'Love Island's' Olivia Bowen shares a look inside her dream new home - including a nod to ITV2 dating show

Reality TV icon legend Olivia Bowen has given an update on the renovation of the dream home she bought with her husband Alex, and has revealed it includes a nod to the ‘Love Island’ villa where the pair first met.

The 30-year-old mum rose to fame after finishing as a runner-up on the second series of ‘Love Island’ in 2016, with her now-husband Alex. Olivia Buckland, as she was then, coupled up with Alex Bowen during the ITV 2 dating show show and the pair stayed together throughout.

Bowen then proposed to her on New Year’s Eve that same year. They married almost two years later, in September 2018, and went on to welcome their first child four years after that. Their son, Abel Jacob Bowen, was born in June 2022.

The Bowen’s recently sold their £1.3 million Essex home and bought a luxurious mansion, which they are now renovating. TV star Olivia talked to ‘The Sun’ about their new home - and has shared how they have been inspired by the place where their love started. She told the publication: "We've designed a little kitchen barbecue area, getting a pizza oven, and we'll have seating. So the ‘Love Island’ is still creeping in."

She continued to explain that her tastes have evolved over time, and that will be reflected in the new house: "I've become a lot more confident in my style and my design process, and I think that that's just helped with this house. It will show because my style is very different to the old one. It will look very different and I think people are not going to expect what it's going to look like.

"The last house was very modern, a lot of like clean lines. A lot of sort of beige, minimalist kind of thing, but this house is very different. There's a lot of colour, a lot of pattern. It's just very country. We have a lot of beams and things, so yeah, it's kind of completely different."

Olivia has already shared a lot of the style decisions she and husband Alex have made in their new home with their fans on Instagram. There’s pastel tiles in one of the bathrooms and a huge walk in wardrobe with sleek, cream coloured furniture.

Explaining the reason the couple chose to move, Olivia said: "The location (of their old house) was just not great. It was on a main road, and with a toddler like, it was just really not ideal to live there, and this house just popped up in our perfect location.

“It was a plot with the plans already approved to build the house and it was just the perfect opportunity to build a house exactly to our specification in the perfect location. So we really couldn't say no. It was just everything kind of aligned at once. That's why we ended up moving."

Olivia said she is hoping the family will move in to their new home in June. You can follow Olivia on @oliviadbowen and keep up-to-date with the Bowen’s home renovation on their dedicated account @thebowenhome.