12 Things You Need To Know About Veronica Valencia Hughes, Star Of HGTV's Revealed
Designer Veronica Valencia Hughes is poised to make a big impression on HGTV viewers with "Revealed," a new series with a boldly original concept that blends heritage and ancestry with home decor. In each episode of the series, she meets with a genealogist, who takes her on a deep dive into the family history of that episode's homeowners. With the information gleaned about their heritage, she then creates a customized mood board that showcases esthetic design elements inspired by the family's ancestry. From there, she and her team — designer Tommy Rouse, builder David Bohler, and artist Joshua Smith — undertake a renovation on the clients' home, utilizing chic design elements that pay tribute to the family's cultural heritage while also integrating unique art and treasured artifacts within the design of the home.
"As a Mexican and Native American designer, culture and tradition have always played a vital role in my life," she said in an HGTV press release about "Revealed," with new episodes appearing on both HGTV and HBO's streaming service, Max. "I've been inspired to tell a family's story through design in over 600 home renovations," she added, "and I believe that discovering our roots can profoundly influence every aspect of our lives."
But who is the woman at the center of this fascinating new series? To find out more, read on to discover 12 things you need to know about Veronica Valencia Hughes, star of HGTV's "Revealed."
Veronica Valencia Hughes's unique heritage inspired HGTV's Revealed
Veronica Valencia-Hughes's ancestry is somewhat unique, a blend of two very distinct cultural backgrounds. "I'm both Mexican American and Native American and very proud of my cultures," she told HGTV. "And so are the families we feature on 'Revealed,' where we incorporate personal artifacts into their home design to help bring their histories and stories to life."
Her own personal journey to better understand her roots inspired "Revealed." By delving into the family history of the clients featured on the show, she's able to create home designs that are not just esthetically beautiful, but also deeply significant to the homeowners. "We worked with historians from Ancestry.com to help our clients figure out their past so we can fill their houses with meaningful items," she explained.
In order to pull it off, she strives to gain an in-depth understanding of each client she works with, going far beyond discussing their wants and needs from a home-decor perspective. "I always say I need to feel a homeowner before I start designing their home," she said, revealing that she gives clients an extensive questionnaire that covers a lot of ground, all part of her quest to get to know them on a deeper level than what's typically seen on an HGTV series. "I'll also talk to the people in my clients' lives, including relatives and friends," she added. "A lot of research goes into each project."
She's been interested in design since she was a kid
While Veronica Valencia Hughes didn't officially launch her career as a designer until after she became an adult, designing is actually something she's been doing since childhood. "From an early age, I loved design," she told HGTV. "My dad and I would drive around looking at model homes on the weekends because I was fascinated by their staging and architecture." She recalled that they would feign interest in buying a place just so they could gain entrance and explore the design features.
When she was still a kid, she told Renegade Collective, she would shift furnishings around and re-style rooms just for fun. Her parents encouraged her interest, allowing her to undertake makeovers of various rooms in the family's home. "My father would come home from work and all of the rooms were switched," she shared. "He was always cool with it." When she was a teenager, a friend enrolled her in a design program without telling her about it. Valencia began attending those lessons, and quickly found herself hooked. "After a few classes, I became obsessed," she shared with HGTV. "I would stay up all night working on presentations."
Shortly after graduating from design school, she landed a job as an assistant to designer Jill Wolff. That job, along with the encouragement and mentoring she received from the designer for whom she worked, proved to be life-changing for her. "Like my parents, she let me soar creatively," Valencia added.
How a family friendship first brought her to HGTV
The same friend who enrolled Veronica Valencia Hughes in design school, Lauren, was also instrumental in launching her design career. As the star told HGTV, Lauren's grandmother was friends with the mother of Paige Hemmis, a designer and TV host working with "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." As a result, Lauren was offered a job working for Hemmis as her assistant.
Once again, Lauren took matters into her own hands, without her friend's knowledge, by giving a copy of Veronica's resume to producers in hopes of landing her a gig on the show's design team. Out of the blue, she received a phone call to set up a job interview for "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." "I got the position and was told I would have to be on an airplane in a week. I'd never been on an airplane before!"
After taking her first-ever flight, she joined the show's design team, in an off-camera, behind-the-scenes capacity. She credits all of the success she's experienced since to that job — and to Lauren for orchestrating the whole process. To pay her back, she surprised Lauren with a full design makeover of her home, which was documented in an episode of the first season of "Revealed."
