HGTV’s Tiffany Brooks on the secret to a real Barbie Dreamhouse

Barbie-mania is in the air, thanks to the hotly anticipated summer blockbuster “Barbie” starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling.

HGTV is onboard too, with its new reality competition show “Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge,” which counts HGTV star Tiffany Brooks among its judges. 

“My immediate reaction [to being asked on the show] was ‘Of course.’ I didn’t care what else I had planned. I needed to be there,” Brooks told The Post. 

“Having been on some of their competition shows before, I know that all of the network stars eat, breathe and live to be competitive,” she said. “I have not yet met a non-competitive person on the network. So I knew they were ready to win.”

Hosted by model Ashley Graham, “Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge” airs Sundays at 8 p.m. and follows eight teams of HGTV stars as they transform a Southern California house into a real life “Barbie Dreamhouse.” 

Each team is given a space, such as the kitchen or living room, and assigned a decade (the ’60s, the ’90s, etc.) 

Then, they transform their designated space with life-size features that look like they’re straight out of a Barbie Dreamhouse toy set — including a pink staircase, a purple pet elevator or a light-up dance floor. The panel of judges decides which team gets to advance to the next round, and the winning team gets a donation made in their name to Save The Children.  

Brooks, 44, a Chicago-based interior designer, is an HGTV staple. She won “HGTV Star” in 2013 and she was also the host/designer for “HGTV Smart Home” in 2020 (and a competitor on Season 2 of “Rock the Block.”)  

She’s also a Barbie fan from way back.

“I have a total of nine Dreamhouses and Barbie structures. I basically have a Barbie town. A couple of them, I made myself, and a couple of them, I refurbished,” she said. “And a couple I bought outright. So, I’m kind of a fanatic. It’s a fun hobby.

“I had my own Barbie town when I was 10,” she said. “I stopped playing with them when I hit the age of 12 or 13. I picked it back up as an adult when I lost my father, because that was one of the things my dad would do — every week, he’d get paid and buy me a new Barbie doll or play set with his pay check.

“He’d come home and surprise me with it. I picked it back up after I lost him, and it grew until I had a Barbie village, with a grocery store, movie theater, restaurant … I have a nod to Barbie in my own house –my library is hot pink. The bookshelves, the ceilings, the walls, everything.”

The competitors on the first episode of  “Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge” include couple Egypt Sherrod and Mike Jackson (“Married to Real Estate”) who compete against builder Jasmine Roth (“Help! I Wrecked My House”) and Food Network’s Antonia Lofaso (“Beachside Brawl”). 

Kitty Black Perkins, who is credited with designing the first Black Barbie, makes an appearance and Maureen McCormick (“A Very Brady Renovation”) also appears as a celeb guest judge, joining Brooks. 

“The teams have to echo a decade in their home,” said Brooks. 

“They also had to have a ‘toyetic’ feature, which is like in the Barbie dreamhouse, you press a button and something happens. So they were judged on that, and overall style, and how well they carried out the total look. 

“One thing that I was looking for was an actual reference to the Barbie Dreamhouses, or a play set of the decades that they were given,” she said. “Iconic features like the trellis work, or some of the patterns that Barbie used. 

“Another thing I was looking for is to make sure a human of our size could use the toy features in the space itself.”