Healthy Home Priorities Differ by Generation

Health and wellness are important to every generation, but there are some variations between them when you dig into their priorities.

Pretty much no one would ever say they want to live in an “unhealthy” home, but not every homebuyer prioritizes healthy home features in the same way. 

In a recent survey, 75% of consumers said that a healthy home was very important or extremely important. Yet there are variations in how much people are willing to pay for different healthy home features and which ones are the most important to them. 

Some of those variations are geographical. For example, people who live in areas prone to wildfires or poor outdoor air quality are more likely to think first about air filtration and good indoor air quality. The importance of a healthy home also varies by generation. 

Baby Boomers place the highest priorty among the generations on a healthy home, followed by Gen X. Baby Boomers, who are retiring or near retirement age, often have the time and resources to prioritize a healthy lifestyle while Gen Xers often have older children at home and want to impact the health of the entire family. Millennials, who often have young children, rank a healthy home highly, too, closely folllowed by Traditionalists and Gen Z. 

Source: COGNITION Smart Data

However, when it comes to deciding how much they’re willing to spend on healthy home features, members of the Gen Z generation top the list with an average budget of more than $4,000. Traditionalists and members of the Gen X generation say they would spend about $3,000, while Millennials say they would spend about $2,750. Baby Boomers, who rank healthy homes higher than other generations, say they’re willing to spend the least amount by generation at $2,500. 

Source: COGNITION Smart Data

When Green Builder dug into one popular healthy home feature—a proactive indoor air quality system—the generations were farther apart on how much they are willing to spend. 

For example, the largest contingency of Millennials (34%) was willing to spend $1,000 to $5,000 on an IAQ system, while 8% were willing to spend more than $10,000 for a proactive IAQ system. Nearly 5% of Baby Boomers and Gen Zers were not willing to spend any money on an IAQ system, along with 4% of Millennials. 

The largest contingency of Gen Zers (44%) was willing to spend up to $1,000, which was also the amount the largest percentage of Gen Xers (38%) and the largest percentage of Traditionalists (56%) were willing to spend. For Baby Boomers, the largest percentage (43%) were willing to spend between $1,000 and $5,000.

Source: COGNITION Smart Data

Check out COGNITION Smart Data or download your free Guide to Healthy Homes for a deeper understanding of consumer priorities for healthy homes, information about healthy home products, and insights about healthy homes from building industry pros and consumers.