows the best friends, business owners and moms as they surprise parents by providing a helping hand in overcoming challenges within their homes. The chaos and growing pains of family and the challenges of parenting, especially when everyone has their own needs, can really affect a home environment. So, when the duo shows up with design ideas and their own experiences, the families get vulnerable and share laughs and tears on their journey to reorganization, renovation, and a life better suited to meet their needs.

During this interview with Collider, Alba and Mathis talked about already being picked up for Season 2 of the series that streams on the Roku Channel, what they’d like to continue to expand on, the importance of finding a balance and flow that can work for your family and life, what they do when they don’t agree with each other’s design ideas, getting emotional with the families, narrowing down which renovations they’ll do in a season, and how they immediately found a vibe with each other when they first met.

Collider: Thank you for talking to me about this. Watching this show inspired me to finally make the leap to repaint the inside and outside my house. It’s been stuck in an era that just didn’t feel like me, so I made the leap to make a change.

LIZZY MATHIS: Let me ask one of the most important questions, what color did you choose?

Image via Roku Channel

I had no idea there were so many shades of white, but the majority of the house is now Swiss Coffee. And the primary bedroom is now gray with white trim.

JESSICA ALBA: I love Swiss Coffee.

Congratulations on already being renewed for Season 2. Now that you’ve done a season, is there anything you want to change for Season 2? Do you feel like you found the perfect formula for the show?

MATHIS: Thank you, because we’re so excited about Season 2. Whenever you’re dealing with families, there is no perfect formula. Every family is so different. That’s what really made this show so unique. We really tapped into each family’s needs and their personalities. This isn’t a cookie cutter show, and we didn’t want it to be. We didn’t wanna come with a certain style.

ALBA: The flow of the show is different, depending on the family and what we’re doing with each home, and also where we were. We were in different places in our lives. You can see that with all of our hairstyles. I went and shot some reshoots on something I had to do from before. We had so many looks, so little time.

MATHIS: What we’re most looking forward to with Season 2 is just leaning into the families again, and being a lot more efficient with our time and our resources. Doing six homes at one time can be a lot for anybody, even on a TV show. We’re just gonna lean in and really tap into the families and their needs. That’s the biggest thing that we’re excited about.

ALBA: We dabbled in it a little bit with one episode, showing where we bought certain things or how to get the same look in your home, and I think we might do a little bit more of that, making it easy for people to shop the look and shop the renovation.

There’s a lot of talk to with these families about balance. A lot of the problem with a lot of these families is their lives are not really in any kind of balance You guys both work in the entertainment industry, you have your own companies, and you both have three kids. Do you feel like you’ve found that balance of family, career and self, or is it always a work in progress?

MATHIS: The latter. You’re constantly trying to find a rhythm and flow. Balance is a hard word to use because that would mean that everything is equal, at every given moment and at every time. I don’t think it’s like that. Our families, although they’re going through transitions, are also just trying to find a flow. What’s great about the show is that we come in and we really just try to help skew the flow a little bit, to make it more easy and intentional, and able for our families to kind of get into a better rhythm with it.

ALBA: Yeah. I don’t know if you ever feel like anything’s truly in balance, but I do think that giving yourself the time to make time for yourself is something, whether you’re single or not, that’s hard to do. We’ve all grown up in a culture, certainly in the United States, where it’s all about hitting goals and the next milestone, instead of living in the moment of what today is. That’s just something that we try to create for the show, making space for them to enjoy the here and now. With every space that we renovated, we felt like we put that inner mindfulness and intention into the spaces, so that they can just really love every moment and savor the moment that they’re spending in their home, in those spaces.

Image via Roku Channel

With the two of you, have your thoughts and feelings about design and your design aesthetics always been in alignment, or do you have any sort of agreement about what to do, if things get heated about something, especially while you’re doing the show?

MATHIS: Sometimes we don’t agree, but I think that’s the beauty in it. Because we come from two different angles with a lot of design choices, it’s our job to also talk to each other through it. If Jess suggests something and I’m like, “Oh, I’m not really sold on that,” or vice versa, it’s great when we work through it because then we really understand if it’s right for that family. Although it might be a great idea for us, in theory, is it great for our family that we’re renovating?

ALBA: I tend to push more when it comes to design and color and bold choices, and Lizzy definitely is more safe and wants everything to be safe. We’ve coached each other, or I’ve coached her, on how to take some risks. In order to get the most wow factor, you have to make some bold choices. You can’t be so safe, all the time.

MATHIS: I think Jess is really good about suggesting bolder moves. I think I’m better at how we can incorporate something into our family. Jess is really good at interior design and saying, “Hey, we should try this color, and we should try this.” I’m a little bit more along the lines of, “Okay, is it functional for our family? Will our family feel good in this space? Will our family be able to work through this decision?” It’s a good yin and yang for that.

Clearly, this show will inspire people to do some design in their own home. I’m an example of that, myself. Are there specific tips, tricks and hacks that you think everyone should know? If people watch this show and want to make even small changes, what do you think everyone should know?

ALBA: Lighten up all your furniture. That’s a standard one. Lighten it up because it will brighten it up. You don’t even need a new piece. You can actually just update with fabric and a staple gun, and it will brighten everything up. A lot of furniture is really heavy and bulky, so when you add dark colors, it’s like a heavy, dark shoe when you’re wearing all light colors. It brings the eye down and doesn’t lift up.

