HIGH POINT — In a repeat of the inaugural Home Furnishings Sentiment Index of 2025, this year’s first exclusive survey finds the same heightened optimism about industry growth among participants across nearly all metrics.
About half predict sales for the year will have gone up vs. 2025, helping to boost the index for the yearly sales projection to 142, the highest mark in the five quarters of tracking this benchmark and ahead of first quarter 2025’s 138 mark.
Similarly, expectations for the next six months beat the index starting point of 100 by 36 points, continuing the positive streak that began in the fourth quarter when this metric hit 103 points.
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Not surprising, the outlook for the first quarter is also encouraging, with more participants expecting sales to be higher rather than lower with an index number of 109. This is coming off a fourth quarter where sales were still lower than expected but continuing to improve from an index low of 64 points in the third quarter of 2025 to 89 for this year’s first quarter.
Turnaround year?
The index shows consumer demand is also expected to be on the upswing as the score rose to 107 from last quarter’s 83. It still lags a bit behind the same period a year ago when the demand score was 118.
The rating for the current state of business — 60 on a 100-point scale — was another sign that participants are initially feeling 2026 could be a turnaround year. This was the highest mark since the start of the index last year and comes off a mediocre 46 in the last quarter.
Still, many more participants continue to categorize business as fair or poor vs. those who rank it good or excellent.
Both employment and capital investments are slower to show evidence of a turnaround. Slightly more respondents are cutting back on hiring vs. adding jobs, resulting in an index score of 97, while those looking to make capital investments dropped marginally since last quarter, down to 73 from 75.
The housing market has caught up with tariffs as the major issues being watched by the home furnishings industry. Both were cited by 77% as factors they are keeping an eye on, followed closely by consumer sentiment at 70%.
Also of interest are inflation (52%) and supply chain issues (40%). About one-third listed labor, monetary policy and geopolitical conflicts as topics of interest.
New among the categories is industry adoption of AI, which made the watch list for about one-quarter of respondents, as did immigration policy.
Expanded survey
Starting with this survey and going forward, the HFSI has been expanded to poll readers of Home Accents Today and Designers Today along with Furniture Today’s audience. Last year the survey was only sent to Furniture Today readers.
The Home Furnishings Sentiment Index survey is conducted on a quarterly basis, polling retailers, suppliers/manufacturers and others aligned with the home furnishings industry among readers of Furniture Today, Home Accents Today and Designers Today. The most recent survey was taken between Jan. 22 and Feb. 10. Results of the next HFSI survey will publish in June 2026.
