The truth about home reno shows

Marcus Lim: TV shows can serve as inspiration as well as entertainment.

The boom in TV home reno shows is proving to be a boon for home improvement industries, with data indicating a spike in demand for tradies after Channel Seven's House Rules went to air in April this year.

Rather than just sitting on their sofas watching the contestants battle it out for the grand prize, figures collected by local services marketplace Oneflare shows a surge in home industry related job requests across the board.

Some of the quotes posted on ServiceSeeking are definitely ideas from House Rules.

The upswing includes a 48 per cent rise in job postings for interior designers, a 35 per cent rise in requests for kitchen renovations, a 30 per cent increase in bathroom renovation job postings, and a 28 per cent increase in requests for architects.

Speaking about the data, Marcus Lim, co-founder and CEO of Oneflare says: "Usually there's a relatively steady amount of jobs in each service category, like people searching for cleaners, plumbers and electricians. But in April of this year, we were baffled as to why there was a sudden jump in people posting home improvement jobs specifically.

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"When we looked into it further, we realised there was a link between when the House Rules show went to air and our job request data. It suggests that TV shows can serve as inspiration as well as entertainment."

Oneflare's renovation and design planning tool, Scrapbooks, which lets home builders compare and hire the best value worker, and manage home improvement jobs from their home device or PC also experienced a spike in traffic.

Home reno dreams are even outstripping desire for a tropical holiday according to an online survey by interiors destination thehome.com.au. When asked what would you do with a spare $15 000, 72 per cent of respondents nominated home improvements over a holiday.

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The truth about home reno shows