Righteous Renovations
Where are the best cities in the UK to take on a renovation project?
As time passes, bricks crumble, paint fades and peels, gardens grow wild, and timber begins to rot. Left to their own devices, most houses will slowly decay, degrade, and eventually disappear altogether as they succumb to the elements around them. Fortunately, most houses are not left to their own devices, as their occupants maintain them, notice developing issues and rectify them.
Furthermore, humans living in homes are often not merely content to fix them up, but also to improve and change how their house looks and feels. This process is known as renovation, which is the process of restoring or changing something old into a new form. Home renovations can encompass the whole house, or just one room, or even just a certain aspect of one room. From converting an old barn into a modern house, to changing the colour of the tiles in a bathroom, renovation jobs come in all different shapes and sizes.
But where is it best to renovate a home? By studying a range of factors including property price, quality of tradesmen, and homeware stores in an area, we have delivered a data-driven insight into where it is best to work on your house.
Here are some of our top renovation projects with our tiles:
Top five best cities to renovate a home
1 – Portsmouth, home renovating score of 7.96/10:
Portsmouth is the best city to renovate a home in. The port on the coast of Hampshire almost scored 8 out of 10, and its score is 2.96 higher than the average. The main reason for Portsmouth being number one is the exceptionally high review score that the tradies in the area have accrued, the average score for trades company reviews was 8.83 out of 10.
2 – Southampton, home renovating score of 7.60/10:
Southampton and Portsmouth are practically neighbours in a geographic sense, and they are also close together on the rankings. Southampton beats its neighbour in terms of the number of people per homeware store and people per trade company, but it has much higher average house prices, thus it ranks second.
3 – Sunderland, home renovating score of 7.40/10:
Just like the two above it, Sunderland is a port city, and it was by far the highest ranking in the north of England. Sunderland scored highly in terms of average house prices and had the fewest number of people per homeware store at 810.
4 – Luton, home renovating score of 7.24/10:
Luton was the fourth-best town for renovation, and the final location to achieve a score greater than 7/10. The Bedfordshire town has 320 people per trade company, which is the best score in the top five. The town also scored well in terms of people per homeware store and tradesman review scores, however, the house prices are quite high.
5 – Stoke-on-Trent and Telford, home renovating score of 6.89/10:
There is a tie for fifth place, as Stoke and Telford are locked together on 6.89. Despite them both achieving the same overall, the way they got there is very different. Stoke ranks higher in terms of tradesman scores, as well as having lower house prices. On the other hand, Telford has a fewer number of people per trade company, and fewer people per homeware store.
Top five worst cities to renovate a home
1 – Edinburgh, home renovating score of 1.33/10:
At the other end of the spectrum, we find Edinburgh, the ancient city in Scotland, which only scored a measly 1.33/10, 3.68 lower than the national average, and 6.63 lower than Portsmouth. Trade companies in Edinburgh have the lowest average score, as they only achieved 9.41, the city also ranks amongst the worst for every other category.
2 – London, home renovating score of 1.79/10:
By far the biggest city in the UK, London is also one of the worst in which to renovate a home. The main reason for this is the astronomical average house price which is over £715,000, more than £150,000 more than the second most expensive city. Moreover, there are over 37,000 people per homeware store, the highest by a long way.
3 – Cardiff, home renovating score of 2.45/10:
Cardiff makes it a hopeless hattrick of home nations’ capital cities as the worst ranking cities for home renovations. Cardiff scored in the bottom half of scores for every ranking category, especially poor scores came in the number of people per trade company, over 3,276.
4 – Bristol, home renovating score of 2.5/10:
Bristol ranks in the bottom half for every category as well and is in the top ten worst cities in terms of the number of people per homeware shop and the average property price. House prices in Bristol are only around £40,000 more than in Southampton, yet their overall scores are poles apart.
5 – Birmingham, home renovating score of 2.76/10:
The second city is the fifth-worst in terms of home renovation, Birmingham only achieved an overall score of 2.76. The category that the city scored worst in was the number of people per DIY or homeware store, there are 5,683 people per shop compared to the national average of 3,683.
Methodology
- The list of 50 cities was taken from those cities listed on TrustATrader.
- We compiled the scores out of 10 for every trade company in each city to get an average score for each location.
- We also found the total number of trade companies in each city and divided it by the population to discover the number of people per trade company.
- The number of DIY/Homeware stores was found on Google Maps and then compared to the population to find the number of people per homeware shop.