Nearly 20 years after winning the second season of HGTV‘s “Design Star” and going on to host multiple shows, winning an Emmy in the process, Kim Myles has returned to her roots — literally. The interior designer has purchased a hair salon in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, with her husband of 25 years, Scott Myles — going from room makeovers to beauty transformations.
On October 27, 2026, Entrepreneur magazine profiled Myles for its “America’s Favorite Mom and Pop Shops” series, diving into the way she’s transformed her own life to focus on one of her earliest passions.
HGTV’s Kim Myles is Creating a Novel Business Model at Her New Salon
Kim originally got into the interior design world on a whim. She worked at salons after completing cosmetology school, with no formal training in interior design, when she auditioned for the second season of “Design Star” at Scott’s urging.
She told Leigh Valley Style, “I had been rearranging my own home and living room for many, many, many years at that point, and my sweet husband was like, ‘Please apply for this. You can go rearrange someone else’s place. This would be great.'”
In addition to opening her own design firm, Kim hosted HGTV’s “Myles of Style” for three seasons, co-hosted 2023’s “Battle of the Bling” with Todrick Hall, and 2024’s “Battle on the Mountain” with Kim Wolfe and Rico León. She won an Emmy for OWN’s “Home Made Simple” and her show “High Design,” where she travels the U.S. to makeover cannabis stores, is available to stream on HBO Max.
Most recently, Kim was a judge on “Rock the Block” in 2025 — just before she decided to give her life a makeover. That same year, Kim and Scott bought a 35-year-old salon called Gadzooks that had seen better days, she told Entrepreneur. They kept the name because of its legacy in the area, but gave the interior a bit of a makeover, from furniture to a plant room featuring greenery from a local merchant.
“I said to the team, ‘I’m not gonna change a thing for the first six months, except I’m gonna make it prettier inside,'” she recalled, noting that she wanted to take some time to observe how the salon operated to figure out what worked and what didn’t.
Eventually, she and Scott did make changes to create a work environment and incentives that would attract great talent, including benefits for employees like continuing education, 401Ks, year-end bonuses, maternity leave, sick days, mental health days and more — all things that are rare in the salon world. Their eventual goal is to “transition this business into an employee-owned model,” she said
Former HGTV Host Kim Myles Has a 1900 House to Keep Her Design Mind Busy
While buying a salon may seem like an odd move to outsiders, Myles explained to editor-in-chief Jason Feifer that she’s been cutting hair for friends and family since she was 12, calling it her “first love,” and said that she and Scott had been “entertaining this idea for years.”
After commuting to Gadzooks from their home in Jersey City, New Jersey, for a while, the couple moved to Lehigh Valley earlier this year, not far from where Scott grew up.
Kim told Lehigh Valley Style she’ll satiate her love of design as she slowly restores the 1900 home she and Scott bought, telling the outlet, “It delights me and it awes me that I get to live my life in this place that has held so many people before me, and so much is intact. With some love and elbow grease, I can bring it back. I have restoration in mind.”
And Kim hasn’t hung up her TV hat just yet. She hopes to still have time for making TV appearances as a design judge or mentor in the near future.
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Longtime HGTV Star Reveals Life Makeover, Now Running a Hair Salon