Royal® Building Products, a Westlake company, released findings today from its annual Outdoor Design Survey about the attitudes of homeowners in the U.S. when it comes to the exterior of their homes. The survey reveals that homeowners are generally happy with their homes, but when it comes to curb appeal they see room for improvement. The survey was conducted by Good Run Research & Recreation (GRRR) and gathered information from more than 1,000 U.S. homeowners ages 25 and older.

“We conduct this survey annually to get a sense of what homeowners care about when it comes to the exterior of their homes,” said Simon Bates, senior vice president at Royal Building Products. “Not surprisingly, we learned that homeowners continue to focus on style and making bold choices with their exteriors, while ranking low-maintenance products as one of the most desired home renovation trends.”

Key findings from the survey include:

The State of Home Exteriors

  • In the next two years, 90.5 percent of Americans plan to make a significant exterior purchase (64.8 percent plan to do so in the next 12 months)
  • Very few homeowners – only four percent – want their house to be a carbon copy of their neighbors’
  • Homeowners instead want to take aspects of the one “it” house in the neighborhood and put their own individual twist on it (50 percent)

Dream vs. Reality

  • If the sky were the limit, homeowners cite these outdoor projects as their top three in the next year:
    • Replace exterior products with “greener” options (78 percent)
    • Enhance architectural details (76 percent)
    • Replace siding (73 percent)
  • The reality is the to-do list outweighs the wish list with these tasks:
    • Modernize the landscaping (56 percent)
    • Weatherproof for upcoming seasons (55 percent)
    • Update the walkway/driveway (48 percent)

Project Barriers

  • Forty-two percent of homeowners say that cost is the No. 1 barrier keeping them from starting an exterior home project immediately
  • Homeowners rank the following attributes in order of importance when it comes to the home exterior planning process: ideas should be affordable, relatively do-it-yourself, completed quickly, inspirational and stay current with exterior home style trends

Trends and Inspiration

  • Homeowners rate low-maintenance products as one of the most desired trends in home exterior/renovation projects (55 percent)
  • Forty-three percent of homeowners are likely to focus on style and make bold choices (23 percent) with the exterior of their homes

Siding Attributes

  • Nearly 70 percent of respondents rank affordability as the most important factor when choosing siding
  • Some homeowners though – 20.3 percent – say that price is their least important factor. For these homeowners, aspects such as being able to use bright, bold colors or finding a style that resonates with them are more important than price

Click here to view the full survey results.

About Royal Building Products

Royal Building Products is a company of Westlake Chemical Corporation (NYSE: WLK). The company manufactures and distributes leading materials for the home remodeling, building and municipal construction markets. For more than 40 years, the company’s commitment to quality, innovation and customer relationships has attracted the loyalty of a growing number of building professionals, homeowners, architects, engineers and distributors to its products. With operations throughout Canada and the United States, Royal Building Products offers the renovation, remodeling and new construction industries a broad range of innovative products including siding, trim, accessories, soffit, rainware, mouldings and decking. Royal Building Products also manufactures pipe and fittings for the electrical, municipal, irrigation, plumbing and industrial construction industries. For more information, please visit www.royalbuildingproducts.com. Follow us on Twitter and “Like” us on Facebook.