She cut her teeth on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
Working on "Extreme Makeover" would seem to be a dream job for any aspiring young designer, and that was certainly the case for Veronica Valencia Hughes. "I loved that job," she told HGTV, noting that was where she met every member of her "Revealed" team (Tommy Rouse, David Bohler, and Joshua Smith). "On the show, we were a tight-knit, behind-the-scenes design team," she recalled. "We'd come into communities and take over a town. We worked on more than 1,000 projects in 34 states."
In addition to the close bonds she formed on the show, "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" proved to be formative in a variety of other ways. "I'm 37 and I've been in the design industry for 20 years, and 15 of those years have been running the behind-the-scenes design teams for some of the most well known makeover shows on television," she wrote in an Instagram post. "It was on that show that I found a passion & drive I never knew I had," she added, revealing that she also met her husband, television producer Kristopher Hughes, while working on the show.
Interviewed by Renegade Collective, she recalled how that single phone call, all those years ago, came to completely change her life. "I was just a baby," she said. "I received a random phone call, had no clue what it was about and the next thing you know, I'm pitching a design presentation to Emmy Award-winning executive producers."
She's obsessed with hats from a specific designer
One thing that viewers of "Revealed" will certainly discover is that Veronica Valencia Hughes loves to wear hats. As she explained to HGTV, donning a hat was initially a way of coping with insecurity, which had developed due to the stutter she'd battled since childhood. "Hats were my alter ego," she said, but pointed out that those hats also came to become a signature look while working on a design. "People were always like, 'Find the girl with the hat!' Now they're just my thing," she explained.
When it comes to those chapeaus, her hands-down favorites come from designer Janessa Leone. "I splurge on a couple of them every year, usually after I book a big job," she said. "I'm like, 'Kris, it's Janessa Leone time!'"
Insecurity may have once been a factor, but these days her self-confidence is through the roof — so much so that it was the key element in how she came to have her own show on HGTV. As she explained, some executives from the network, curious to see how well she'd fare on television, placed her on a few HGTV shows. "Then during the pandemic, and with newfound confidence, I called up one of the executives to see if he would give me a shot at my own show," she recalled. As she put it on Instagram, "I had the guts to ask for my own show."
She's already Rocked the Block
When HGTV execs decided to give Veronica Valencia Hughes a television test run, one of the shows in which she appeared was "Rock the Block." In each season of HGTV's hit home-renovation series, a different assortment of the network's personalities compete against each other, in teams of two, to redesign and renovate one of four homes located on the same street. Each team is given an identical budget and time limit, with the team that adds the most real estate value to their respective home deemed to be the winner.
Veronica wrote about her experience on the show on her website, having appeared in the fourth season's fourth episode, titled "Lower Level Face-Off." As she recalled, she was partnered with "Windy City Rehab" star Alison Victoria to judge the four teams' efforts on redesigning and renovating the unfinished lower level of each home.
"This episode was HUGE one!" she wrote, praising the teams for their hard work and creativity. "They each poured every ounce they had into 1,500 square feet of a BLANK CANVAS to create something beautiful," she added.
She's worked with the Property Brothers
In addition to appearing on "Rock the Block," Veronica Valencia Hughes also popped up in two 2023 episodes of HGTV's "Brother vs. Brother," the competition series that pits "Property Brothers" siblings Drew and Jonathan Scott against each other. In her first appearance on the show, she noted on her website, she and chef Alex Guarnaschelli (a veteran of such Food Network series as "Iron Chef America" and "Chopped") were enlisted to judge the results of the brothers' respective kitchen renos. She also appeared as a judge in the series' seventh episode, "Behind the Battle."
"We had so much fun judging on this one!" Veronica wrote on Instagram, recalling her experience on the show. "So much fun in fact, that Alex had me laughing so hard I almost peed my pants while filming!"
Other than those two on-camera appearances, the rest of her experience with HGTV has been behind the scenes. In addition to her role as a producer on "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," she's also served as production designer on HGTV's "Home Free," "Design At Your Door," and "Help! I Wrecked My House."
She founded her own design business
In the midst of her work on "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," Veronica Valencia Hughes and husband Kristopher Hughes launched their own design business, Design Hunters. As the Design Hunters website pointed out, the company cuts a pretty wide swath when it comes to the types of projects that are undertaken. "From new construction, to remodels, to television home renovations, we work with you to design a space reflective of your personal style and taste," the site noted. "We work and collaborate with builders, commercial brands, television networks, photographers, non profit organizations and other designers around the world to produce design content for editorial, broadcast and residential use."
