- Comfort – Despite rising vaccination rates, most people still aren’t venturing wide into the world. Many homeowners are looking for ways to be more comfortable at home…from lounge-worthy furniture, indulgent bedding, live plants, and dimmable/mood lighting to radiant heating floors and massaging shower heads. According to the February-March edition of The Freedonia Group National Online Consumer Survey, 60% of respondents indicated they were currently buying products to make staying at home more comfortable, so this market opportunity remains large.
- Rooms – Our love affair with the open concept floor plan isn’t over yet, but more homeowners are looking to better define their spaces and, heaven forbid, add walls so that multiple people working at home or different family activities going on at the same time don’t interfere with one another.
- Video Conference Accommodations – Most people don’t have the pressure of the Room Rater twitter account calling out their background for their work-a-day video conferences. Still, setting up a professional looking or pleasant background with attractive lighting (or at least not backlighting or glare), plants (live or faux), and appropriate art has become a priority for more people working from home, particularly as more expect to do so for the long haul. In the February-March edition of The Freedonia Group National Online Consumer Survey, 46% indicated that they were still working from home or away from their normal work space because of the pandemic.
- Sustainability – Most improvements these days are taking sustainability into account. Key options include better insulating windows, high efficiency appliances, water efficient plumbing, using natural/renewable materials, incorporating space for recycling or composting, and adding indoor “kitchen gardens”.
For more information and discussion of opportunities, see The Freedonia Group’s extensive collection of off-the-shelf research, particularly in the Construction and Building Products and Consumer Goods areas, with titles such as Residential Lighting Fixtures; Live Goods: Plants, Trees, & Shrubbery; Flooring; Global Major Household Appliances; and Plumbing Fixtures & Fittings; and Freedonia Focus titles such as Household Furniture: United States and Office Furniture: United States. Freedonia Custom Research is also available for questions requiring tailored market intelligence.