Sarah Baeumler’s passion for blending functionality with the design of modern, luxurious living spaces has taken her down a less conventional path. Her love for nature, design, family, and thinking outside of the box has brought both challenges and rewards.
Raised in Canada, the HGTV personality, entrepreneur, hospitality designer, and lifestyle brand ambassador always had a creative streak—particularly in the arts and dance. After earning a degree in political science and English from Ontario’s Western University in 1999, she pursued a post-graduate degree in international business.
The daughter of a creative father who designed furniture as a hobby and a nurse mother, Sarah began her career in Toronto, working with the legal team for one of the largest investment banks in Canada by day and as a dance teacher at night. Still, she dreamed of a more creatively fulfilling life.
“I’ve always liked design and am fascinated by wellness and creating healthy lifestyle products,” says Sarah, who now lives part-time in Wellington and maintains a West Palm Beach office for her lifestyle products and brands. “I’ve become a blend of both of my parents.”
Bringing her vision to life took time. She met her husband, Bryan Baeumler—now also an HGTV personality, entrepreneur, and construction expert—when they were in high school. They started as friends, began dating after college, and were married in 2004.
Their dinner-table conversations often revolved around careers, goals, and dreams. Bryan encouraged her to follow her heart. “I needed to work for myself and set my own schedule,” Sarah says of her early frustrations. “I wanted to balance my life outside of the corporate world, and Bryan encouraged me.”
Sarah returned to her dancing roots full-time in 2007, opening a dance studio in Canada. She and Bryan also purchased their first commercial building and worked tirelessly to build their careers. “I loved the dance studio because it was a wonderful experience in building a team and working with customers,” she says. “Bryan always told me to work longer than anyone else and figure out how to get where I want to be.”
Meanwhile, Bryan was heavily involved with his own company, Baeumler Quality Construction, and looked at television as a wonderful marketing tool. He took a bold step and wrote to HGTV executives, offering to do construction work for free. “We were both interested in TV,” Sarah recalls. “I liked to put my two cents into the work he was doing and actually got to do interior design for various projects on the shows.”
In 2007—years before their hit show, Renovation Island, debuted on HGTV in 2020—Bryan’s first major HGTV series, Disaster DIY, premiered. Sarah contributed design work while continuing to run her dance studio. House of Bryan, which showed Sarah and Bryan building their own custom home, debuted two years later. It was followed by Renovation Inc., which chronicled the Baeumlers’ client projects as they grew their Ontario-based renovation company.
The series was a prequel to Renovation Island, which aired until 2022 and followed the family as they undertook the massive renovation of a long-abandoned hotel in South Andros, Bahamas.
“We were on vacation with the kids and not shopping for a hotel,” Sarah says of the 2017 Bahamian holiday that started it all. “We like to go off the beaten path in untouched natural areas like South Andros, which is a smaller, family-oriented island. We fell in love with it and were intrigued by a decade-long abandoned hotel we found there.”
Eager to restore the property, the couple decided to take their four young children out of school and leave Canada. It was a significant lifestyle shift for the entire family, which includes Quintyn, now 20; Charlotte, 18; Lincoln, 14; and Josephine, 12.
“We told our parents and the schoolteachers that we were relocating to the Bahamas because we had a unique opportunity to live and work in another culture,” Sarah says. “Teachers were supportive by packing up work for the kids—journaling, math, science, etc. I was crying because the whole process was so emotional.”
In true Swiss Family Robinson fashion, the family arrived in South Andros by boat, excited yet naive. The hotel had no water and no electricity, and they had no idea where to find fresh food. “At first, we stayed on the boat in the marina and asked a lot of questions,” Sarah recalls of their adventure. “We needed to see what life was like.”
Five months later, they started construction on the hotel. The couple found a 700-square-foot villa and moved in with their kids. Shortly thereafter, they put together a construction and design plan, assembled a small film crew, and let the cameras roll.
