David Bromstad: The Guy Who Made HGTV Brighter
I've watched enough home renovation television to know when something is genuine versus when it's manufactured for ratings. David Bromstad falls somewhere in between. He's been on this network since 2008, and honestly, he's one of the few people who makes color feel normal again. That's not something you see every day in interior design. Bromstad studied illustration at Ringling College of Art and Design in Florida before applying to HGTV's Star Design competition. He won the first season of that show in 2006, which gave him Color Splash. The rest is basically network history at this point. But what people don't always talk about is how radically his aesthetic changed from season to season. In the early episodes of Color Splash, Bromstad was working with a much narrower design vocabulary. High saturation, bold patterns, very "theme room" energy. It played well for television but didn't always translate to real homes. By season five or six, I noticed his palettes had shifted noticeably. More neutrals. Better flow between spaces. Less of the visual shouting match that characterized his earlier work.
That evolution matters more than you'd think. Most designers who get a TV show early plateau because they optimize for camera, not for livability. Bromstad managed to keep improving. His later projects on Beach Flip and Glitter Bomb had a quieter confidence to them. You could see him stepping back from being the star and letting the rooms breathe a little more. Outside of television, Bromstad has been open about his relationship with artist Michael Merry, whom he married in 2023. Before that, Merry was frequently featured on Bromstad's social media and even appeared on a few episodes. They have a son together through surrogate, and Bromstad has talked about how fatherhood shifted his approach to design fundamentally. Rooms started mattering more than aesthetics. Function over flash, basically. If you're trying to replicate Bromstad's style for your own space, here's what actually works from his methodology:
Start with one statement piece and build outward. Bromstad frequently begins with a rug, a chair, or an artwork that already exists in the home. Everything else follows from that anchor. This is actually smarter than picking a color scheme first because most people already own things they love. Working from those pieces gives the room instant personality without feeling designed from scratch. Use color as a mood, not a mandate. His early work treated color like it needed to fill every surface. Now he uses it strategically. A single wall in a deep terracotta. Cabinet interiors painted a contrasting shade. Baseboards in a tone-on-tone rather than stark white. These small moments create the energy that made his earlier shows look good without overwhelming a lived-in space. Pattern layering needs structure. Bromstad mixes patterns aggressively, but there's usually a unifying element tying them together. Scale variation is the key. Large florals with small geometric prints, or vice versa. If every pattern is roughly the same visual weight, the room looks chaotic rather than curated. I learned this the hard way when a client tried to combine four busy prints in a single living room. It looked like a fabric swatch collection exploded. We ended up simplifying to two patterns with a shared color and the room immediately felt intentional.
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The main pitfall people run into with Bromstad-inspired design is underestimating lighting. Bold colors behave completely differently under warm versus cool light. A yellow that looks vibrant in daylight can turn muddy under incandescent bulbs. Bromstad's productions always do extensive lighting tests before finalizing palettes, and most homeowners skip that step entirely. Test samples on multiple walls and observe them at different times of day before committing. His show schedule has changed in recent years too. After a period of heavy production on multiple series, Bromstad stepped back considerably around 2022-2023. He did guest appearances and specials rather than full seasons. Given the pace of HGTV production, this is actually notable. Many hosts burn out within three to five years of their breakout show. Bromstad lasted longer by intentionally reducing his workload rather than pushing through until something broke. For anyone wanting to study his approach, the earlier Color Splash episodes are still watchable but should be taken with a grain of salt. They represent a specific moment in television design history rather than best practices. His later work demonstrates more maturity, and his personal home projects shared on social media often show the most honest version of his taste since they aren't constrained by network formulas.
The irony of Bromstad's career is that his biggest strength on television became his biggest limitation for viewers trying to apply his work practically. What reads dramatically on a twenty-six-inch screen often reads as cluttered in a real nine-by-twelve room. The trick is translating the principle rather than copying the result.
