Top 10 HGTV Shows That Overstayed Their Welcome: A Look at Series That Should Have Ended Sooner

HGTV is known for its unpredictable decisions, sometimes axing promising series prematurely while extending others that have lost their spark. There are various reasons a show might dodge cancellation. Perhaps it maintains impressive ratings despite lacking chemistry between the hosts. Maybe it appeals to a specific audience segment HGTV is reluctant to lose. Or, quite possibly, it features the ever-popular Property Brothers.

Regardless of the rationale, it’s clear HGTV has kept certain series running longer than necessary.

“Divided by Design” presents an intriguing concept: Ray and Eilyn Jimenez, a charismatic Miami-based couple, operate competing design firms with different styles. Each episode typically starts with Ray and Eilyn meeting individually with a potential client, each trying to outdo the other with their design proposals. Despite the rivalry, their playful exchanges add a touch of charm to the show. But where does it falter?

“Divided by Design” has a fun premise: Ray and Eilyn Jimenez, a stunningly gorgeous husband and wife design team based in Miami run competing design firms with differing styles. Most episodes follow the same format: Ray and Eilyn individually meet with a potential client and make a design pitch to win the job from the other. At the end of the day, their competition is all in good fun. The pair have great chemistry and their banter makes for entertaining enough television. So what’s the problem?

Well, for a show about the couple’s conflicting design styles, they’re way more compelling when they work together. “Divided by Design” is at its best when Ray and Eilyn share the screen and bounce ideas off of each other, and that’s missing with the current format. Sure, they butt heads when it comes to design, but that real conflict is better than any manufactured drama the HGTV writers could conjure up.

So far, “Divided by Design” has only had one season, and while it was far from awful, a show where the two are forced to work together would make for better TV. HGTV hasn’t confirmed that the show is canceled; however, a post on Eilyn’s Instagram from early 2025 references “embracing the next chapter,” making it sound like a second season isn’t likely. Fingers crossed Ray and Eilyn film a spinoff called “United by Design.”

Season 1 of “Fix My Frankenhouse” was promising. The show follows Mike and Denese Butler, a lovely married design team who fix up overly complicated homes in the greater New England area, and boy, do these homes need help. The homes they take on for these renovation projects are often oozing with character but have issues that completely overpower their charm. The couple came up with the term “Frankenhouse” to describe “hodgepodge houses that don’t flow,” Mike shared in an interview with HGTV. According to him, “the layout and features just don’t make sense or lend themselves to modern-day living.”

Sadly, Mike and Denese’s renovations manage to fix these design flaws but can miss the mark when it comes to honoring these older homes’ style. Unhappy viewers have taken to Reddit to voice their complaints. “Episode three left me speechless with rage,” wrote one user in a thread with similar comments. The viewer was distressed by what they described as the couple “casually disregarding house style.” To be fair, it doesn’t matter as long as their clients are happy. There’s no rule that an older house’s charm needs to be preserved throughout the years, but it’s still disappointing to see an antique interior become completely modernized.

Despite occasional design blunders, Season 1 was a fun watch. Season 2, however, dragged in comparison. The focus on whether Mike would quit his corporate job felt forced and unnecessary. The show could have ended on a high note with one season instead.

Christina Haack and Tarek El Moussa are HGTV royalty thanks to their hit show “Flip or Flop.” The show’s premise is simple: The then-married couple would purchase homes at low prices, renovate them, and sell them for a profit. They were usually successful, but sometimes renovations would unveil more problems than the two bargained for. If the home would not offer a return on their investment, it would flop. 

If the idea behind the show was simple, the couple’s personal lives were anything but. While seemingly happily married, Christina and Tarek’s relationship grew troubled behind the scenes. Tensions between the two mounted as Tarek was diagnosed with cancer and the couple struggled with infertility while trying to conceive their second child. The “Flip or Flop” couple eventually divorced following an argument in which Tarek reportedly left their home with a gun.

The two continued to film their show during and after their divorce proceedings, before it finally ended in 2022. Admittedly, watching Tarek and Christina navigate working together while no longer being a married couple was interesting to watch at first. But by Season 10, that dynamic was no longer refreshing and the show had run its course. By the time Christina was on her second husband post-divorcing Tarek, it was beyond time for “Flip or Flop” to end. 

