Demo & Reno your HGTV ideas
All lookalike couples and lookalike designs? Nope, there’s so much more to see on HGTV (*177).
Have you ever thought that even a caveman could spot a “typical” HGTV show: Designer blonde lady make house pretty with shrill complaints; husband, dark-hair man, fix house with big hammer. In all their pictures, this demo-&-reno couple are dressed like they’ve just come from a church inside a fitness centre. And what do they design? Open concept all-white kitchen, big entertainment area to “en-ter-tain”, white sofa, rugs, fireplace, brickwork. Maybe grey for a treat, a homoeopathic dose of blue if you’re a circus clown who can’t live without colour.
It’s easy to rag on HGTV’s design shows, which happens when you’re a victim of your own success. In August, you can watch exactly 100 episodes of the hugely popular Flip Or Flop, across five different seasons, with the blueprint for HGTV’s designer vs construction (former) husband vs wife team – Tarek
El Moussa and Christina Haack. You can also see somewhat similar looking duo Dave and Jenny Marrs in three different series in the same month: Diamond In The Rough, Fixer To Fabulous and Fixer To Fabulous: Welcome Inn. And you can see 44 episodes of Mash Up Our Home with looky-likey Kele Dobrinski and Christina Valencia. And there are more eerily similar couples, like Farmhouse Fixer’s Jon Knight and Kristina Crestin…
But there’s much more to see. HGTV is filled with shows and designers who not only break the mould, they grind it up and turn it into a decorative planter. Here are five nothing-alike designers and shows you can watch on HGTV…