Homeowners 81 and older nearly doubled their median kitchen renovation budget in 2025, jumping from $15,000 to $27,500, according to the just-released 2026 U.S. Houzz & Home Study of more than 20,000 homeowners. The same survey found this senior cohort outspent every other generation on home renovations overall, with a median project budget of $25,000. For families on Chicago’s North Shore, the number lines up with what we are already seeing in our showroom: more clients in their late sixties, seventies, and eighties are choosing to reinvest in the kitchen they already own rather than downsize, and they are willing to pay for choices that will keep them comfortable, safe, and independent for the next two decades.
That shift is the real story behind the headline number. The $27,500 figure is not about luxury indulgence. It is about a generation of homeowners deciding the home they raised their kids in is the home they want to grow old in, and that the kitchen is where most of that aging-in-place investment has to happen.
What Did the 2026 Houzz Study Actually Find About Senior Kitchen Spending?
The Houzz & Home Study is one of the largest annual snapshots of U.S. renovation behavior. The 2026 edition surveyed more than 20,000 homeowners between January and March, asking how much they actually spent in 2025 and what they plan to spend in 2026. Houzz’s head of economic research, Marine Sargsyan, summarized the cohort data this way: the broader market is being held up by “pent-up demand from homeowners who are finally able to act on long-planned renovations.”
The kitchen-spending jump for the 81-and-older cohort was the most striking single number in the report. While most age groups held their renovation budgets steady year over year, Seniors nearly doubled what they were spending on kitchens specifically. By comparison, Gen X homeowners (ages 46 to 61) and Baby Boomers (ages 62 to 80) posted overall renovation medians of $24,000 and $22,000 respectively, well below the $25,000 median for the 81+ group.
Why the Oldest Homeowners Are Suddenly the Biggest Kitchen Spenders
Three forces are pushing this number up at the same time. First, homeowners who bought decades ago are sitting on enormous home equity and pre-pandemic mortgage rates they have no interest in giving up. Second, the cost of selling and moving to a comparable home at today’s rates is brutal, especially for North Shore homeowners whose property taxes alone would reset on a new purchase. Third, this generation has watched friends move to senior living and decided that staying put in a home they already love is the better financial and emotional bet, as long as the kitchen and bathrooms work for the next twenty years instead of the last twenty.
Why Are Older North Shore Homeowners Reinvesting Instead of Moving?
The Houzz study found that 61 percent of homeowners plan to stay in their current home for 11 years or more, and 44 percent now describe their house as a “forever home.” That label used to belong almost exclusively to young families finishing a starter house. Today it belongs just as much to homeowners in their sixties, seventies, and eighties who have done the math on staying versus selling and decided that staying wins.
In Northbrook, Highland Park, Glenview, and Wilmette, that calculation is even sharper. A homeowner who bought twenty or thirty years ago is often sitting on a kitchen that has not been touched since the original build, a mortgage that is nearly paid off or already gone, and enough home equity to fund a thoughtful remodel without taking on meaningful debt. Many of our clients are tapping that equity to remodel the kitchen they already own rather than start over in a smaller house at today’s prices and rates. As Sargsyan put it in the Houzz report, “We’re seeing a clear shift toward investing in forever homes rather than moving, with many adapting their spaces to meet changing needs.”
The “Stay Put” Math for Long-Tenured Homeowners
Picture a couple in their early seventies in a four-bedroom colonial they bought in 1992. Their mortgage payment is small or gone. Their property tax is anchored to an assessment from years ago. Their friends, doctors, places of worship, and grandkids are all within a fifteen-minute drive. Moving to a “right-sized” condo would mean swapping a familiar neighborhood for a new HOA, a higher monthly housing cost, and a kitchen they did not design. Reinvesting $27,500 to $75,000 in the kitchen they already use three times a day gets them a space that fits their life, holds its value at resale if priorities change, and keeps them in the community they want to age into.
Which Aging-in-Place Kitchen Choices Are Absorbing That Extra Spend?
