Infographics

The “Do It For Me” (DIFM) trend continues to be a powerful force in the home improvement industry. With many homeowners prioritizing professional expertise for home maintenance and repairs, this trend sheds light on who’s investing in-home services, how much they’re spending, and why. Here’s a breakdown of key insights from our recent Home Services Study.

See the HIRI-OpenBrand infographics on product categories for the US and Canada.

For 2024, The Home Improvement Research Institute (HIRI) appointed The Farnsworth Group (TFG) to conduct the latest wave of a survey to help home improvement retailers, manufacturers and distributors understand customers’ needs. The study intends to understand consumer purchasing regarding 17 home improvement categories and how those dynamics change over time.

HIRI recent­ly sur­veyed over 8,000 home­own­ers to provide the home improvement industry with an understanding of both how famil­iar home­own­ers are with ener­gy effi­cien­cy, smart home tech­nolo­gies and sus­tain­abil­i­ty prac­tices and an understanding of what moti­vates and dri­ves home­own­er inter­est in these areas.

Because the rapidly changing economy has impacted homeowner’s discretionary spending habits, HIRI conducted a study to understand homeowners’ macro-economic views and their personal economic condition, as well as evaluate their home selling and buying intentions, and how those factors have converged to influence their intended home improvement spending patterns in 2024. Here’s what we found:

HIRI’s research reveals disparities in DIY home improvement experiences among women, notably fewer engaging in advanced projects.

As homeowners are forced to again prioritize home improvement projects as available sources of funding are more constrained, these are the handful of merchandise lines that show the most promise for growth between 2025 and 2028.

Here is a look at some trends that are dri­ving MEP project deci­sions and prod­uct sales to help man­u­fac­tur­ers and sup­pli­ers strate­gize in the com­ing years:

A top of mind question remains in the home improvement industry: did high levels of home improvement activity during the pandemic represent a “pull forward” effect or a “one time” spending anomaly? Here’s what we know: