Home Improvement Product Purchases Continue to Rise

Home improve­ment prod­uct pur­chas­es in all cat­e­gories are up across the board. Since the pan­dem­ic start­ed, HIRI has observed a large jump in retail sales fig­ures, indi­cat­ing the con­sid­er­able invest­ment that home­own­ers have made in their homes. 

Here’s a sneak peek at the data for 2022:

Top Categories Purchased

Most prod­uct cat­e­gories have sig­nif­i­cant­ly increased in pur­chase rates, indi­cat­ing wide­spread home ren­o­va­tion. The fol­low­ing pro­vides an overview of the top five prod­uct cat­e­gories pur­chased in 2022:

Lawn and Garden: 

• Per­cent­age of home­own­ers pur­chased: 68.7%
• Most pop­u­lar purchases:
  • Weed killer
  • Gar­den hose
  • Lawn/​plant fertilizer

Paint and Sundries:

• Per­cent­age of home­own­ers pur­chased: 61%
• Most pop­u­lar purchases:
  • Inte­ri­or paint
  • Tape
  • Paint brushes/​rollers/​pans

Elec­tri­cal and Lighting: 

• Per­cent­age of home­own­ers pur­chased: 54.8%
• Most pop­u­lar purchases:
  • Light bulbs
  • Inte­ri­or light fixture
  • Light switch­es

Plumb­ing:

• Per­cent­age of home­own­ers pur­chased: 51%
• Most pop­u­lar purchases:
  • Toi­let repair parts
  • Faucet
  • Water heater

Hand Tools/​Accessories:

• Per­cent­age of home­own­ers pur­chased: 48.7%
• Most pop­u­lar purchases:
  • Work gloves, knee pads and oth­er pro­tec­tive gear
  • Flashlight/​work light
  • Util­i­ty knife

Motivations for Purchase

Accord­ing to HIRI data, reli­a­bil­i­ty, trust, and use­ful­ness are often most impor­tant to home­own­ers shop­ping for home improve­ment prod­ucts. They want prod­ucts to be use­ful to them and their house­hold, easy to attain and trustworthy. 

For every prod­uct cat­e­go­ry, the most cit­ed rea­son for pur­chas­ing was for a planned repair or replace­ment, fol­lowed by a planned new prod­uct. Based on this, it can be inferred that home improve­ment shop­ping is an inten­tion­al process for many, with a desired prod­uct or project in mind with every trip to the store or online search.

Generational Role

The gen­er­a­tional trends in pur­chas­ing can also reveal inter­est­ing insights. Although a high­er per­cent­age of house­holds of younger gen­er­a­tions are pur­chas­ing prod­ucts across more cat­e­gories, Baby Boomers still own the high­est per­cent­age of pur­chas­es over­all. This is like­ly due to the home­own­er­ship rate dif­fer­ence between gen­er­a­tions as younger groups have strug­gled to own homes at the same rate as their predecessors.

Why both­er with home improve­ment data?

It’s help­ful for home improve­ment indus­try firms and pro­fes­sion­als to under­stand today’s trends, with an eye on how those trends fluc­tu­ate over time. That’s why HIRI releas­es pur­chas­ing data every two years, to give its mem­bers a broad­er per­spec­tive (and more data) on the indus­try over time.

Find out what kind of ben­e­fits HIRI offers its mem­bers, learn more about HIRI mem­ber­ship here.