Doug Wilson grew up on his family's farm in central Illinois. He graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and moved to New York in 1986 to study at the National Shakespeare Conservatory to pursue a stage and screen career. He won several stage and commercial roles but he didn't quite take to the hurry-up-and-wait nature of auditioning. In the meantime, Doug supplemented his actor's income by doing different odd jobs from professional window washing to handyman chores to word-of-mouth interior design jobs. Later in the April 2000 issue of House and Garden magazine he noted an article on color psychology which got him an invitation to audition for "Trading Spaces," which, at that time, was in its formative stages.