4 Throwback DIY Ideas from 2000s HGTV Shows That Totally Hold Up Today

If I were to look back at my childhood to figure out how, exactly, I’ve written over 900 Before & Afters for Apartment Therapy, I’d say it might be because my mom loved watching home renovation shows when I was growing up. I loved watching with her — even as a kid — and still do. 

My personal fave was HGTV’s Divine Design with Candice Olson, who has not graced my TV screen since the early aughts. But TikTok is letting me relive my nostalgic decorating show days thanks to little clips from this and other throwback decorating shows.

TikTok has tons of jokes about many of these ’90s shows, and yes, the ideas are, a little, well out-of-the box (another ’90s and ’00s TV show I loved, BTW). But my hot take is: I think the DIYs and trends in these vintage design shows have a little more staying power than people realize. Here are some of the best throwback ideas I’ve seen and how they’d work in 2025.

This TikTok showing a clip from an old Decorating Cents episode shows off a lot of maximalist decor. The velcroed-on tiles from this video are perhaps something to leave in the 2000s, but the bold red kitchen cabinet color is not!

Cut to present day, and this color still holds up. DIYer Imani Keal used a similar shade for the cabinets in her Brooklyn apartment’s kitchen. (Imani’s paint color pick was Valspar’s Royal Garnet.)

This particular Trading Spaces clip showing a living room reveal to a less-than-enthusiastic couple really puts the “rust” in rustic, thanks to the actual rust (!) covering the walls. You might not want to add literal rust to your walls, but wood drenching and wood paneling are totally a thing in 2025.

Here’s the home of Heather Davis, Urban Outfitters’ director of print, pattern, and textiles, to prove that wood paneling looks just as dreamy in 2025. “Wood has always been a comforting, grounding material for me,” Heather previously told Apartment Therapy. “Its warmth and texture not only soften surfaces visually, but also add a sense of depth and character.”

OK, unlike in this clip from HGTV’s Decorating Cents, I don’t think anyone’s wrapping their chandelier in tulle or sheer netting in 2025. (As the TikTok comments — and the person filming the clip — point out: Hello, fire hazard!)

That said, is the idea of tulle netting over a chandelier not one step away from those increasingly popular flush-mount light cover-up kits? The lesson learned here is: If you’re stuck with a rental (or hard-to-remove) light fixture, you can cover it up. Just make sure to do it in a way that’s not flamable.

Although I’m not loving everything in this old-school HGTV clip, the kitchen windows — which feature grapevines, string beads, and more — actually have one idea I’d pull out. Those pressed flowers are a timeless classic (but I’d skip the indoor trellis).

In its 2025 Creativity Trend Report, Michaels Arts & Crafts identified crafting kits, gateway crafts, and crafting parties as DIY trends for the year, and flower pressing (especially on a small scale with a kit) would fall into these categories. This larger-scale pressed flower door in Patricia Ojendyk’s Airstream is completely gorgeous for the 2020s. The flowers were grown on the farm the Airstream sits on. And re: the trellis, ivy decor is popular with Gen Z. 

As I’ve previously written about, what goes around comes around, and I think it’s fun to laugh at these trends but also to laugh at the fact that in about 10 years, we’ll probably be scrolling at whatever the next version of TikTok is (or gazing into something holographic or implanted in our own brains) and laughing about today’s biggest trends, like big bows and curtain walls.