Lauren Kobayashi Riihimaki, better known as LaurDIY, is a Canadian YouTuber, content creator, and entrepreneur who has turned her love of DIY (Do It Yourself) projects into a huge online business. Lauren was born on August 11, 1993, in St. Catharines, Ontario. Her main YouTube channel, LaurDIY, has more than 8.5 million subscribers, and she has a loyal following on Instagram and TikTok as well. Her journey from a college student who liked to make things to a multimedia influencer, TV host, and businesswoman shows how creative, strong, and business-minded she is.
Life and Schooling in the Past
Lauren’s parents, Greg and Gail Riihimaki, are from different cultures. Her father is Finnish and Ukrainian, and her mother is Japanese. She grew up in St. Catharines, a big city in Ontario’s Niagara Region, where she was surrounded by people who encouraged her creativity. Lauren was very active as a child. She took lessons in swimming, skating, piano, and guitar. She also showed signs of being creative early on, like cutting out cardboard boxes with her father’s help.
When she started studying graphic communications management at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University) in 2011, her creative outlet took a new turn. But the structured school setting made her want to get away from it all and be creative. She was bored with her schoolwork, so she started redecorating her room with DIY projects. This gave her the idea to share her work online.
LaurDIY’s Rise
Lauren’s journey on YouTube started almost by accident in December 2011. At first, she made a WordPress blog called Desire & Inspire to share her do-it-yourself projects, mostly sewing tutorials. She started posting videos to YouTube under the name LaurDIY because she thought they would better show her step-by-step processes. What started out as a hobby quickly took off because of her friendly personality and easy-to-follow tutorials.
Lauren was able to handle a full course load and make videos for YouTube every week by her second year of college. Millions of people watched her videos, which showed how to make your own room decor, fashion hacks, and school supplies. She signed with Select Management Group, which helped her make her brand more professional and get deals with companies like Target, Forever 21, and Starbucks. Lauren was making enough money from YouTube to support herself full-time by the time she graduated in 2015. This meant she could make content creation her job.
Her channel grew so quickly that Forbes and the Los Angeles Times called her “Millennial Martha Stewart.” Lauren’s videos changed from DIY to lifestyle vlogs, beauty tips, and challenges, which showed her true self. She also started LaurDIY Vlogs and co-hosts the Wild ‘Til 9 podcast, which together have 535,000 subscribers as of January 2022.
Growing Her Empire
Lauren has an impact that goes beyond YouTube. In 2017, she tried her hand at acting, playing “The Engineer” in the second season of the YouTube Premium show Escape the Night and appearing in Tyler Perry’s Boo 2! A Madea Halloween and YouTubers React. That same year, her Facebook Watch web series Served By LaurDIY debuted, showing off her cooking skills.
Lauren made a big move into traditional media in 2019 when she hosted and was the executive producer of Craftopia on HBO Max, a Daytime Emmy-nominated crafting competition show. The show, which started in 2020, helped her inspire a new generation of crafters and cement her status as a creative expert. Lauren called Craftopia a “big leagues” moment in her career. It was a big deal.
She has started her own business selling crafting kits, jewelry, and clothes at stores like Target, Walmart, and Amazon. Working with brands like PopSockets, Fanta, and Mudd Jeans has helped her reach even more people. Lauren is a unique influencer because she can expand her brand while staying true to her DIY roots.
Life and Problems in General
Fans love how open Lauren is about her personal life. She has talked about her problems with anxiety and depression, especially when she was in college and had a lot of schoolwork and a busy schedule. She was able to get through these problems with the help of therapy and medication, and she came out stronger and more confident.
People have also been interested in her love life. Lauren and Sebastian “Baz” Morris were together from 2010 to 2015, and they stayed friends until he died in an accidental drowning in 2020. She was in a high-profile relationship with fellow YouTuber Alex Wassabi from 2015 to 2018. They broke up in a video that made her cry. She started dating singer and business owner Jeremy Lewis in 2019. They met while filming a “Roast Yourself Rap” video in 2015. They got engaged in December 2022 and then got married on April 7, 2024. Lauren’s honest stories, like how she first thought Jeremy was gay, have brought her fans closer to her.
Effect and Legacy
Lauren has built a community she calls her “#prettylittlelaurs fam.” She has over 1.2 billion views on her YouTube videos and millions of followers on Instagram (4.4 million) and TikTok (2.2 million). She has been able to reconnect with her audience, many of whom have grown up with her, by making content that is more real and less family-friendly in recent years. She talks about important events in her life, like her wedding, honeymoon, and talks about fertility, which show how her life has changed over time.
Lauren has a lot of power because she can inspire people to be creative and real. She talks about how important it is to find a balance in her life, and she does this by keeping her public and private lives separate. Her rise from a bored college student to a multimedia mogul shows how powerful passion and hard work can be. She told Mashable, “There’s going to be an audience for literally anything that you want to make,” which encouraged people who want to make things to be true to themselves.
Lauren Riihimaki, also known as LaurDIY, is more than just a YouTuber. She is a creative force who has changed what it means to be an influencer. She continues to inspire millions to be creative through her DIY videos, TV shows, and business ventures. Lauren is still a shining example of honesty and creativity in the digital world, even as she goes through new phases in her personal and professional life.