For those who are unaware, “Design Star” was HGTV’s answer to shows like “American Idol” or its sister channel’s “Food Network Star.” HGTV would find young, talented designers, pluck them from relative obscurity, and give one lucky winner their own specialized show on the network. This would, theoretically, change their life and transform them into HGTV’s next big star.

In practice, “Design Star” winners saw mixed results. On one hand, Season 2 winner David Bromstad has seen undeniable success after his stint on the show. On the other, how many “Design Star” winners can you name? Notoriety isn’t the only thing that makes one a star, but HGTV struggled to make the show’s winners into full-fledged household names. Other than Bromstad, the other winners saw only a few seasons, at best, of their individual shows. 

By the time “Design Star” was canceled, the show’s host Vern Yip told the Atlanta Journal-Constiution that viewership was around 1.5 million per episode, down from approximately 3 million per episode in 2009. HGTV could have cut their losses and ended the show earlier rather than struggle with finding a spot on the channel for each new winner. 

“Love It or List It” is one of HGTV’s quintessential series. For most of its run, the show followed designer Hilary Farr, who would renovate a family’s home in the hopes they can learn to love their property, and real estate agent David Visentin, who would try to convince homeowners to list their newly renovated house and purchase a new one instead. The pair developed an entertaining rapport and bickered their way into the hearts of viewers around the world for over 19 seasons. 

Then, in 2023, Hilary announced her decision to leave the show. In an exclusive interview with People, she explained that it was time for her “to move on and meet new challenges.” Despite their onscreen arguments, the two hosts developed a close friendship that shone through to audiences. Hilary credited David with supporting her through her breast cancer diagnosis in 2014 and spoke warmly about being “there for each other” through hard times. Given how integral the two hosts’ chemistry and bond had been to “Love It or List It,” it would have been reasonable for HGTV to cancel the show upon Hilary’s departure.

Instead, Page Turner of “Flip or Flop: Nashville” replaced Hilary for Season 20. To her credit, Page does a great job trading wits with David and designing homes for their clients. But is it too much to ask that HGTV create a spin-off of “Love It or List It” with Page and David instead?

“Renovation Island,” originally airing as “Island of Bryan,” on HGTV Canada followed Bryan and Sarah Baeumler as they renovated an old resort in the Bahamas. The couple’s end goal was to restore it to operable condition and run it themselves. They moved into one of the resort’s villas with their children and opened the resort to the public in 2019 after roughly a year of renovations.

Things took a turn when Hurricane Dorian hit the island, and the Baeumlers paused filming before reopening the resort in February 2020. Any joy they felt at reopening was short-lived though, as the COVID-19 pandemic began shortly after. The pandemic brought its own set of problems, but Sarah and Bryan were determined to see their dream through.

While it was interesting to watch the Baeumlers deal with unprecedented circumstances on top of the existing challenges of fixing up the resort, the show’s premise felt stale by the final season. Bryan and Sarah were already operating the resort by that time and any new problems requiring renovation felt as though they were manufactured for television. 

Married design team Chelsea and Cole DeBoer made quite the impression on HGTV viewers with their show “Down Home Fab.” Unfortunately, not all fans found that impression to be a good one. Soe HGTV fans who’ve watched “Down Home Fab” took to Reddit to complain about nearly every aspect of the show. Everything from Chelsea and Cole’s personalities to their design choices is fair game. “I think their designs are always so ugly,” one viewer wrote. “I can’t believe people hire them.” Dozens of similar statements have been upvoted by other frustrated fans.

Before entering the home design world, Chelsea and Cole had already gained celebrity status as reality TV stars on a different channel. Chelsea first starred in the show “16 and Pregnant” before appearing in “Teen Mom 2,” which documented her and Cole’s love story. Her time in the “Teen Mom” spotlight has helped Chelsea amass an impressive Instagram following – something she’s praised and berated for in equal measure on sites like Reddit.