When a budget moves from $15,000 to $27,500, the extra dollars do not usually go into a flashier countertop or a higher-end range. They go into the dozens of small design decisions that make a kitchen genuinely usable into your eighties and nineties. Most of these choices have to be made early, while cabinetry, plumbing, and electrical layouts are still on paper, because retrofitting them after the fact is far more expensive than building them in the first time.
Storage, Reach, and the End of Bending Over
The single biggest aging-in-place upgrade in a kitchen is replacing door-and-shelf base cabinets with full-extension drawers. Reaching into the back of a low cabinet on your knees is the kind of daily friction that quietly pushes homeowners out of their homes. Deep drawers for pots, pans, and bulk pantry items, paired with pull-out shelves wherever a door cabinet must remain, eliminate almost all of the bending and crouching that older cooks tell us they have started to dread. Many of our clients also use this remodel to rebuild pantry storage around pull-out shelves and shallow drawers instead of fixed shelves a homeowner has to step into.
Counter Heights, Walkways, and Wheelchair-Ready Clearances
Standard base-cabinet height is 36 inches, but more clients are now asking for split-height counters: a 36-inch zone for everyday prep and a slightly lower 32- to 34-inch zone for seated work or longer baking sessions. Main walkways are getting widened from the older 36-inch standard to 42 or even 48 inches so a future walker, wheelchair, or grandparent-and-grandchild pair can pass through without choreography. None of this is visible in a finished photograph, but it is exactly where the extra $10,000 to $15,000 of “aging-in-place” budget tends to go.
Lighting, Faucets, and the Quiet Safety Upgrades
Layered lighting is one of the most underrated aging-in-place investments. Most kitchens we tear out have a single ceiling fixture and maybe one strip of undercabinet lighting. A forever-home kitchen layers ambient lighting, undercabinet task lighting, in-drawer lighting, toe-kick lighting for middle-of-the-night trips to the sink, and pendant or recessed task lighting over the island. Lever-style faucet handles replace round knobs that are hard to grip with arthritic hands. Induction cooktops replace gas burners that older cooks are increasingly nervous about leaving on. A pressure-balanced or thermostatic anti-scald valve at the prep sink protects against accidental burns. None of these are luxury items. They are the difference between a kitchen that supports independence and one that quietly works against it.
What Does the Planning Phase Look Like for a Forever-Home Kitchen?
One of the most overlooked findings in the Houzz report is how long thoughtful kitchen remodels actually take. The 2026 study put the average kitchen-project timeline at 9.5 months of planning followed by 5.8 months of construction. For a forever-home kitchen, that planning phase is even more important than it is for a younger family’s remodel, because almost every aging-in-place decision has to be locked in before drawings go to the cabinet shop.
Drawer-based base cabinets, comfort-height counters, wider walkways, induction circuits, anti-scald valves, layered lighting circuits, and lever hardware all have to be specified during the design phase, not bolted on at install. That is one of the reasons we walk every client through a single, accountable design-build process from first showroom visit to final punch list rather than handing them off between a separate designer, contractor, and supplier. A forever-home kitchen is a system, not a collection of finishes, and getting the system right takes a planning phase that is honest about how the homeowners want to use the space at age 70, age 80, and beyond.
What to Ask Yourself Before You Sign a Design Contract
The most useful planning conversations start with practical questions, not finish samples. How do you actually move through the kitchen on a typical morning? Where do you grip the counter when you stand up? What jobs in the kitchen have you started avoiding because they take too long or hurt afterward? Which cabinets do you already skip because the contents are out of reach? Honest answers to those questions usually point straight at the upgrades that are worth the extra investment, and they make it much easier to walk through a step-by-step kitchen remodel that fits how the household actually lives instead of how a generic pattern book imagines it.
How Should North Shore Homeowners Approach a Forever-Home Kitchen Today?