MATHIS: If you’re having a monochromatic moment in the room and it’s more of an intentional theme, and the walls, the furniture and the wallpaper are dark, that’s different. I would also say, just paint the wall. Choose a color and paint the wall. It will freshen things up. Even that little touch of painting your walls, your doors, your trim, and all those fun things, can make such a huge difference.

ALBA: A lot of cabinets are a cherry wood. If you do a nice, fresh coat of paint, like a nice, soft gray, and you add new hardware, it will make all the difference.

Image via Roku Channel

I can definitely attest to that. Are there aspects of renovation and design that you guys wish you could do, but have realized or learned that you just can’t, and you have to turn those over to someone else?

ALBA: We bring in all the experts, for sure. We have no problem with asking for help and bringing in experts.

MATHIS: We have great ideas.

ALBA: Most of them don’t end up on the show. The ones that work end up on the show. But just try stuff. Don’t be afraid. It’s not that deep. The creative process of trying things is actually the joy. You can feel it out and be like, “I don’t know if I love this,” and then you have a bunch of throw pillows to donate to your friends.

Did you guys go into this knowing that you would get emotional, as you connected with these families? Was that something you were prepared for?

MATHIS: You know, no. I did not go into it thinking that it would make such an impact on us, as we were making one on them. Learning about our families, getting to know them, getting to know what they like and what they don’t like, and also getting to know their family dynamic, what their pain points were and what transition they were going through with kids, is something that we really could connect to. I just loved that. I honestly would get teary-eyed, on almost every reveal. There’s a nervousness. We don’t know if they’re gonna like it, so we’re nervous too. We’re like, “Hold up, what if they’re not into what we just literally transformed their whole house into? What if they’re not feeling it?” So, you also get those nerves and you just really wanna do right by them. We really just wanted them to be happy, at the end of the day.

ALBA: Yeah, for sure.

Image via Roku Channel

I loved that moment when you guys paused before opening the door for one of the reveals, out of your own nervousness about their reaction.

MATHIS: I was like, “Girl, open the door! I’m so nervous. I can’t take it anymore.” She was like, “Okay, just one more second.” It’s hard because we put so much into it that we want them to be happy. It’s nerve wracking, just hoping that they’re gonna be happy.

I love that this is a series that revolves around families, their love for each other and making their lives easier, because who doesn’t want to root for that? But at the same time, it feels like you’ll never run out of families who need help and who need their lives reorganized in some way. How hard is it to narrow down just a small group of people, for each season?

ALBA: That’s the hardest part. It really is.

MATHIS: We had so many wonderful families to choose from. To be honest with you, what we learned is that, it’s not just you falling in love with a family and casting them for the show. It all has to make sense. The style of home makes a difference.

ALBA: You don’t want too many of the same types of renovation.

MATHIS: Everyone who’s done a home renovation knows that permitting is a big issue, so it all depends on the city they’re in and how the permitting process works with the timing.

ALBA: And can they leave their house for three months, at this time in their life?

MATHIS: It was really hard to focus on people who are in apartments or condos, as opposed to homes, because of HOA rules. There are so many different logistics that come into actually choosing our families, but you’re right, this show could go on forever because there is an endless supply of parents and families who just need this sort of intervention.

How did the two of you meet? Was it one of those like meetings where you guys knew you would be friends and stay in each other’s lives, and it would lead to doing a TV show together? What was it like when you guys met each other?

ALBA: My middle daughter and her oldest daughter went to preschool together, so we became mom friends because our daughters were friends first. And then, we just vibed. I don’t have a ton of mom friends that I’ve met at school.

MATHIS: Same.

ALBA: It’s rare to find somewhere where you’re like, “Yeah, you’re cool. You feel like my people.”

MATHIS: That’s exactly what it was. We saw each other’s vibes and we connected. It’s just like with any relationship. When you know, you just know that someone will be in your life forever. We knew instantly that this wasn’t gonna be, “Oh, okay, she cool for right now.” I think it’s cool when you make those relationships, and when you can find that later on it life. When does that happen? It’s actually very special.

Image via Roku Channel

You guys both have a lightness and brightness when you come into these families’ homes, and your smiles seem very genuine. It seems like that would be very comforting, for any nerves they might be having. Do you feel that really helps reassure these families, in turning their homes over to you?

ALBA: What’s important is that people don’t feel judged. Everybody’s just trying to do their best. Our philosophy is that everyone is doing the best they can, and they want what’s best for themselves and for their families, but they just usually don’t have the time to think through all these decisions. We allow them to press pause for three months, and really, hopefully, change their lives through home design and renovation.

MATHIS: Can you imagine the vulnerability that it takes for our families to even come on this show? Yes, they may know Jess or myself from other things, but they don’t know us. We’re still strangers. They’re really allowing these two strangers into their home and this vulnerable space, and this isn’t how they wanna be represented. It’s not like their homes are already good to go and they’re great. There’s always a little bit of trepidation. It’s a vulnerable process, so we just really wanna make sure we hold their hand through the whole.

ALBA: Yeah, no judgment.

It feels a bit like design therapy.

MATHIS: It is!

Honest Renovations is available to stream on the Roku Channel.