While Chelsea and Cole seemed passionate about learning more about interior design and improving their skills as they built their business, their lifestyle was of most interest to viewers. Season 3 of “Down Home Fab” had its moments, but segments that focused on the couple’s lives were few and far between. Rather than just continuing with a lackluster design show, Chelsea and Cole’s show should’ve concluded after the second season. Better yet, HGTV could give them a new show that shows the couple furthering their design education. We’d watch!

Chip and Joanna Gaines built their home design empire off the success of their seminal HGTV show “Fixer Upper.” Though the couple is now worth millions and run their own lifestyle, entertainment, and home design company, Magnolia, they come from humble beginnings. Although the couple both attended Baylor University, they never crossed paths until they had both graduated. A chance meeting at Joanna’s dad’s auto shop in 2001 led to something more and the two were married just two years later.

Shortly after, Chip convinced Joanna to give flipping houses a try, and the Gaineses soon built a small business doing just that. While they earned enough to live comfortably, the money paled in comparison to what they’d later earn once they landed a show with HGTV. “Fixer Upper” was born thanks to High Noon executive Katie Neff, who found the Gaineses through a 2011 blog post about Joanna. The post mentioned Chip, their family, and of course, their business flipping houses. It was the perfect circumstances for a hit HGTV show. Neff contacted Chip and Joanna, the couple filmed a sizzle reel, and the rest is history.

“Fixer Upper” Season 1 aired in 2013 and ran for five successful seasons. By the show’s end in 2018, the Gaineses were officially stars. But they were also worn out by the fast pace of filming a hit series while working on their personal projects. In an interview with People, Chip said that he felt “trapped” and that they were behind on projects by Season 3. “We were screwed. We were doing projects backward,” he told the publication. If HGTV had ended “Fixer Upper” just a season earlier, it would’ve been better for everyone.

Tarek El Moussa of “Flip or Flop” fame returned to HGTV in 2023 alongside his new wife, Heather Rae El Moussa of “Selling Sunset,” with another show about flipping houses. The first season of “The Flipping El Moussas” documented the couple navigating their joint business while growing their family with the birth of their son Tristan. The show was canceled after Season 2 aired, but it could easily have stopped earlier.

It’s not that “The Flipping El Moussas” was bad. If anything, the show gained fans thanks to the couple’s refreshing dynamic. Unlike many HGTV couples, neither Heather nor Tarek are very involved in the designing or renovating of the houses they flip. “Tarek treats it like a business and he’s very clear about that,” one fan wrote in a Reddit thread about the show. Other fans revealed that they appreciated Heather’s realtor background and that the couple gives credit to the designers who style the homes they flip. This transparency was definitely one of the show’s greatest strengths, but it doesn’t change the fact that “The Flipping El Moussas” is basically “Flip or Flop” with Heather instead of Christina.

While the “Flip or Flop” format held strong for nearly a decade, it was more than time to let it go. Heather and Tarek are cute together and both have personality in spades, but must they have an HGTV show about flipping houses? With the show being canceled, perhaps they can just enjoy their newlywed lives and flip houses without sharing it with the rest of the world.

Even if you know next to nothing about HGTV, you likely recognize the Property Brothers. Twins Jonathan and Drew Scott have become huge stars for the channel thanks to their wildly successful brand, beginning with their first series, “Property Brothers.” After building a career in real estate, the duo were approached to bring their business to television. But when they started pitching their idea to networks, HGTV wasn’t interested. “They were looking for husband-and-wife combos,” Jonathan said in an interview with Today.

The show was then picked up by Canada’s W Network, where it became an instant success. HGTV came calling soon after, and the “Property Brothers” empire was born. Drew and Jonathan are fantastic additions to HGTV and thrive on the network — but how many shows do they really need? 

At this point, we’re dangerously close to reaching “Property Brothers” fatigue. While HGTV was on a cancellation spree in 2025, they only postponed two of the brothers’ planned shows. And if there’s any show to cancel, it’s “Don’t Hate Your House with the Property Brothers.”

To be fair, the show’s focus on fixing the client’s existing house’s problems rather than moving into a new home altogether is refreshingly practical. It’s also nice to know the homeowners will end the episode relieved that they actually love their house again, thanks to the show’s formulaic nature. But the Scotts have several shows airing concurrently on HGTV, and we — and they — can stand to lose this one.