Top Construction Trends (September 2023)

Some companies experiment with marketing their brands in hotels and airports; they’re a way to get exposure to customers who will then try the brand at home. Gush paint, which sells wall paint designed to absorb pollutants, is using a similar approach: they landed a large health system as a customer, and painted many of its delivery rooms with their paint. Since the paint is pricier than other kinds, this is the kind of detail the hospital is likely to highlight to new moms—some of whom may decide they'd rather not bring their newborn home to a less-than-healthy home environment.

That’s especially powerful product placement when marketing to new parents, who are often suddenly open to lifestyle changes and spending in new categories (in Gush Paint’s home country of Singapore, births are very likely to be to new parents—the country’s fertility rate in 2019 is 1.14 children per woman). Other companies have built big businesses on marketing to customers at a key point in their lives: Gillette, for example, has marketed itself by sending free razors to people on their 18th birthdays, to get them to buy blades.

Increasingly, indoor air quality is important to consumers: while the pandemic certainly raised awareness around ventilation and air filtration, even in years beforehand there was a growing drumbeat of studies and news stories about how much indoor air quality affected people's lives. Gush Paint’s product is an interesting reversal, since lead paint was historically a major source of health problems—now, paint is being used to solve them instead.

Gush Paint has raised money from property developers and construction companies, which use its product as a selling point in new and remodeled homes. This gives the real estate sector a way to tap into growing interest in health and wellness.

American homes are getting noisier as carpet usage has declined over the past several decades.

Wall-to-wall floor carpeting was common for much of the 20th century – it even started as a sign of luxury.

But as a growing percentage of Americans became more mobile, and many homeowners lived in their houses for shorter periods of time, they began to optimize more for the resale market than for comfort or personal preference.

This gave hardwood flooring the perfect in. It’s better for resale value, and cleanliness, and has, in recent times, grown into preference among the American population.

And as technology improves, hardwood synthetics like LVP and SPC flooring are bringing down prices.

Meanwhile, with the carpet industry struggling, the rug industry has been using a number of strategies to stay relevant. For one, the rug industry continues to support a common apartment lease clause – used in most NYC apartment leases, for example – which says that at least 80% of the floor must be covered in rugs in order to reduce sound. The rug industry has also created the washable rug category which, beyond just being convenient, effectively reduces the cost of a rug significantly with fewer trips to an expensive dry cleaner, and a longer lifespan of the rug even after it’s seen spills.

At the same time, with carpets making their way out of homes, consumers are increasingly looking for ways to dampen sound. Some companies, like Woodupp, are incorporating sound-dampening elements into trending interior styles like fluted panels, and are successfully cashing in on this monumental change in American home layouts.

In cities like New York and San Francisco, many leases include a surprising clause: that 80% of flooring should be carpeted. This rule is mostly to reduce noise, since carpets are vibration-absorbent, which is especially helpful in a more crowded dwelling like an apartment complex.

Carpets are falling in popularity, both for aesthetic reasons and due to concerns about allergies, so more people are buying uncarpeted floors. While hardwood flooring is still a default option, more and more homeowners and landlords are opting for new materials. One popular option is luxury vinyl plank flooring (LVP).

LVP flooring is a durable material that can be bought with patterns that look like wood, stone, or other materials. And not only is it long-lasting, but its scratch-resistant properties make it especially appealing to landlords, who get less wear and tear when tenants move in and out. Even when it does get damaged, individual pieces can be removed and replaced without removing the entire floor.

LVP flooring also has sound-reducing properties, meaning it serves some of the same functions carpeting does for the landlord—and the neighbors. Soundproofing has gotten more important as more people work from home, increasing both the ambient level of noise during the day and how sensitive tenants are to it.

Millions of rural landowners are land rich but cash poor. Any way to increase liquidity is attractive to this demographic who often inherited the land and many of whom are facing rising property taxes and stagnant earnings.

A growing number of these landowners are now finding a relatively straightforward solution as Barndomoniums take off in popularity. These metal barn-building kits let buyers build a stylish and affordable home in true IKEA fashion. And then, rather than go through the process of finding a broker and selling the property, home and all, many simply list the property on a marketplace like Airbnb.

The kits come with all the challenging parts already installed, such as plumbing and electrical. And by letting buyers customize the kit, they can also avoid a third challenging and costly aspect of building a home: hiring an architect.

Even those that don’t yet have land are taking part, amid the growth of articles with titles like “How to buy inexpensive land, build for cheap, and dominate Airbnb”.

Banrdominiums are not only much cheaper and easier than building a home from scratch, but they also sport less-obvious cost savings: Steel structures don't burn and they hold up better against tornadoes and earthquakes, leading to lower insurance rates.

And while steel companies and prefab companies capitalize on this trend, many smaller businesses are too: tens of thousands of consumers have bought guides and building plans on Amazon, created by small-time ecommerce sellers who are catching on early.

In parallel, the farming population is on the decline and rising crop yields mean that land is less important. Alternative ways to monetize land are consequently on the rise, whether through building and flipping homes, listing the homes on sites like Airbnb, or even renting out the land to campers on sites like HipCamp.