Flow­ers are bloom­ing, birds are chirp­ing, and, every­where you look, ani­mals have emerged from hiber­na­tion. We’re well into a live­ly spring sea­son. But, nature is not the only source of activ­i­ty when the sea­sons change. Shifts in the weath­er also sig­nal to home­own­ers that it is time to pre­pare their prop­er­ties for improvements. 

Some projects may be clear­ly relat­ed to the chang­ing sea­sons. For exam­ple, gar­den­ing and land­scap­ing typ­i­cal­ly pick up in the spring. But the Home Improve­ment Research Institute’s Project Deci­sion Study takes a deep­er look, track­ing home improve­ment project time­lines from ini­tial con­cep­tion to full completion. 

Keep read­ing to learn about the stages of pop­u­lar sea­son­al projects and when to antic­i­pate your prod­ucts’ pur­chas­ing stage for homeowners. 

Timelines by Season

Accord­ing to sur­vey respon­dents, most home­own­ers (41%) begin think­ing about home improve­ment projects dur­ing the first quar­ter of the year.

When do homeowners start thinking about home improvement projects?

The deci­sion to take on a project is most com­mon­ly made in the sec­ond quar­ter, with 39% of respon­dents report­ing doing so.

The second quarter is also the most popular time for homeowners to start projects (42%). These are the most popular months for project starts:

When it comes to project completion, most homeowners complete projects in the third quarter:

These are the most popular months for project completion:

Timelines by Project

While it is impor­tant to under­stand the sea­son in which home­own­ers begin plan­ning and ini­ti­at­ing their projects, it is also worth not­ing that each project has its own rhythm, and more com­plex and expen­sive projects may have longer time­lines than others.

For exam­ple, adding a bath­room has a par­tic­u­lar­ly long time­line — 35.5 total months on aver­age. Home­own­ers give a project of this scale a great deal of con­sid­er­a­tion. In fact, the aver­age home­own­er plan­ning a new bath­room ded­i­cates 16 months to the con­sid­er­a­tion stage alone and, after decid­ing to do the project, waits anoth­er six months before start­ing the work. Adding any kind of room; build­ing a patio, deck, or porch; and replac­ing sid­ing all have sim­i­lar­ly long timelines.

Here are some projects on the shorter end of the spectrum:

1. Exte­ri­or paint­ing: 14 months
2. Repair­ing plumb­ing fix­tures: 13 months
3. Gardening/​landscaping: 8 months

Learn­ing how and when home­own­ers plan for projects can be key for man­u­fac­tur­ers to pre­pare for influx­es. If you are a HIRI mem­ber, access our full Project Deci­sion Study now to get all the data across prod­uct lines.

Not a HIRI mem­ber? Sign up today.