Home Renovation Cost Report 2026

The median renovation project in our database costs $2,800. That means half of all home improvement projects come in under that figure. If you're planning a single room update - a bathroom refresh, new flooring, or a paint job - you're likely in that lower half.

The mean is pulled up to $6,346 by big-ticket items: room additions, second stories, pool installations, and ADU builds. These are the projects that cross six figures, and they skew the average significantly. Don't let that number scare you off a more modest renovation.

Regional pricing matters more than most homeowners expect. The same kitchen remodel that costs $25,000 in Indianapolis could run $38,000 in San Francisco or $35,000 in New York City. Before budgeting, check your metro's cost multiplier in the table above - it's the single most important adjustment to make.

One trend worth noting: electrical and smart home upgrades remain the most affordable renovation category by average cost. If you're looking for high-impact improvements on a limited budget, projects like dimmer switches, smart thermostats, and under-cabinet lighting deliver noticeable results for under $500.

This report answers the cost half of the cost vs. value question: what 234 common renovation projects actually run in 2026, from our own compiled dataset. The value half, the percentage of that spend a project returns at resale, is a different measurement, and we keep our full ranking of it on a dedicated page: Renovation Cost vs. Value 2026: Which Projects Pay You Back. (If you are looking for the remodeling industry's annual Cost vs. Value study itself, that is published by Remodeling Magazine and its parent Zonda; our ROI page draws on that research and cites it.)

The pattern that holds year after year: the projects with the best resale return are rarely the expensive ones. A garage door replacement, $750 to $2,500 in our data, sits near the top of the resale rankings, while a full kitchen remodel ($14,500 to $41,500) typically returns well under its cost. Curb-appeal and systems work protects value; big interior remodels are livability purchases first. So if resale is the goal, spend from the top of the ROI ranking, not the top of this report's cost table.

This report aggregates data from all 234 project cost guides on Cost to Renovate. The national ranges in those guides are compiled estimates built from published industry cost guidance (HomeAdvisor/Angi, Fixr, HomeGuide, Homewyse), and where a guide's specific sources are listed, they appear on that guide's own page.

Category averages are calculated as the mean of national average costs across all projects in that category. Regional multipliers are computed rather than compiled: each project is scaled by the real mean hourly wage for the trade it actually depends on, taken from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program (May 2025) and divided by the national mean for that trade. Non-labor costs track the metro cost level at half strength, because materials ship at closer to national prices while wages are set locally. The multipliers in the table above are the typical case for each metro; the per-trade wage data underneath them is published in the Metro Labor Index 2026.

All cost data reflects 2025-2026 contractor pricing. We update individual guides as new data becomes available and plan to publish this report annually.