One of the most predictable paths for something becoming viral on TikTok goes something like this:
1) A few random people under the age of twenty discover some film or TV show made before they were born and realize that seen through 2025 eyes, it is truly deranged.
2) The more they talk about, the more people discover it and uncover even more unsettling footage
3) After awhile, some people start to argue that "Hey, some of this stuff makes a lot of sense."
4) Which prompts other people to weigh in with examples of why the show/movie is the worst and if you don't agree, you're just stupid.
5) And then the fun really begins
That's the way that the 1990s HGTV series Decorating Cents seems to have become an enormous point of conversation on Design TikTok, which usually focuses on the best ways to make your first apartment not feel so much like a very small, hundred-year-old prison cell. The show is not the focus of what appear to hundreds if not thousands of videos, many of them pointing out the absolutely low-rent design style of the show's designers and host Joan Steffend.
One TikTok video describes the premise of the show this way: "They take a perfectly normal room, and spend $500 to make it worse."
To be fair, I remember when this show was originally on the air and it was a pretty freaking insane series back then. But viewers also had a smaller universe of design shows to choose from, so somehow Decorating Cents came off as more sad than insane. But looking back at the video clips, the show does resonate in a very different way in 2025.
Here is a link to a number of the Decorating Cents TikTok videos and honestly, some of the funniest things are the comments:
"U forgot to find a decrepit piece of furniture in the garage and paint it a warm mustard yellow."
"I just want to apologize all the time I was crapping on millennial gray if this is what I was exposed to, I want to would put myself in a crazy box as well."
"these two ladies just randomly ruining people's houses"
"My mom “decoupaged” a 400 sf room (yes it was huge) with brown paper grocery bags and mod podge to look like leather. Spoiler, it looked like brown paper bags mod podged to the wall, and I’m unsure why she wanted to wall to look like leather."
"its like when you see a pigeon try to make a nest. Just clap for them, they tried their best."
"These are the two colors we’ll be working with, diarrhea and sinus infection."
Decorating Cents ran for 32 seasons, 29 of them with Steffend hosting. Since leaving the show, she founded Peace Begins With Me, a non-profit organization she co-founded to "spread kindness, compassion and understanding on a global level." Through the organization, Steffend shifted her focus from helping people redesign their rooms to helping them redesign their lives.
Steffend has written two books in recent years. 2010's "She Sparkled" and "Peace In Peace Out," which was published in 2012.
She currently much of her time speaking to audiences about her experiences on the show as well as her beliefs in mindfulness and being content with your life.