Houzz has released the 2026 U.S. Houzz State of AI in Construction and Design Report, providing a detailed look into how the industry is reacting to the rapidly evolving AI landscape. Based on a survey of more than 600 U.S. construction and design professionals, the report finds that businesses have moved from curiosity to using AI for everyday business tasks (41 percent, up 7 percentage points year over year), with meaningful productivity gains and rising expectations for AI’s impact. For the first time ever, Houzz also surveyed nearly 3,200 U.S. renovating homeowners, and found that 1 in 5 homeowners are experimenting with AI during their home project (22 percent).
Construction has seen the sharpest gains of any segment. More than half of firms (52 percent) now use AI for everyday business tasks, up 20 percentage points from a year ago, and adoption runs deep once it takes hold: 80 percent of construction firms that use AI do so daily. AI now touches nearly every function, led by sales and marketing (64 percent), planning and design (61 percent) and project and client management (59 percent).
Nearly 2 in 5 design firms now use AI (39 percent), up 8 percentage points from 2025, with planning and design overtaking administrative work as the sector’s leading AI application (doubling to 68 percent from 34 percent in 2025). In fact, designers point to pre-project visuals as their most concentrated use case, with 82 percent of firms applying AI to develop and refine a concept before work begins.
In 2026, more than 1 in 5 homeowners (22 percent) have used AI tools for their projects. Adoption varies widely by generation (from 41 percent of Millennials to just 7 percent of Seniors) and homeowners consistently reach for AI to imagine a project rather than manage it.
Getting renovation or design ideas (64 percent), visualizing concepts (58 percent) and comparing options (50 percent) top the list of uses, while tasks like budgeting (24 percent), permitting (10 percent) and understanding contracts (6 percent) trail behind. More than a quarter of homeowner AI users are very satisfied with the AI technology they used (27 percent), while 50 percent of AI users are somewhat satisfied. Only 5 percent are dissatisfied. Interestingly, while visualization is one of the most popular use cases for AI, it is also the top area homeowners say falls short of expectations (26 percent). Among homeowners who chose not to use AI at all, the top reason across every generation was a simple preference for professional expertise (38 percent), reinforcing that even as AI reshapes how homeowners explore ideas, the value of a trusted pro has not diminished. In fact, the majority of homeowners continue to hire professionals (80 percent) to execute their vision.
Among homeowners whose pro used AI, the technology’s biggest impact was clarity and confidence in their pro. Homeowners say their pro’s use of AI helped them to visualize their project (76 percent) and understand their pro’s ideas (49 percent), while nearly a third (35 percent) said their pro seemed better prepared as a result of using AI.