Joan Steffend on the Viral Resurrection of 'Decorating Cents'

I talked with the host of this '90s-era HGTV show, which has gone viral for offering some of the most unhinged decor advice anyone's ever seen.

Earlier this summer, clips of Decorating Cents — a Y2K-era HGTV show — started making the rounds online after comedian Rob Anderson posted them to Instagram. He summed it up as a series about “taking a perfectly normal room, and on a tiny budget, making it worse.”

That may be how we view the transformations now, but when Decorating Cents debuted in 1998 it was a hit, running for 30 seasons until 2009. The premise was straightforward: with just $500 (about $1,000 today), could you give a room a whole new look? Host Joan Steffend presided over projects that ranged from the sensible (a fresh coat of paint, rearranging furniture) to the surreal — painted sofas, rugs painted directly onto wood floors, and an alarming number of birch tree branches forced into service as decor.

I decided to watch for myself (episodes are up on Amazon with a paid membership to Discovery+). What I found was an absolute time capsule: pure late-’90s/early-2000s cheesiness, but it was also uncannily familiar. These were the same DIY tactics I remembered from my own family — the kinds of projects my mom and aunt once tried at home.

I wanted to know more. So I reached out to Steffend, who spoke to me from her home in Minneapolis.

But before we get to the Q&A, here’s Joan’s backstory: She studied acting, went to Los Angeles, and quickly realized that — in her own words — “Hollywood wasn’t looking for me.” So she went back home to Minneapolis, took some radio broadcasting classes and landed herself a job as a local TV anchor. And Joan was successful — spending some 20 years as an anchor and reporter. But she found herself looking for an out. “I’m an empath,” Joan told me, “and it's really hard to talk about horror and tragedy and trauma all the time.”

Opportunity came when, during “wine time” at a book club, someone told her about a producer who was in town looking for a host for a gardening or decorating show. She auditioned and landed the role, but was reluctant to take it — Joan was trying to spend more time with her kids. But the producers kept offering her more money, so she took the job and stayed in it for 10 years.

Below, our interview, which has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Schmatta: How did you find out that Decorating Cents was resurfacing on the internet and going viral?

Joan: I got some emails where people would say, “Hey, did you hear Decorating Cents is back?” And I was like, Oh, that's cool — but I didn’t look it up. Then slowly, turned into, “Do you know what they're saying about you?” Like, no, I don't, but I still didn't check it out. And then my husband looked it up one night in June. It was a clip from Rob Henderson. It hit in that painful way that unexpected things do.

Schmatta: What were your what were the thoughts going through your head?

Joan: I felt pain for the people who had put their heart and soul into the show — my family of designers, directors, and producers. It just felt painful to hear it, to see the piling on. I kind of froze for a couple of weeks, and then my kids and I just sat down and we decided — let's have some fun with it. So we made a website and put up some some T-shirt and mug designs. A portion of the proceeds go to World Central Kitchen — so we could do some good.

Schmatta: So you’re feeling okay about it now?

Joan: It was such a huge tsunami of shame that my only response could be — I think I know I'm good with who I am, no matter what anybody says. So it ended up strengthening something in me that I wasn’t aware needed strengthening. But I probably wouldn’t even be doing this Zoom with you if it were a month ago.

Schmatta: I’m sorry you went through that, and that you’re better for it now. But, you know, my place of interest in Decorating Cents is that it was a really accurate portrayal of American homes. And that it maybe now stands as important documentation of the time. In “decor media” we really don’t see the average American home, so I found it to be fascinating. I’m curious to know: Did you have any interest — or background — in design and decor before becoming the host of Decorating Cents?

Joan: I had no interest in either. I grew up with parents who were children of the Depression. And so it was function over form every time. I mean, my mom would make rag rugs out of her old T-shirts and recover furniture and stuff like that.

Schmatta: A lot of the internet chatter about Decorating Cents is directed at you — but it seems more like the designer came up with the decoration. What was the ideation process like for an episode? How involved were you?

