Long, long ago in 2006 — when Hannah Montana premiered, Facebook and Twitter launched to the general public and American Idol made Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day” the No. 1 song — a baby-faced former Disney creative who’d recently pivoted to designing children’s rooms took his friend’s advice and auditioned for an HGTV competition. Two decades later, David Bromstad is celebrating 20 years as part of the HGTV family, and it’s impossible to imagine the network without his inimitable combination of warmth, joy and unapologetic fabulousness. Join us as we sashay down memory lane and revisit the years between then and now.

On July 23, 2006, HGTV viewers got their first glimpse of David as one of 10 designer contestants on an all-new series. Then hosted by Clive Pearse and judged by Vern Yip, Cynthia Rowley and Martha McCully, HGTV Design Star was an all-in, media- and cellphone-free immersion in interior design for 32-year-old David, whose previous residential experience was relatively limited (though his artistic and creative résumé was substantial). “All we had was a lot of time to ourselves,” David told Sarasota Scene. He emerged victorious from that creative boot camp as the owner of an SUV, the face of a to-be-developed-for-him HGTV show and a free spirit with a crucial vote of confidence in his live-out-loud style.

“The big lesson I took away from that experience was to just be myself. Being gay wasn’t a great idea to present on TV at that time,” he said. “But I had to be me. And that ultimately is what made all the difference. I learned to trust my gut and not second-guess myself.”

Just six months after the onstage confetti release for David’s big Design Star win, Color Splash hit HGTV like a paintball ambush. As he has explained, “You don’t get promised a show when you win Design Star; you get a chance at a show” — and while early episodes register a bit of the on-air-job-interview nerves he initially felt, his passion for coaxing homeowners away from ho-hum neutrals and into more vivid spaces was also front and center (and irresistible).

The beauty of being yourself is, of course, that when you find a receptive audience, you know just what to do next. David and his team barreled on through bland-to-blazing transformation after transformation, gaining confidence and notoriety as they went. In addition to painting a one-of-a-kind canvas for each home featured on the show, David also tucked in touches like the custom Color Splash jersey signed and framed on the wall in this once-beige, now basketball-themed family room. Are you even an on-air interior-design personality if you don’t create site-specific athletic equipment for your projects?

HGTV’s February announcement that it was ordering 26 more episodes of Color Splash was just the (literal and figurative) beginning of David’s year. It was time to start extending his magic across the network, and he kicked things off by guest-starring on HGTV's $250,000 Challenge, a summer competition series that pitted five couples from the same street against each other as they redesigned their homes room by room (and were eliminated over the course of four episodes). For his appearance, David challenged the neighbors to create original works of art for their redesigned bedrooms. HGTV's $250,000 Challenge’s host, incidentally, was none other than future DIY aficionado Drew Lachey (who would show his stuff as a Rock the Block competitor 17 years later).

As Color Splash’s audience grew and David and his team tackled even more projects, the canvases he created for each home grew more and more central to his designs. This graphic painting ultimately had pride of place above a gorgeous rosewood credenza in a pitch-perfect midcentury-modern dining room. (Like Drew's 2009 hosting gig, this is foreshadowing.)

2010 was also a banner year for David as an activist: He became the first HGTV host named to the Out100, Out's annual compilation of the most impactful and influential people in the LGBTQ+ community.

Speaking of early-21st-century cultural phenomena, have we mentioned that Color Splash went Hollywood for a very special home transformation inspired by Twilight? Joining forces with the team behind Breaking Dawn – Part 1 just before its theatrical release, David and his crew gave two lucky superfans a sneak peek at the movie, a makeover inspired by the vampiric Cullen family’s magnificent filmic home and a meetup with actor Nikki Reed.

2011 also marked a nonresidential return to David's artistic roots. His first-ever public art exhibition, a project comprised of both canvases and custom-designed furniture, opened at The Z Hotel for Art Basel Miami.

Taking over from previous host Tanika Ray in a deeply satisfying, full-circle move, David assumed hosting and mentoring duties for the seventh season of Design Star. His favorite part of that first season in charge? Tasking his contestants with tackling Kris Jenner’s offices. “She was awesome on [the show],” he told Entertainment Weekly. “I was expecting her to be a big b—-, but she was really, really savvy to work with and just really grateful. I was most proud of my designers because they killed it on that challenge. They produced such great, great designs.”

Returning as host for Design Star’s last season, David joined the judges and contestants in toasting champ Tiffany Brooks. Though they might not have known it at the time, that meeting of the influential show’s first and final winners proved to be, as Humphrey Bogart put it in Casablanca, the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Serving as a high-energy host for viewers who tuned in to see HGTV Urban Oasis 2014, a sleek, contemporary apartment perched high above Atlanta, David toured destinations around town and provided context for the spectacular, gallery-style collection designer Lindsay Pumpa used to accent the home’s luxurious spaces. He also painted one of the abstract canvases hanging in the hallway — and while he technically wasn’t a Georgia-based artist like the other works’ creators, he does show a local’s level of enthusiasm wherever he goes.

David supersized his hosting duties for the debut of his next soon-to-be-wildly-popular show, one that dovetails beautifully with his ability to be genuinely thrilled for the families he advises. Who could be better suited to join and serve as a cheering squad for newly flush house hunters as they realize their real estate dreams? When your new budget allows you to dream big, David’s the empathetic host you want celebrating at your side.

