Hildi Santo-Tomas

Hildi Santo-Tomas (born April 4, 1961) is an interior decorator best known for her appearances on the TLC home renovation TV series "Trading Spaces".

Santo-Tomas is known on "Trading Spaces" for her convention-defying room designs, which have included covering walls of rooms with non-traditional materials, often to the dismay of the homeowners. These projects have included covering the entire walls of a bathroom with artificial flowers, using old phonograph records as the cover for another room, and creating a mural-sized self-portrait of herself across a living room wall. She has from time to time created daring designs, sometimes appearing to ignore the tastes and wishes of homeowners. For example, in one episode, homeowners with small children had the walls of their family room covered with hay. When the homeowners pointed out that toddlers tend to put things in their mouths and threatened a lawsuit, the costs for removing the hay was settled out of courtFact|date=January 2008. In another home she ignored the fact that the family did not drink alcohol and used a wine label theme in the kitchen decor.

Despite, or perhaps because of these controversies, Santo-Tomas is one of the "Trading Spaces" designers that has stayed on the show through all seasons and has a large viewer following.

She lives in Paris, France.

External links

* [http://hildi.com/ Official Hildi Santo-Tomas website]
*imdb name|id=0763826|name=Hildi Santo-Tomas
* [http://tlc.discovery.com/fansites/tradingspaces/bio/hildi.html Hildi Santo-Tomas biography at TLC.com]