Design Star shines: SouthFlorida.com

When David Bromstad faced his final challenge in the HGTV Design Star competition, he didn't play to his strength. Bromstad, 32, earned a spot in the home-and-garden channel's contest with his clever and innovative children's room designs, most of them done in model homes in South Florida. Through weeks of grueling matches against nine other contestants, Bromstad consistently pulled together the most elegant and stylish rooms.

Now, in the deciding challenge, he had to come up with a design for a glass room plopped into a New York City park, and he had to work in front of whoever wanted to wander up and watch. Did he go with his strength and design a kiddie room?

Nope.

"For a hot second I thought about doing a kid's room, but I felt I couldn't have pulled off a child's room that I would have been proud of with the resources I had," he said.

Fellow finalist Alice Fakier of Temple, Texas, meanwhile, turned her glass house into a "through the looking-glass" fantasy child's room.

Bromstad saw the paradox. "I found it very ironic that I was competing with a kid's room," he said. But he went another direction, turning his glass house into a zen-filled adult bedroom that made the most of the simple lines of the space.

And he won.

Now he will be host of a new HGTV show based in San Francisco. He'll keep South Florida as his second home. Bromstad attended Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota. After graduation, he headed to Orlando, the theme-park mecca, to work as a designer for Walt Disney World and Universal Studios. When a friend who designs model homes asked Bromstad to help him with some children's rooms, a career took off.

"He said, 'I can't do kids' rooms,'" Bromstad said. "It's almost like it was destiny. "Kids' rooms are so much fun. Only your imagination limits you. It's very rewarding."

Bromstad said over the years he designed 10 kids' rooms for various South Florida Parades of Homes and "four or five won the competition."

Bromstad's design themes have ranged from rocket ships to clamshells to sandcastles to tiki huts. Because he is also an accomplished carpenter, Bromstad often builds the fantasy beds and furniture he envisions.

"I'm a versatile designer and artist," Bromstad said. "I make furniture, do murals and they're all very unusual, very Disney-fied. I'm sort of one-stop design -- I make it, install it in homes, pick out the bedding, the lamps."

Well, until he hit the big time.

Now it might be a tad tough to get a house call from HGTV's newest design star. Not to worry. Bromstad may be leaving South Florida for a while, but not before he offers some advice to parents who want to create special rooms for their youngsters.

"The biggest factor in designing a child's room would be to do what [the child] wants because, after all, it is the child's room," he said. Parents should look through magazines and books for suitable designs, then develop a budget, and figure out which furniture can be used in the design.

"And watch my show," he said.

South Florida's wonderful location should make it easy for parents to find a theme, he said. "Because Florida is surrounded by water, I look at tropical or Caribbean, and I stick with whatever is going on in the rest of the house, such as palms, tikis or shells."

"There isn't a palette I stick by," he said. "Use pink, oranges. The sky's the limit for kids' rooms."

Bromstad recommends parents make the child's bed the focal point of the room. "The bed is the feature that should be the most dramatic," he said. "You can do dressers, but the bed should be special."

"My inspiration comes from animation theme parks and movies," Bromstad said. He recalls one design he loved. He took a plain bed and fashioned it into a vintage Corvette. Then he converted an old armoire into a gas station.

Or there was the time he turned a bed into a clamshell. Or the other time he secreted a twin bed inside a sandcastle and turned up the lights with lampshades make out of sandpails. Naturally, he used a beach ball for a throw pillow. And there was the butterfly room. "That was the first one, and people just went crazy for it," he said.

But Bromstad's favorite was a rocket-ship room. "It was always something I wanted to design. It also was really fun and very challenging," he said.

"Kids need to be in a fantasy," Bromstad said. "But sometimes parents want to be in the fantasy as much as their kids. They say, 'I wish I had this when I was little.'"

When it comes to wall paint and murals, "glazes are the most important thing," Bromstad said. "Glazes tone down bright colors and give great depth. Not one mural I've done didn't have at least one glaze. Shapes can look nice, but add glaze and they can look amazing."

Parents should consider their children's ages in room design as well, Bromstad said. "If a kid is just 2- or 3 years old, just do fantasy. If they are 9 or 10, you want a transitional room, or something that can transition into a teenage room." Bromstad said he loves the reactions children have to his designs. "Some are speechless. That's the most rewarding part of the process. It always brings me great joy."

He won't be leaving children's rooms completely behind when he starts his new show on HGTV. "There will be one episode for a child's room," he said.

You might say Bromstad has grown up a little -- or at least his designs have -- because of his television experience. "Being on Design Star showed me that I could do adult themes and that I am not just a kid's designer. I have a strong point of view with my design."