HGTV Trivia
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48 free HGTV trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
HGTV began life as the Home, Lawn, and Garden Channel, launched from a small production company in Knoxville on December 30, 1994, and grew into the network that made shiplap a national obsession. Along the way it gave us the Property Brothers, Chip and Joanna, Hilary and David, Tarek and Christina, over 2,400 episodes of House Hunters and an annual Dream Home most winners cannot afford to keep. This quiz covers the network's history and owners, its biggest shows and the cities they made famous (Waco, Laurel, Indianapolis, Detroit), the hosts' backstories (which twins were apprentice clowns, which designer was in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which host worked as a Disney illustrator), the Canadian imports, the Brady Bunch renovation and the admission that House Hunters is mostly re-created. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so it works as a TV round, a renovation-night game or a test for anyone who has ever said "we could knock this wall down".
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What does the initialism HGTV stand for?
Home & Garden Television
Home & Garden Television was Ken Lowe's pitch to the Scripps board: the home and garden magazines Americans loved, turned into a cable channel.
Q 02Which media company bought HGTV's parent company in 2018?
Discovery
Discovery paid $14.6 billion after rival bidder Viacom dropped out of the running, and the deal also handed it Food Network and Travel Channel.
Q 03In which Tennessee city did Scripps buy a small production company in 1994 to house HGTV?
Knoxville
Knoxville was home to Cinetel Productions, which Scripps bought in 1994; the site grew into the network's sprawling headquarters and its own low-cost studio.
Q 04What kind of programme filled most of HGTV's schedule when the channel launched in 1994?
Low-budget how-to lessons
Low-budget how-to lessons came first: hosts talked to camera about quilting, scrapbooking or rugs, and one later star called it 'that sock-darning and napkin-knitting channel'.
Q 05Which New Kids on the Block singer restores centuries-old New England homes on HGTV's Farmhouse Fixer?
Jonathan Knight
Jonathan Knight went into real estate after the band first split, and had spent years renovating houses before HGTV built a farmhouse series around him in 2021.
Q 06Which film star opened HGTV's Celebrity IOU by turning his longtime makeup artist's garage into a guesthouse?
Brad Pitt
Brad Pitt teared up at the reveal in the 2020 opener: with the Property Brothers he had rebuilt the garage behind Jean Black's home for the makeup artist he had worked with for almost 30 years.
Q 07On Renovation Island, builder Bryan Baeumler moves his family abroad to restore an abandoned beach resort in which country?
The Bahamas
The Bahamas: the Baeumlers uprooted their children to South Andros to reopen a resort that had sat abandoned for years, a gamble first screened as Island of Bryan.
Q 08What is the name of HGTV's annual sweepstakes that gives away a custom-built house?
Dream Home
Dream Home has handed a viewer a furnished house every year since 1997, yet most winners have let the prize go rather than settle in.
Q 09Why have most winners of the annual house sweepstakes sold their prize?
Property taxes and bills
Property taxes and bills arrive with the keys because a prize house counts as income: the 2005 winner couldn't raise the federal tax he owed and put the house up for sale within a year.
Q 10Which Parks and Recreation actress hosts HGTV's Ugliest House in America?
Retta
Retta tours homeowners' proudest eyesores and crowns one the ugliest in the country, and the insult pays: the winning house gets a $150,000 renovation.
Q 11What did HGTV admit in 2012 about House Hunters?
Scenes are mostly re-creations
Scenes are mostly re-creations because producers pick buyers who have already chosen a home; one participant said in 2012 that the houses she 'rejected' on camera belonged to friends and weren't even for sale.
Q 12In 2009, Time blamed HGTV's programming czar for what?
Financial crisis
The financial crisis, Time argued, was fed by lifestyle channels that taught viewers how to extract value from their homes, with shows like House Hunters giving 'the housing game glamour and gusto'.
Q 13Which American politician named HGTV's Love It or List It as her favourite TV show in a 2012 interview?
Q 21Which stage career taught Property Brothers contractor Jonathan Scott his first woodworking skills?
