15 Facts You Might Not Know About Love It Or List It Star Hilary Farr

While in a waiting room, presumably at a doctor's office, Farr noticed Love It or List It playing on TV. She took to Instagram to share her thoughts on the surreal and strange experience, despite having been on the small screen for more than a decade. She wrote: "Always weird to see myself on the telly - hear myself in real time, watch people in the waiting room doing a double take and going… whaaaat!???"

Farr's favorite way to unwind involves being immersed in the world's natural beauty. "For me, the only foolproof way to completely disconnect and clear my mind of anxiety and stress is to be in nature, especially with water around me and of course Suki [her dog]," she wrote on Instagram.

Farr appeared in Designing Christmas, a discovery+ original movie released in 2022. The festive film centers on a fictional designer and contractor duo who host a popular home renovation show. When a production change interferes with the designer's wedding planning, she confides in her mentor—played by Farr—about her feelings for her cohost.

"I grew up wanting to be a ballet dancer," Farr told Extra in 2016. The Toronto-born designer attended the Royal Ballet School in London. At 11 years old, she went through a growth spurt that made her shift gears and focus on theater instead.

Farr’s acting career took her further, with small roles in various movies, including Sex Farm and City on Fire. Her pre-design claim to fame, though, is playing the bride at the wedding that Brad and Janet attended before their car broke down and landed them at Dr. Frank-N-Furter’s mansion in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. “It came about because we lived—as a family—right below Tim Curry [aka Dr. Frank-N-Furter himself],” Farr told Popsugar.

After a stint in theater and film acting, Farr got into interior design. (It's reported that helping her mom makeover her childhood home sparked her love of decorating.) Since then, she's honed her style while helming her company, Hilary Farr Designs, and starring in Love It Or List It.

With years of experience have come some strong opinions, including her thoughts on the safest-of-safe shades to paint your walls: beige. "It's not a color," she told The Detroit News in 2015. "There's a difference between being drawn to earth tones—which are neutrals—and beige. Every single color has a base to it. You can have a taupe that has a green undertone, a taupe that has a gray undertone."

Knowing that people don't simply buy a home based on its price or number of bedrooms, Farr zeroed in on the thing that many of her competitors in Canada were overlooking: possibility. "You have to figure out a way to get an emotional impact" out of the space, Farr said during a conference.

That means styling the furniture and accessories in each room in such a way that people see the potential of the home—and are inspired to put down an offer.

Farr shared on Instagram that she acted as the vet tech to a veterinarian on a 2017 trip to Africa. She helped vaccinate six dogs and earned the nickname "Muscles," which a group of schoolchildren gave her after seeing her zip past them on her morning jog.

Farr rose to fame in her native Canada, but she's also lived in England, New York, California, and Australia. These days, she divides her time between her New York and Toronto offices, where she runs Hilary Farr Design. She also has a home in Raleigh, North Carolina, where multiple seasons of Love It Or List It were filmed.

Farr is certainly a dog person. She welcomed her current pup, Suki, in 2021 from a rescue in India. "Without [the rescue], she would undoubtedly have died," the designer revealed on Instagram.

The pair have been best friends ever since, going on boat rides and enjoying sunny weekends at the park. Farr has even taken Suki home shopping for her clients on one of her HGTV shows.

While Suki gets a lot of Instagram love from the designer, Farr also shares a few snapshots of her one-eyed cat named Puff (sometimes Mr. Puff). The cat can be spotted snoozing upside down on her dining table and getting some R&R in bed. "Puff was hit by a car when he was an eight-month-old stray," Farr shared on Instagram. "We rescued him and put him back together again, couldn’t save his eye but he is perfect as he is."

While Farr recently announced that she is leaving HGTV's Love It or List It—and revealed her experience battling breast cancer partially led to her decision—she still maintains her solo HGTV show called Tough Love with Hilary Farr. Fingers crossed a third season is on the way!

One of the most Googled questions about Farr is whether she's married to, or dating, her Love It Or List It, costar David Visentin. The answer: Nope, and she never was. She was previously married to Gordon Farr, but the two have been divorced for years. They share one son. Visentin is married to Krista Visentin, a real estate agent.

Farr is a huge animal lover (just take one look at her Instagram feed and you'll see), and she's an active supporter of Veterans Empowered to Protect African Wildlife, focusing on their work to end elephant poaching in Africa.

Occasionally, Farr shares the recipes for some of her favorite eats—including her go-to cheesecake recipe. It's a pretty simple recipe with a berry topping, and you can all of the measurements and methods for making it on her Instagram. Another good signature dish is what she calls the "perfect summer salad on a hot day."