Raleigh couple says Hildi’s State Fair room on ‘Trading Spaces’ ‘nothing to be mad about’
The room was a shock of color.
Pink, yellow, green, gray and taupe all starting at a point in the middle of the room, spreading across the floor and fanning up the walls in a sort of pinwheel pattern, swallowing furniture, curtains, even window blinds as it moved toward the ceiling.
That’s the master bedroom the infamous “Trading Spaces” designer Hildi Santo-Tomas, a Raleigh native and UNC-Chapel Hill grad, designed for a Raleigh couple in an episode of the show that aired last weekend on TLC.
Ashley and David Brown switched homes with friends and neighbors Angie and Ryan Tucker, with each couple getting a designer who used a quick trip to the N.C. State Fair as inspiration for their designs.
Ashley and David worked with Laurie Smith, who created for Angie and Ryan a tasteful blue bedroom with an Art Deco-style sunburst behind the bed’s headboard, inspired by the inner spokes of a Ferris wheel.
Angie and Ryan worked with Hildi, who took Ashley and David’s request for “a pop of color” and ran as wild as a pig in a State Fair race.
How did they really feel about that room?
Before the show aired last week, we spoke to both couples and they had very nice things to say about their experiences on the show, but couldn’t go into detail about how their rooms turned out or how they felt about them.
After the show aired, lips were unsealed.
So how did Ashley and David — cool as cucumbers during the reveal on TV — feel about their kaleidoscope room when the cameras were off?
Turns out their surprisingly chill attitude on television was no act.
“We definitely expected something 100 percent ‘out there,’ but I didn’t expect quite what we had, even though I expected crazy,” Ashley said in an interview on Friday. “I was shocked. You could tell she put a lot of work into it and designed it well, but I was speechless. I think I was in shock.
“But it’s nothing to be mad about,” she continued. “The overall experience and amount of fun we had totally outweighs the room we got. It’s what we got and it’s fine.”
“It’s fine” doesn’t mean the couple kept the room as it was presented to them.
“It’s a cool design,” David said. “But I don’t want to live in it.” (Ashley and David’s three kids, by the way, absolutely loved the room.)
The two couples made a pact before appearing on the show that if they got messed-up rooms, they’d help each other fix them.
Angie explains: “I said, Number One, the thing that’s most important is our friendship and no way, good or bad, we’ll let this affect our friendship. If we get crazy rooms, we will fix it.”
“Even if we got a room we liked but we don’t like the color or there were little aspects we wanted to change, we’d help each other out,” Ryan added.
Ashley said Angie, who cried on the show because she felt so bad presenting her friend with that hue-tastic boudoir, insisted they paint the walls in Ashley’s bedroom right away.
“You can’t sleep in that room,” Angie said. “It like, glows at night!”
She wasn’t wrong about that. David said the room was very bright.
“With the walls and that floor ... it was easy to wake up facing that yellow wall just as you open your eyes,” David said.
Angie said when it was time to reveal the room to her friends on the show, she hid in the bathroom until the crew made her come out.
“I hugged Ashley and told her I was sorry, and I told her, ‘we’ll fix it,’ but they edited that out. I knew with every coat of paint we put on those walls that we’ll be repainting this.”
Ashley and David liked the gray from Hildi’s color wheel (Agreeable Gray by Sherwin Williams) and used that color for the entire room. Angie and Ryan helped, of course.
Ashley said they also kept some of the painted furniture (remember, the couple wanted “pops” of color, not an explosion): the pink dresser, a gray side table and gray headboard and frame, a couch with colorful accents, and a yellow end table.
The floor they had to live with for a couple of months, but they didn’t mind.
“For months after we just laughed,” Ashley said. “We laughed a lot.”
The couple got hardwood floors — all one color — in December.
No regrets
The couples not only aren’t mad at Hildi for the crazy design, they go out of their way to defend her work.
“I know for a fact that Hildi is not out to destroy anything,” Ashley said. “According to Angie and Ryan, she was very kind and seemed to care about what she was doing. It’s just not our taste — not most people’s taste.”
Angie said a producer even contacted them after the show because Hildi wanted to make sure they were OK.
“That speaks to the true character of Hildi,” Angie said.
“She really is a sweet person,” Ryan said. “We don’t have the same design taste, but that doesn’t reflect on her as a person. ... I think she’s an artist, so she doesn’t care if everybody doesn’t like her art.”
Something else they all agree on was that participating in the show was huge fun.
“We loved it, no regrets,” said Ryan. “We were talking after with David and Ashley and we both said we’d do it again in a heartbeat. It was so much fun, even with the outcome. The crew, everyone made it enjoyable. Overall it was a great experience.”
“The part we’re most sad about now is that it’s over,” said Angie.
The Browns, the ones who were stuck (at least temporarily) sleeping inside a circus tent, also loved being on the show.
“It’s all about having fun, all about the experience,” Ashley said. “The experiences last forever, and we get to hold on to that.”
More North Carolina episodes
There are a couple of more North Carolina episodes of “Trading Spaces” coming up soon, and one features designer John Gidding working on a home in Charlotte. A future episode of the show will take place in Chapel Hill.
Gidding’s episode airs Saturday (April 6) — the same weekend John will be in Raleigh for the Southern Ideal Home Show.
John, formerly of HGTV’s “Curb Appeal,” will appear at 4 p.m. Friday (April 5) and 2 and 4 p.m. Saturday (April 6).
Show hours are 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday. Ticket prices are $10 for adults and free for children under 12. Advance tickets — and more information on the show — are $8 at fairgroundsraleighhomeshow.com.
This story was originally published April 5, 2019 at 3:25 PM.