If the Houzz data tells us anything, it is that the homeowners most likely to be sitting in their kitchen twenty years from now are exactly the ones reinvesting in it today. That is a healthy, rational response to a housing market that has made trading up a much worse deal than staying put. The question is not whether to remodel. The question is whether the remodel will still serve you well at 80, 85, or 90 years old.
The kitchens we are happiest with five or ten years after install are not the ones with the most expensive finishes. They are the ones where every drawer slides easily, every faucet handle moves with one finger, every walkway accommodates a future mobility aid, and every light source can be adjusted from a single switch. Those kitchens cost more than a $15,000 quick refresh, but they cost a lot less than selling, buying, moving, and rebuilding a life around a new neighborhood. If you are weighing that decision in Northbrook, Glenview, Highland Park, Wilmette, or anywhere else on the North Shore, a slow, considered planning conversation at the showroom is the right next step. We are happy to walk through your kitchen and your aging-in-place priorities at an in-showroom consultation before any design fees are committed.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the median kitchen remodel budget for older homeowners in 2025?
According to the 2026 U.S. Houzz & Home Study, homeowners aged 81 and older spent a median of $27,500 on kitchen renovations in 2025, up from $15,000 in 2024. That same cohort had the highest overall renovation median of any generation, at $25,000. Median spending in the 46-to-80 range was lower overall, but kitchen-specific spending climbed across most age groups.
What counts as aging-in-place kitchen design?
Aging-in-place kitchen design is a set of layout, cabinetry, lighting, and hardware choices that keep a kitchen safe, comfortable, and independent for a homeowner who plans to stay in their home long-term. Typical examples include drawer-based base cabinets instead of door cabinets, pull-out shelves, wider walkways, layered lighting, lever-style faucets and pulls, induction cooktops, and pressure-balanced anti-scald valves. The goal is a kitchen that works as well at 85 as it does at 65.
Do I have to choose between style and aging-in-place features?
No. Most aging-in-place features are invisible in a finished kitchen photo. Comfort-height counter zones look like regular counters. Pull-out drawers look like normal cabinet fronts. Layered lighting just makes the kitchen look better. Lever faucets and matte pulls are standard in design-forward kitchens already. A thoughtful designer can deliver a kitchen that reads as a refined North Shore remodel and quietly supports a homeowner for the next two decades.
How much extra does aging-in-place kitchen design add to a remodel?
It depends on how many decisions you build in early. The Houzz data showing senior kitchen budgets moving from $15,000 to $27,500 captures roughly the spread between a cosmetic refresh and a true forever-home remodel. The largest line items tend to be full-extension drawer cabinetry, additional lighting circuits, induction wiring, wider walkways requiring layout changes, and accessible plumbing. Many individual upgrades, however, like lever faucets or pull-out shelves, add only modest cost when specified during design.
Is induction cooking really safer than gas for older cooks?
For most older cooks, yes. Induction cooktops heat the pan, not the surface, so the cooktop stays cool to the touch when a pan is removed and cools quickly after use. There is no open flame, no risk of a gas burner being left on without a flame, and no combustion byproducts in the kitchen air. Pots cannot tip into a flame because there is none. Many of our seventies-and-eighties clients name the switch from gas to induction as one of the upgrades they wish they had done a decade earlier.
How long does a kitchen remodel take from planning to finish?
The Houzz 2026 study put the average kitchen-remodel timeline at about 9.5 months of planning and 5.8 months of construction. That sounds long, but most of the planning time is design and product selection that homeowners only do once. A forever-home kitchen is worth taking that planning phase slowly, because every aging-in-place feature has to be specified before the cabinetry is built.
Should I remodel now if I am planning to stay in my home long-term?
If you are confident you will be in the house at least seven to ten more years, the math almost always favors remodeling over moving at today’s home prices and mortgage rates. Forty-four percent of homeowners in the Houzz study now describe their house as a forever home, and aging-in-place choices made today will pay back every single day you stay in it. Waiting until a mobility need forces the remodel almost always costs more, both financially and emotionally, than designing for it in advance.