Inside David Bromstad's Winter Park House

David Bromstad has hosted My Lottery Dream Home since 2015, walking lottery winners through houses they never expected to afford. In 2021 he ran the search for himself, on camera, and it ended at a Tudor-style house in Winter Park, Florida. The house has since carried him through a storm flood, a down-to-the-studs rebuild, and the hardest stretch of his career. This is the story of the designer and the house, together.

From Disney sketches to Design Star

Bromstad was born in Cokato, Minnesota, in 1973, the youngest of 4 kids. He trained as an illustrator at Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, drew for Disney after graduation, then drifted sideways into interior design. In 2006 he won the first season of HGTV's Design Star, and the prize was a show of his own. Color Splash ran from 2007 to 2012. My Lottery Dream Home followed in 2015 and is still running.

His Florida years began on the coast. Bromstad kept a condo in Bal Harbour, the beach village north of Miami Beach, and treated it as a portfolio piece. The chalkboard wall by the kitchen was black latex paint, drawn on with white colored pencil instead of chalk. He put the condo on the market in 2016.

The host runs his own search

By 2021 Bromstad had been renting an Orlando-area apartment for more than 3 years, a stay he planned at under 1 year. He had been looking at houses on and off since 2017, and the pandemic pushed him to buy. HGTV turned the search into a special. My Lottery Dream Home: David's Dream Home aired on July 16, 2021, with Bromstad and his friend Greg Stott touring 4 houses around Orlando.

The winner was a Tudor-style house in Winter Park, north of downtown Orlando. It had been renovated before he bought it and needed no structural work, though that is not why he chose it. “When a house hits you, it hits you,” he said of the pick. He has since called it a generational home, one he doubts he will ever sell.

We keep the exact address off this page. It is a real front door, and the precise reveal is the paid part. For the property record, the neighborhood, and the map pin, see David Bromstad's Winter Park home profile on Velvet Ropes.

A Tudor in Chase and Chapman's town

The setting does half the work here. Winter Park is one of Florida's oldest planned towns. Loring Chase and Oliver Chapman, 2 childhood friends from Massachusetts, bought 600 acres of it in 1881 and platted a New England-style town around the lakes, with a central park, church lots, and a resort hotel by the water. The South Florida Railroad, Orange County's first, had reached the area the year before, and the depot opened in 1882. The town incorporated in 1887 and grew as a winter resort for wealthy Northerners.

Rollins College, founded there in 1885, is the oldest college in Florida, and the brick streets and oak canopy still read more New England than Central Florida. A Tudor-style house fits that streetscape. Winter Park has been borrowing northern architecture since the 1880s, and Bromstad's pick joins a 140-year habit.

Flood, mold, and a happy ending

The renovation turned into a 4-year test. Storms flooded the house mid-project, mold followed the water, and Bromstad took the interior down to the studs. The plan grew into a kitchen rebuild plus an addition with a home theater. Partway through he stopped for about a year, entered a treatment program for substance abuse and mental health, and traveled to Norway, where the architecture of his ancestral homeland reshaped the design.

HGTV filmed the whole arc. My Lottery Dream Home: David's Happy Ending aired on December 19, 2025, and Bromstad has said it is likely the last time he designs on camera, though he keeps hosting. “I've spent 18 seasons of My Lottery Dream Home making my winners happy. Now it's my turn,” he said ahead of the premiere.

More homes behind the ropes

Design TV keeps handing us front doors worth mapping. When your map moves to Nashville, step inside Christina Haack's Franklin house, another HGTV name behind the ropes.