One might assume that taking on a project for a client would be a far easier and more straightforward process than dealing with the lightning-fast pace of television production. For Veronica, however, the opposite is true. "You would be surprised how easy it is working for TV networks as opposed to clients," she told Renegade Collective. As she explained, that may not be the case for everyone, but the tight deadlines required in television suited her personality. "Working on a television show requires things to be accomplished in a very short amount of time," she noted. "Everything needs to be done yesterday and working under pressure is my [specialty]."
She and her husband tied the knot in a redwood forest
Given the unique nature of her HGTV series, "Revealed," and her demonstrable flair for style, it shouldn't be surprising that the wedding of Veronica Valencia was far from cookie-cutter. In fact, when she and husband Kristopher Hughes tied the knot in 2017, it wasn't in a church, but beneath a canopy of giant redwoods in a California forest.
As Stylecaster reported, the two walked down the aisle at Calamigos Ranch in Malibu, where guests enjoyed such special touches as flowers from a farmer's market and a mobile photo booth situated in the back of a truck. "November 11 was easily the most magical day of my life," she said of her wedding day. "I married my best friend, my business partner, and my life partner. I have no words for the ceremony."
Judging by an Instagram post celebrating her hubby's birthday in January 2023, the fire is still burning brightly between the couple. "THE best decision I ever made," Valencia wrote of marrying Hughes.
She designed the home of a former Bachelorette
In addition to her on-screen HGTV appearances and off-camera design work for some of the network's series, Veronica Valencia Hughes also distinguished herself by doing some design work for celebrity clients. One of these was Ali Fedotowsky, who starred in the sixth season of "The Bachelorette."
As MyDomaine recalled, Ali and her husband Kevin Manno enlisted Veronica to redesign their home. One additional challenge with this particular reno was the fact that Ali was in the home stretch of her pregnancy while the renovation was taking place. "We finished the house when my baby was two weeks old," Ali told People, revealing she took a hands-on approach to assisting with the renovation despite expecting her second child. "No one would believe it if they saw what I was doing nine months pregnant or with a newborn in my arms!" she proclaimed.
Admittedly a big fan of Chip and Joanna Gaines' work, Ali joked that she continually instructed Veronica to bring a "Fixer Upper" look to the design. "I kept saying, 'I want it more Joanna Gaines!'" Ali said. "Ali's style is decidedly fresh and coastal with a dose of rustic and vintage," said Veronica of the look she was going for, instructed by Ali to ditch as many modern elements as possible and bring in a farmhouse vibe.
Her biggest design influences come from nature
Whether she's working with clients through her design business or on a television show, Veronica Valencia Hughes must factor in a variety of criteria that influence the designs she creates for those projects. When it comes to her own personal style, however, she opts for a mélange of different styles that she's dubbed New Modernism. "I'm a girl who loves a floral print and a classic stripe, and I just happen to think they can all live in the same space," she told Select Blinds. "It's not about rules. It's about living with what you love the most, all captured in one space."
While Veronica is certainly influenced by the work of other designers, an even bigger influence is the natural world all around her. "I'm forever inspired by nature," she explained. That nature-inspired perspective is one that she's always eager to pass on to clients, sharing her belief that design isn't rigid and inflexible, but can actually be an expression of personal freedom that doesn't necessarily need to be strictly by the book. "People tend to follow what they perceive to be mandated guidelines: a dishwasher has to go here, a fridge needs to be there," she told HGTV. "I always tell my clients to keep an open mind."
Her top tips for creating high style in a baby's bedroom
When redesigning "Bachelorette" star Ali Fedotowsky's home, Veronica Valencia Hughes paid extra attention to the nursery. Not surprising, considering Ali's baby arrived shortly before the project was completed.
When designing a baby's room, Veronica is a firm believer that form and function can co-exist happily, and that a nursery should be as stylish as any other room in a home. Much like the mood boards she creates for her clients on HGTV's "Revealed," she is a big fan of creating a vision board for each space she's redesigning — particularly a baby's room. "It's important to understand the vision for the space — so don't only decide the color, concept or style, but also ask yourself what special moments and milestones you envision in this space," she explained in an interview with Motherly. "That way, you can determine the must-have items and find pieces with sentimental value too."
Veronica feels that vibrantly colored, childish-looking rooms have not only become passé, but will also require a redesign fairly quickly as the child grows older. That's why she feels that, from a design perspective, less can be more in a baby's room. "I feel all nurseries should feel serene and as stress-free as possible, and keeping them simple is the best way to achieve this," she pointed out. "All of the colorful toys will naturally bring in some character."