5 Key 2024 Home Improvement Trends: Online Purchases, Market Share, Promotions & More

We’ve reached the mid­way point of 2024, and the Home Improve­ment (HI) mar­ket is buzzing with fresh trends and inno­va­tions, prompt­ing ques­tions like: How is mar­ket share shift­ing? Are con­sumers opt­ing more for the con­ve­nience of online shop­ping? What mar­ket trends are dri­ving Major Appli­ance pro­mo­tions and sales? 

Open­Brand explores 5 mar­ket trends and eval­u­ates the ​“why” behind share changes. Read on to uncov­er changes in online and in-store pur­chas­es, learn what con­sumer trends are dri­ving pro­mo­tion­al changes for retail­ers, and under­stand oth­er 2024 mar­ket trends. 

Source: All data looks at home improve­ment cat­e­gories tracked by Open­Brand as of Q2 2024 includ­ing: Home Appli­ances, Kitchen & Bath, Lawn & Gar­den, Tools & Hard­ware, Fur­ni­ture, Home Acces­sories, Home Care Prod­ucts, Paint Prod­ucts, Build­ing Mate­ri­als, Light­ing, Mill­work, Plumb­ing & Elec­tri­cal, and Flooring.

1. Brand & outlet winners in home improvement market share 

Across all Home Improve­ment cat­e­gories, the top 5 retail­ers hold­ing the high­est mar­ket share in dol­lars for the first half of 2024 are:

1. Home Depot ( 17.1%)
2. Lowe’s (15.2%)
3. Con­trac­tor (10.3%)
4. Ama­zon (6.4%)
5. Wal­mart (4.9%)

Note: While not a tra­di­tion­al retail source, ​“Con­trac­tor” is a top out­let with­in Open­Brand data as the major­i­ty of con­sumers are pur­chas­ing prod­ucts direct­ly from the con­trac­tors they hire to com­plete project work.

Among all home improve­ment pur­chas­es, the three cat­e­gories gen­er­at­ing the most dol­lar share for the indus­try in 2024, as well as the lead­ing brands and out­lets for each, are as follows:

1. Major Appli­ances (20%) — lead­ing brand is LG; top out­lets are Lowe’s and Home Depot
2. Lawn & Gar­den (14%) — lead­ing brand is Scott’s; top out­lets are Home Depot and Lowe’s
3. Home Care Prod­ucts (14%) — lead­ing brand is Trane; top out­lets are Con­trac­tor and Home Depot

2. Major appliances pricing & promotions trends at Home Depot & Lowe’s

With Major Appli­ance prod­ucts gen­er­at­ing the most rev­enue for home improve­ment busi­ness­es, let’s look at some of the pric­ing and pro­mo­tions dri­ving sales — specif­i­cal­ly at Lowe’s and Home Depot.

Through­out 2024, Major Appli­ance con­sumers were increas­ing­ly price-con­scious, often com­par­ing pric­ing across retail­ers and favor­ing replace­ments over upgrades. 

Home Depot strate­gi­cal­ly catered to this trend by focus­ing on low­er­ing shelf prices rather than net prices and enhanc­ing pro­mo­tions. Spe­cif­ic insights include: 

1. Lowe’s led with high­er pro­mo­tion val­ues dur­ing President’s Day, but Home Depot sur­passed them with more sub­stan­tial pro­mo­tions dur­ing Memo­r­i­al Day. 
2. Dur­ing the Memo­r­i­al Day pro­mo­tion­al peri­od, shelf prices for dish­wash­ers, cook­tops and wall ovens, laun­dry, refrig­er­a­tors, and ranges saw notable decreas­es at Home Depot. How­ev­er, net prices remained steady and were high­er on aver­age com­pared to Lowe’s.
3. Com­par­ing Q1 2024 to Q2 2024, Lowe’s saw a 1.34% decrease in aver­age pro­mo­tion val­ue, while Home Depot grew 7.80%.

3. Home improvement is seeing an increase in online purchases 

In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, online sales in home improve­ment saw tremen­dous growth, jump­ing from 19% of pur­chas­es made online to 27%. Though not return­ing to a pre-pan­dem­ic state, online home improve­ment pur­chas­es did see a slight decline over the next two years, drop­ping back to 25% in 2022.

In 2024, online home improve­ment pur­chas­es are back on the rise, con­tin­u­ing a two year trend and reach­ing a new all-time high of near­ly 29%. 

This cor­re­sponds to 22.3% of dol­lar share being made online. Inter­est­ing­ly, while 1.6% more units are sold online now than dur­ing the 2020 pan­dem­ic era, dol­lar share is .1% low­er now than in the sec­ond half of 2020.

4. The average price paid (APP) in 2024 was lower for online home improvement purchases 

In line with dol­lar share grow­ing slow­er than unit share, the aver­age price paid (APP) across online home improve­ment pur­chas­es was down YOY, drop­ping from $237 in 1H 2023 to $228 in 1H 2024. 

Addi­tion­al­ly, dur­ing the first half of 2024, APP across online home improve­ment pur­chas­es was $19 low­er than pur­chas­es made in-store. This has been a con­sis­tent trend over the past five years, with the excep­tion of the first half of 2020, when the APP for online pur­chas­es ($212) was slight­ly high­er than those made in-store ($207).

5. Hardware was the top home improvement product category purchased online

Across all home improve­ment prod­ucts, Hard­ware was the cat­e­go­ry most often pur­chased online so far in 2024, with slight­ly more than half of all Hard­ware (52%) pur­chased online. 

Notably, Hard­ware is the only home improve­ment cat­e­go­ry where the major­i­ty of pur­chas­es are made online. The next clos­est cat­e­gories were Fur­ni­ture & Home Acces­sories, with 47% of all pur­chas­es made online, and Small Appli­ances, at 45%.

Get More Home Improvement Insights

If you’re ready to learn more about the cur­rent state of the home improve­ment mar­ket, join us from 5:30 – 7p on Sep­tem­ber 18 for our com­pli­men­ta­ry Recep­tion & Cock­tail Hour at the HIRI Sum­mit, hap­pen­ing Sep­tem­ber 18 – 19, 2024 in Chica­go.

About OpenBrand

Open­Brand uses a com­bi­na­tion of time-test­ed process­es and next-gen­er­a­tion tech­nolo­gies to deliv­er unmatched mar­ket intel­li­gence to the Home Improve­ment indus­try, help­ing busi­ness­es deter­mine not only what is hap­pen­ing — but why. Learn more about how they are shap­ing the future of mar­ket intel­li­gence for home improvement.