We dove into the data to explore The Home Depot and Lowe’s recent foot traffic performance, audience profiles, and consumer trends shaping what lies ahead for the chains.
Q1 Traffic: Nothing to Write Home About
The home improvement space has seen YoY traffic lag for quite some time, as sustained challenges in the housing market and tight budgets have resulted in fewer home improvement projects. Despite these trends continuing in Q1 2025, YoY visit gaps to home improvement retailers remained relatively minor; The Home Depot received 3.8% less visits in Q1 2025 than in Q1 2024 while Lowe’s received 3.6% fewer visits.
Zooming in on monthly visits reveals more nuanced foot traffic patterns to The Home Depot and Lowe’s. February’s relatively dramatic declines in YoY visits were likely impacted by the comparison to 2024’s leap year. And in spite of severe weather, YoY traffic to the chains improved in March 2025 as consumers prepared their homes for storms.
Improvement Around the Corner
Despite Q1 2025’s lackluster performance, analysis of weekly visits suggests that there is reason for optimism in the home improvement space. In 2024, industry foot traffic peaked in mid-May – perhaps as consumers took on pre-Summer projects – indicating that the next few weeks of 2025 present an opportunity for The Home Depot and Lowe’s to drive significant seasonal traffic.
Regional Audiences Revealed
As traffic to the home improvement space begins to turn a corner, analysis of the trade areas from which The Home Depot and Lowe’s attract visitors reveals that each chain serves a slightly different mix of rural, suburban, and urban audience segments.
In Q1 2025, both The Home Depot and Lowe’s were popular among consumers in regions defined as “Suburban Periphery” and “Metro Cities” (i.e. small metro areas and satellite cities). However, Lowe’s drove higher shares of traffic from rural segments and The Home Depot from strongly urbanized ones. This audience segmentation highlights several differences between the chains’ retail footprints and the regions from which they command traffic.
Will Visits Get a Facelift?
Despite prevailing headwinds, the home improvement space may be gearing up for a seasonal boost, particularly if consumers feel a little wiggle room in their budgets or decide to take on bigger projects in anticipation of price hikes and supply constraints.
For more data-driven retail insights, visit Placer.ai.
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