Every homeowner who is thinking about a new bathroom, an extension or a roof repair asks Google first. Read enough of those searches together and you get a fair picture of which jobs are coming, and what people want to know before they pick up the phone. This is our read of home improvement search trends UK homeowners are showing this autumn, taken from Google Trends on 8 October 2026, and what it means for where a builder or installer puts their marketing budget.
How we read the numbers
Google Trends does not tell you how many people searched. It tells you what share of all searches a phrase took, scaled from 0 to 100. That is still useful, provided you read it carefully, because home improvement searches are heavily seasonal. Compare this September with last March and almost everything looks like it is booming, when really it is just the time of year people start thinking about their homes.
So we did two things. For growth, we averaged the weekly figures into whole years running October to September and compared each year with the one before, which cancels the season out. For what people are asking right now, we used Google’s rising related searches, which compare queries against each other inside the same twelve months, so the season affects them all equally.
One limit is worth stating plainly. A rising share can reflect a change in wording as much as a change in demand. If more people now type “renovation” where they used to type “refurbishment”, that shows up here as growth. Treat these figures as interest in the search, never as the size of the market.
Bathrooms, kitchens and extensions grew across the whole year
On a whole year basis, UK interest in bathroom renovation searches was 39% higher than the year before, kitchen renovation 34% higher and house extension 29% higher. Driveways rose 32%. Those are not autumn spikes; the season has been averaged out of them.
Two jobs stand apart. Plumber rose 6%, which is steady rather than growing, and fits a trade where demand comes from things breaking rather than from plans. Loft conversion was flat, down 2%, and has been roughly level for four years. Loft work has not gone away, but the interest is not growing either, so a loft specialist is competing for a stable pool of homeowners rather than a widening one.
If you fit bathrooms or kitchens, this backs up what we wrote about where homeowners still commit their money: those two rooms remain the jobs people choose first.
The questions have turned to price
The rising searches inside each job tell the more useful story. Across almost every trade we checked, the fastest growing questions are about cost.
| The job | Rising search, last twelve months | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Kitchen | “kitchen renovation package” | +250% |
| Kitchen | “kitchen renovation price” | +200% |
| Kitchen | “budget kitchen renovation” | +60% |
| Bathroom | “bathroom renovation price” | +200% |
| Bathroom | “bathroom renovation costs” | +90% |
| Loft conversion | “how much would a loft conversion cost” | +70% |
| Garden room | “cost of garden room” | +50% |
| Roofing | “emergency roofer cost” | +110% |
Source: Google Trends, GB, rising related queries, twelve months to 8 October 2026. Each figure is that query’s own rise, not the size of the search.
Place that beside what homeowners told Houzz this year. The 2026 UK Houzz & Home Study put the average renovation budget at £10,000, down from £14,000 the year before, and found 38% of homeowners went over budget once the work started. We are not claiming one caused the other. They do describe the same homeowner: still planning the job, and wanting a number before they talk to anyone.
The search for a kitchen “package” is the one to notice. Someone typing that wants a defined job at a defined price. If your adverts and your website can show what a typical bathroom or kitchen costs with you, as a range, you answer the question they are already asking, and the enquiries that come through have seen your prices before you visit.
And to who will do the work
The second pattern is homeowners moving from researching to hiring. “Bathroom renovation contractors near me” is marked Breakout, which is Google’s label for a search that has grown by more than 5,000%, usually from a small base. “House extension company” rose 120%. “Loft conversion specialist” rose 80%, and “loft conversion builders near me” and “loft conversion company near me” rose 60% each.
So even where the overall interest in a job is flat, as with lofts, the people searching are closer to choosing a firm. We covered that moment in more detail in builders near me searches. In short, someone typing “company” or “near me” has stopped reading guides and started looking for a phone number.
When something breaks, people want someone today
The trades that fix things show a different pattern again. In plumbing, searches for an emergency plumber in a named town rose sharply: Preston up 160%, Leeds and Nottingham up 120% each. “Same day plumber” rose 70% and “cheap plumber near me” 90%. In roofing, “emergency roofer” rose 60% and “emergency roofer cost” 110%.
These homeowners are not comparing quotes over a fortnight. They want whoever answers first, nearby, today. That favours a firm that shows up for its own town’s name and picks up the phone, which is the ground we covered in turning up when someone nearby searches.
What we left out
Rising searches always carry noise, and some of it is worth naming so you can ignore it. Several rising queries were overseas place names, films or people in the news, not UK homeowners planning work. Driveway’s rising queries this year were almost entirely about parking rules and charges rather than about laying a new drive, so the 32% rise says more about news than about demand for the work. We have not read anything into either.
Putting your budget behind the searches
Search data like this is most useful when it changes where the money goes. Three things follow from this autumn’s read.
Back the jobs that are growing. If you do bathrooms, kitchens or extensions as well as other work, those are the services with rising interest behind them this year. That is where extra spend has the best chance of finding people who are already looking.
Answer the price question up front. Show a range for your typical job in the advert and on the page it leads to. The homeowner asking “how much” is not a time waster; they are a homeowner with a budget who wants to know whether you fit it.
Be findable at the moment of hiring and of emergency. For the “near me”, “company” and “emergency” searches, the homeowner has already decided to hire. Search advertising puts your firm in front of them at the moment they search, targeted by location and by what they typed, with a daily cap you control. For the planned jobs, where homeowners spend months thinking before they search, advertising on Facebook and Instagram puts your finished bathrooms and extensions in front of homeowners nearby before they reach for Google at all.
If you would like to know how these searches look in your own area and for your own trade, get in touch and we will talk it through.