John Gidding

Biography

Gidding was born in Istanbul, Turkey, to an  American father and a Turkish mother.
He lived in Turkey until moving to the United States for college after attending Leysin American School in Leysin, Switzerland. He graduated from Yale University in 1999 with a BA in architecture, then the Harvard Graduate School of Design with a Master's in architecture. At Yale he sang a cappella with The Society of Orpheus and Bacchus, and choral music with the Yale Glee Club, and at Harvard he sang with the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum.
Gidding moved to New York City, where he started John Gidding Design, Inc. after working for two years as a designer for Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates.
Gidding's start in television was with the ABC Family TV show Knock First, where he and three other designers took turns making over teenagers' bedrooms.  Designed to Sell (Giddings' previous show from 2006 to 2011) was canceled in early 2011 b y HGTV, and Knock First is still running in syndication internationally.
He is best known as the designer on Curb Appeal:The Block where his team spent $20,000 on improvements to the exterior and  landscaping of chosen homeowners.  Less expensive touch-ups were done for 2 or 3 nearby neighbors' homes to improve overall neighborhood property values.
In 2015 he was one of the expert judges on the Fox TV show Home Free (2015 TV series).  He joined the cast of the reboot of Trading Spaces, joining the cast alongside Paige Davis and Vern Yip.

Personal life

He has been married to ballet dancer Damian Smith since 2013.