“We had constant sourcing and shipping issues since we were on an island in a country we didn’t know,” Sarah says. “The experience taught us how to deal with problems and overcome them.”
For example, there was no Home Depot, let alone reliable access to construction materials. Yet the children adapted quickly, made friends, played sports, and bonded with their parents. “It was a unique experience for us as a family unit,” Sarah says. “It was stressful and a logistical nightmare. But the kids embraced it, so we all coped.”
The result was the late-2019 soft opening of Caerula Mar Club, their boutique luxury resort comprising villas and suites on 10 secluded beachfront acres. But the grand opening in March 2020 coincided with the pandemic lockdown, resulting in a major setback.
“We had invested our life and money in the Bahamas, then came COVID,” Sarah says. “But we liked our Bahamian life where we could fish daily, eat mango and papaya, [and] leave the kids outside—where they never got sick like they did in Canada—and just enjoy nature. This was a key moment for us. We felt we could survive on the island.”
They remained on South Andros for seven months before reopening the resort, which they still own, operate, and continue to improve with new amenities. Around the time of the lockdown, they visited Florida to look for a home and found a property in Wellington’s Aero Club community. (Bryan is a pilot and now flies Cessnas back and forth from the Bahamas to Wellington.) They also maintain a home in Canada not far from their corporate head office near Toronto as well as their original villa in South Andros. With frequent travel, home is wherever they land.
Sarah spends weekends at the resort in the Bahamas and several days during the week in their Wellington home and at her West Palm Beach office. She juggles a dizzying number of roles as a TV star, designer, and brand ambassador. One of her latest ventures is Prelude, her sophisticated wellness line of natural coconut cactus body butter, oil, and scrub products, and pure soy candles. She originally created the products for Caerula Mar Club but has relaunched them for sale in the United States.
“Working with Sarah is nothing short of inspiring,” says Carlin Domi, brand director for the Sarah Baeumler lifestyle brand. “She’s a true visionary with an unwavering commitment to seeing things through. She doesn’t stop until it’s done—and done beautifully. The truth is she is just getting started. The best is yet to come.”
The Baeumlers want to grow their responsibilities on South Andros and expand their regenerative travel portfolio to include other islands. They have established the 50M Real Estate Fund to support hospitality ventures and a residential community development within the Bahamas. Sarah envisions integrating wellness, sustainable farming, job creation, and marine science into these projects.
“Our experience will drive this as we look to buy land in the hospitality sector and community development,” she says. “Since we still live on South Andros, we engage in family time, enjoy the beach, and do a lot of swimming, kayaking, and scuba diving. We love the healthy life.”
Another major project is their renovation and redesign of the Pines & Palms Resort in Islamorada, which is featured in a new television series, Building Baeumler, that recently aired in Canada and will later air on HGTV. It showcases their efforts to upgrade the Florida Keys resort while maintaining its historic charm. The show also shares updates from Caerula Mar Club in the Bahamas.
Beyond their own shows, the Baeumlers appear on other HGTV series, including Rock the Block, Battle on the Beach, and Home Town Takeover. Recently, they broke ground on two Princess Margaret Cancer Centre Lottery Show Homes near Toronto, with Sarah leading design and Bryan managing construction. Her team also designed the new Ronald McDonald House in Halifax, Nova Scotia—a 44,000-square-foot, four-story facility serving 1,300 families annually.
Expanding on her passion for yoga, Sarah operates four U.S. locations of Power Yoga Collective and Power Yoga Canada, with plans to grow to 84 studios in five years. The next U.S. studios are slated for West Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Delray Beach, and Estero.
Her continued success is fueled by her influential voice and massive reach: her TV shows air in 52 countries, and she has more than 600,000 social media followers. She’s committed to diversity, inclusion, and empowering women—principles that resonate with her audience.
“I know I’m busy, but I do like the chase,” Sarah admits. “I fly back and forth to the Bahamas with Bryan piloting. I come and go constantly. Since I love doing many things, I have no plans to slow down.”
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