Happy home?
In and out of lockdown we’re spending more on home improvement than ever before. Dave Broxton, managing director of Bohle, said it is something that goes to the very core of our being.
There is a psychology to home improvement: doing it makes us feel better; not doing it, eats away at us until we do.
Lockdown, and the limitations placed on daily life since, means that we’re spending more time staring at walls, tired kitchen cabinets, and mildew in the corner of showers, And it appears, as a nation, we can’t take it anymore.
With most of us stuck indoors, a report published in August by mortgage comparison site money.co.uk found UK homeowners spent £55 billion on renovations to create their perfect property since lockdown ended.
That is an average of £4,035.70 each on home renovation since the lockdown restrictions began in March.
And there is a wealth of research that points a direct link between satisfaction with the state of our homes and our wider mental health and well-being.
A Europe-wide study by home improvement giant Kingfisher (delivered in partnership with the independent think tank The Happiness Research Institute and pollster Gallup) even attempts to put a value on its contribution to our individual ‘happiness’.
Following feedback from 14,000 respondents, the Good Home Report 2019 found that satisfaction with our home contributes 15% to our overall sense of happiness.
If you take the average Brit from an unhappy or less happy home, to one that they’re ‘happy with’, their individual happiness will increase by 34%, nearly double the European average.
I’m not sure how much weight you can attach to this, but when we talk about happiness and the home, there is clearly a recognised link, something that has become more acute since Covid-19, as we have spent more time at home.
This may go some way to explaining the spending spree seen in UK home improvement since March; home extensions, new kitchens and bathrooms making up many of the most popular home improvements.
It’s not only about the dopamine hit that you get when making a new purchase. There are further psychological drivers involved. For example, a Yale study found that people use the physical warmth of a shower or bath to compensate for and replace the social warmth they crave during periods of isolation.
However, the fact that home improvement and bathroom refurbishments are high on people’s lists is good for us and our customers.
For example, Bohle’s new shower system, the MasterTrack ST, launched last month (September 2020) has come at the right time.
It’s suitable for installation as either a barrier-free or low threshold system, and can be configured to: two-sided corner applications; recess applications; u-showers; and one-sided corners.
The profile runs to 2m, so it’s suitable for large installations as well as standard-sized and smaller installs, while it also offers immense design flexibility.
There’s no need to process glass on site: the glass is clamped between specially developed reprocessed cork pads and tightened.
That’s in addition to the end-user appeal it delivers; really luxurious operation and smooth running through the use of a highly sophisticated carriage and damper-system.
The damper system used in the MasterTrack ST uses a patented hydraulics system and a double-sided spring guide to effortlessly slow the door in a single and ultra-smooth operation.
This emulates the system used by Bohle in its development of the MasterTrack internal sliding door system.
Unveiled last year, it uses the same design principles as the ST, with a sophisticated carriage system, patented hydraulic dampers, and clamp system to eliminate any requirement to process glass.
This means that MasterTrack can be fitted in as little as 10 minutes delivering opportunities across home improvement and light commercial sectors.
It accommodates glass thickness from 8mm to 12.76mm and maximum weights of 60kg, 80kg, 120kg and 150kg, as either a wall-mounted or ceiling hung system.
We’re seeing a boom; that is at least one thing to feel happy about. What happens next, we don’t know, so it’s time to cash-in on the opportunities that are there, right now, and in front of us.
Ease of installation, design flexibility and through-life performance mean MasterTrack ST and MasterTrack support you in maximising efficiencies and margins.