Illusionist
Illusionist Jonathan designed and built his own stage tricks, which he says is how he first learned to work wood and metal, long before he was rebuilding houses on television.
Q 22What unusual childhood training did the Scott twins have?
They were apprentice clowns
They were apprentice clowns who worked parties and parades for several years, until Jonathan decided he had had enough of putting on the make-up.
Q 23In which city were Property Brothers twins Drew and Jonathan Scott born?
Vancouver
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, said she found it 'very calming', and after losing the 2016 election she listed watching HGTV as part of her self-care routine.
Q 14In which Texas city is Fixer Upper set?
Waco
Waco became a tourist town almost overnight: the couple's market pulled in more than a million visitors a year, and other local attractions reported record crowds from the spillover.
Q 15Which interior design trend is Fixer Upper largely credited with popularising?
Farmhouse-chic
Farmhouse-chic paid off at sale time: a 2018 Zillow Group study found starter homes whose listings mentioned a farmhouse sink sold for 26 percent more than expected.
Q 16Which HGTV sister channel was rebranded under the Gaineses' Magnolia brand in 2022?
DIY Network
DIY Network was relaunched as Magnolia Network in January 2022, giving Chip and Joanna Gaines a whole channel four years after they walked away from Fixer Upper, then HGTV's biggest hit.
Q 17What marks the Gaineses' Magnolia Market shopping complex?
Two 120-foot silos
Two 120-foot silos are rusting relics of a cottonseed oil mill; the Gaineses bought the long-idle site in 2014, kept the towers and named the complex Magnolia Market at the Silos.
Q 18In which state's mountains did Chip and Joanna Gaines film their first Fixer Upper project outside Texas, aired in 2025?
Colorado
Colorado had been the family's ski-trip escape for a decade, so the Gaineses bought a 1960s house in the Rockies to keep for themselves.
Q 19What job does Drew Scott do on Property Brothers?
Real estate agent
Real estate agent Drew finds and negotiates each house, then his contractor twin rebuilds it; he earned his licence while the pair flipped houses to pay the bills as out-of-work actors.
Q 20In which country did Property Brothers originate?
Canada
Canada's W Network backed the first two seasons, shot around Toronto; filming only headed south, to Austin, Texas, once HGTV in the US signed on as a partner for season three.
Vancouver-born, the twins grew up on a horse ranch in suburban Maple Ridge, where they helped their father build barns and fences years before they renovated anything on television.
Q 24Which home furnishings brand did the Property Brothers launch?
Scott Living
Scott Living began in 2015 as patio furniture sold on the shopping channel QVC, and within about two years the brothers said it had passed $100 million in sales.
Q 25Who were the original designer and realtor duo on Love It or List It?
Hilary Farr and David Visentin
Hilary Farr and David Visentin bickered through 258 episodes as designer and estate agent before Farr walked away in 2023, saying the show had become a rut and she wanted new challenges.
Q 26In which cult film did HGTV designer Hilary Farr appear in a minor role?
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
The Rocky Horror Picture Show opens with a wedding, and Farr is the bride, Betty Munroe, who throws her bouquet to Susan Sarandon's Janet; as a child she had trained at the Royal Ballet School.
Q 27Which formerly married couple hosted Flip or Flop?
Tarek El Moussa and Christina Haack
Tarek El Moussa and Christina Haack became a divorced couple after the sixth season yet kept flipping houses together on camera until the show ended with its tenth, in March 2022.
Q 28In which California county did the Flip or Flop hosts flip houses?
Orange
Orange County was where the couple sold homes as estate agents until the housing crash dried up their business; they switched to buying battered houses to repair and resell.
Q 29How did Flip or Flop's future hosts first pitch themselves for television?
They sent in a demo tape
They sent in a demo tape, a home video shot on a lark while renovating one of their first flips; the series it led to ran for ten seasons.
Q 30What was Bristol Marunde, co-host of Flip or Flop Vegas, before television?
An MMA fighter
He and wife Aubrey mirrored Tarek and Christina's roles for three seasons from 2017.