Joining fellow Design Star Tiffany as a guest judge on Brother vs. Brother, Drew and Jonathan Scott’s likely never-ending quest to out-design and triumph theatrically over one another, David toured and evaluated the sibs’ bedrooms and bathrooms to determine who would get to perform with legendary illusionist David Copperfield. They declared Jonathan the winner after both tours; happily, it seems he was unable to find the puffy shirt he’d set aside to wear for the occasion.

A year later, David headed to Galveston to evaluate the Scott brothers’ living and dining rooms at dueling beach houses on the Texas coast. He and fellow Brother vs. Brother guest judge Egypt Sherrod declared Drew the winner, which meant Jonathan and their brother J.D. got to watch and taunt him as he rode the dizzying Revolution at Pleasure Pier — but David was more than happy to join the brothers for a second ride (at which, again, he somehow managed to be photogenic?). In his pre-HGTV years, David was a sculptor for theme parks like Walt Disney World and Universal Studios; you can take the designer out of the thrill rides, as they say, but … actually, you can’t take the designer out of the thrill rides.

In the fourth season of My Lottery Dream Home, David traveled to Minnesota to help young parents Luke and Emily — who’d won $1 million with a Powerball ticket they purchased on a whim at a gas station — buy a much bigger house for their growing family. They zeroed in on the Minneapolis suburb of Eagan, 65 miles east of David’s itty-bitty rural hometown of Cokato; “I’m home, I feel like I’m at home now, this is really good,” he said. David knew from experience that growing up in Minnesota meant hanging out in the basement and hitting the hills with a sled in the winter, and he found his young house hunters a property with utterly fantastic versions of both.

He traced his own footsteps down to Florida (where he’d initially moved at 18 to earn an illustration degree from Sarasota’s Ringling College of Art and Design, then settled in for good because, of course, he and Florida were made for each other) to celebrate the one-way trip of a winning New Yorker looking to retire in Punta Gorda. “He’s ready to take that trip and never go back to New York State, absolutely not,” David explained. “The snow is not for him, and I welcome him with open arms into the Sunshine State!” (Aside: Note how seamlessly David transitioned from the Minnesota plaid in the previous milestone to the Florida plaid he sports here. A natural snowbird, our Bromstad.)

Poring over 11 seasons of his work and offering real talk on what stood the test of time and what was due for a makeover, David offered fearlessly fresh takes on Color Splash. He turned his throwbacks into teachable moments by building in style tips that viewers could use to refresh their own spaces; while we salute his commitment to evolution, we also hope the homeowners who asked him to salute the Twilight saga back in 2011 have remained faithful to the on-screen vampire family that inspired them.

To create a Minnesota-worthy, Scandinavian-influenced winter spectacular for his mother and father, David summoned his sisters Dynelle and Dionne to a very special holiday makeover in Florida. Bromstads take immersive Christmas experiences seriously, and this transformation carried all the way from new ceiling beams in the living room and “gnome moments” to creating an evergreen forest on his folks’ front lawn.

David’s track record as a dream-home guru is undeniable: The Houston headquarters he found for lucky New York lottery winner Stephen’s family was such a success that he was called back into service two years later to find Stephen a $2 million place of his own in the Big Apple. (“When you win the lottery, you get to do it all again!”) No behind-the-wheel monologues for this episode, mind you: “It’s a crazy enough city without David Bromstad driving in it,” he said. “I’m terrified of this whole situation, but I’m so excited!”

Viewers who stuck around after My Lottery Dream Home weekend premieres in 2023 were treated to the HGTV equivalent of the post-credits sequence after a blockbuster movie. In an iconic network-superheroes crossover, David joined legendary House Hunters narrator Andromeda Dunker to offer commentary on home-buyers’ adventures. Easter eggs included David’s encouragement to the shoppers (“Keep the fantasticness coming!”), as well as in-studio preparation of s’mores (for which he flung away graham crackers and marshmallows and went straight to the chocolate) and mostly unsuccessful attempts to toss and catch popcorn in his mouth ("I was never good at that"). Andy Cohen, please try harder.

After 17 seasons of wish-fulfillment real estate, David headed across the Atlantic to help a couple from the States find the pied-à-terre of their dreams in France (and pose for this excellent portrait outside of Notre Dame; d’you think Parisians could tell he’s American?). They chose Voie Foxy, a spacious urban apartment in the Champagne region that boasted both Old World details and turnkey functionality that would welcome them in style whenever they visited.

My Lottery Dream Home: David’s Happy Ending turned the show’s format on its head and revealed the long-awaited transformation of David’s own space in Winter Park, Florida. It took him years of work to realize his own dreams, and he was candid about the procedural and personal setbacks that entailed: “When it was down to the studs,” he said, “so was I." He remixed the 4,000-square-foot, Tudor-style house’s old-school style with ultra-textural, pink-on-pink-on-pink finishes that feel like the residential equivalent of his personality.

When Zillow Gone Wild host Jack McBrayer explored this 6,000-square-foot, movie-themed home outside Orlando, he donned a tuxedo: “The name’s Bond,” he said. “Municipal Bond.” David followed suit (in a pink suit): “Doctor Colonel General Gay MD, aka The Senator.” As a Florida expert with serious theme-park experience, he saluted the homeowner’s eccentric vision and, yes, real estate savvy: “You know Orlando is a very specific market, especially with it being so close to the parks; you can get away with a lot,” David said. “This is going to bode well for an investor who wants to have an income property.” Who would know better than The Senator?