Credit: Entertainment Tonight
When he’s on screen, David Bromstad has a particularly vivid quality. His bright shirts, quick wit, and exuberant enthusiasm give him an endless energy that seems to be piped in from another dimension. However, he let the curtain drop in late 2025, revealing a man pleading for assistance rather than a character.
His dream home renovation in Florida had already been a very personal endeavor, more about healing than luxury. Then a storm hit, destroying the makeover rather than just delaying it. Mold, brought on by water damage, infiltrated the walls he had hoped would keep him safe. And he found something incredibly familiar among the debris: himself.
| Name | David Reed Bromstad |
|---|---|
| Born | August 17, 1973 |
| Profession | Designer, TV personality, artist |
| Career Milestones | Winner of HGTV Design Star (2006), Host of My Lottery Dream Home (since 2015) |
| Health Disclosure | Checked into treatment in 2025 for mental health and addiction recovery |
| Source | People Magazine – December 2025 |
This was more than just a construction setback. Stability collapsed.
David openly discussed how the chaos forced him to resort to his old coping strategies in the December 2025 HGTV special My Lottery Dream Home: David’s Happy Ending. He started using drugs once more, but this time out of desperation rather than disobedience or recklessness. “It was really easy to go there when you’re in distress,” he said.
The real surprise, though, was not that he spiraled but rather that he stopped.
He stopped everything and entered a treatment program on his own. He didn’t do it to boost ratings or appearances. He knew he wouldn’t be able to survive otherwise, so he did it.
He started releasing years of trauma that had built up behind his smile during the program. being teased as a teenager. experiencing rejection because of one’s differences. constructing a brilliant career that, in retrospect, had become “unsustainable.”
He told TV Insider, “I am a bright and shiny person by nature.” “Until it began to destroy me, that version of myself saved me.”
I read that quotation three times. I found it to be remarkably self-aware and painfully honest. This was a particularly blatant acknowledgement that joy, when coerced, can become pressure for someone who had centered their entire public persona around it.
He had already discreetly posted about his sobriety back in August 2023, celebrating his fiftieth birthday with a hiking trip across Norway. After ascending the 2,000-step Reinebringen mountain trail, he reported feeling “present, sober, and living the life I was intended to live.”
It wasn’t arrogant. It was grounding.
Both the destination and the challenging, stunning, high-altitude ascent were symbolic. He claimed that he could breathe the same air as his ancestors in Norway. That was not an escape. There was a reunion.
Concern quickly spread after he shared a picture of himself hooked up to an oxygen tube months later. However, David winked and reassured the very next day. He wrote, “You guys are weird and sweet.” “I was getting my cells oxygenated and delicious in a hyperbaric chamber!”
The decision to share that type of therapy wasn’t made at random, but the humor was quintessential Bromstad. Treatment with hyperbaric oxygen is frequently used to repair internal damage to the immune system, nervous system, and body. It felt remarkably symbolic to him.
He never portrayed recovery as a one-time occurrence, which has become especially motivating. No dazzling montage of transformations. No tie-ins with products. Just make small steps forward. Sincere, untidy, but progressive.
The house that was supposed to be a fantasy turned out to be a reality. However, he created something much more durable—perspective—from those bare walls.
“My childhood fantasy, my house, is broken, like me,” he said in his HGTV special. However, that recognition did not equate to defeat. It served as a guide for reconstruction. One that made it possible for the house and the man to develop into something greater than they had anticipated.
He continues to design, work, and appear on camera for other people. However, he now also shows up for himself.
When victories are presented with ribbons, it’s simple to celebrate. David Bromstad has celebrated progress even when it appears to be silence, drywall, dust, and second chances.
And that may be his most exquisite design to date, according to those of us who have watched him for years.