Joan: Not at all. I mean, I was as surprised as anybody what the direction of the episode would be. I would be given an address, I would show up, and then it'd be like, “Whoa, really? Okay, cool.” So I was finding out everything along with the audience. But I could always honor the creativity of the designer.

Schmatta: So how was the production team finding these homes? [Ed note: all episodes were filmed within 30 miles of Minneapolis.]

Joan: Well, first of all, they'd have to scout locations to see if they would fit television expectations — because you needed to have a certain amount of room, hopefully air conditioning, and space for all the big vehicles to park. And then they would go talk to the homeowner, and ask, in general, what do you want? They would do their best to to fit what the homeowner wanted.

Schmatta: That must have been a challenge.

Joan: Sometimes homeowners didn't always get listened to. Sometimes the designers did what they wanted to do, or what they could accomplish, or what they think would be good on TV. TV loves a little crazy every once in a while.

But, man, when you're digging in dumpsters and picking up things in alleyways…sometimes [we] didn't even know what color the paint was because they’d get this inexpensive mystery paint at Home Depot, and then you'd kind of build a room around that. I mean, it was wildly creative, and a lot of people might say, you know, “You can buy things for less,” but for television you need to have demo stuff happening all the time. So we couldn't just say, well, we found this lamp at HomeGoods — you’d [have to show] a way to make the lamp.

Schmatta: I assume the designer has a plan going in —

Joan: Yes, but never having tried it out in the space, right? This was just like, good luck. Let's hope it works. Sometimes we would try things and fail.

Schmatta: What episode comes to mind first as something that just didn’t work?

Joan: There was only one time when the homeowner said, please put everything back. And that was the one with the Native American sacred prayers. I'm so sorry. It was a different time.

[To set the scene: In that adventure, the designer takes pages of Native American prayers and decoupages them onto a newly painted cabinet. Joan’s voiceover for the episode explains: “We unanimously decided we had made a mistake…it was much too busy on the door fronts.” So they get to peeling and scraping off the paper, but not all of it will come off. They decide to leave the “distressed, aged look [they] had mistakenly created.”]

Joan: We didn't have the homeowner reveal on camera at that point, but the homeowner did come in and just go: “Hate it, put it back.”

Schmatta: Oh my god, haha!

Joan: Situations like that, you just have to make it work, because HGTV is waiting for a show, and there was literally no show that we did not turn in.

Schmatta: How much of the actual labor did you and the designers do?

Joan: I painted! I painted every time. [Our crew] was so bare bones. There was no makeup. There was one lighting guy. There was one photographer. But we did get extra people to help paint so we could get the painting done in less than four hours.

Schmatta: One thing I really admire about the show — especially in the segments where you go visit peoples’ homes to interview them about their decor — is that the homes aren’t styled. They’re messy and imperfect — especially the home where the mom is showing off her dirty kids’ clothes that she used as decor.

Joan: That's what I have to applaud. [That homeowner] was so joyful to show us that, and it was perfect for [her].

Schmatta: So why did you leave the show?

Joan: After 10 years, you could feel the wheel turning at HGTV. Some word had come down through the producers that there were some age limits that they were working with — for homeowners and for hosts — meaning they wanted to make sure that they were appealing to a younger audience. I'm not saying that that specifically [made me leave], but there was enough in me that felt like I wanted to move on and find another part of my life to live. [HGTV] did make me an offer to come back for another year, and I said that I didn't want to — not because I didn't love [my coworkers] who are like family to me. It was a really hard decision, but I felt like there was something else for me to do, and I really wasn't sure what that was.

Joan, in her kitchen in Minneapolis.

Schmatta: So where does that lead you to now?

Joan: I’ve written two books. I founded a nonprofit at one point called Peace Begins With Me, which was asking people to be accountable for embodying traits that might allow the world to be a little kinder. I've worked with my husband on a number of documentaries. Right now, we're trying to fund another documentary about the smallest acts of kindness and how they live on in people's lives.

Schmatta: One last question. What was with beds always being placed in an angle in a corner of a room? Was that, like, a camera trick or something?

Joan: I don't know! I wasn't aware of it prior to doing the show…it was like creating a different, unexpected flow. I can't explain it. It just was.