Growth in Consumer Spending for Furniture and Home Furnishings Products
August 9,
2019 by Laurie Northington in General 
Consumer spending on furniture increased 7 percent last year outpacing the growth of all other broad home furnishings goods categories with sales of $114.6 billion in sales. Despite promising growth, all home furnishings goods continue to lose consumer dollars to spending on services including healthcare, rents and mortgages. This is the final factoid in a series of five factoids detailing consumer spending across all spending categories in 2018.
Major household appliances is the second largest home furnishings spending category at $41.4 billion, followed by clocks, lamps, and lighting fixtures at $39 billion and televisions at $31.7 billion.
Although window coverings is the smallest of the home furnishings categories, it has experienced the largest post-recession surge in consumer spending – increasing 67.7 percent since 2007.
Spending on carpets and other floor coverings, the most affected home furnishings category, has slowly increased since 2012 but still shy of 2007 expenditures. As of November 2018, spending on furniture is 13.7 percent higher than pre-recession amounts in 2007.
All home furnishings categories except for televisions exceeded 3 percent average annual growth from 2011 to 2016. Spending on televisions had an average loss of (-0.2 percent) over five years but has rebounded slightly – increasing 4.3 percent last year. By far, furniture and window coverings have shown the most consistent growth from 2011 to 2018
Source: Personal Consumption Expenditures, Bureau of Labor Statistics *Seasonally Adjusted at Annual Rate (SAAR), 2018 through November