Last updated: August 2026. Human written and fact checked against each named source.
Ireland has one of the oldest and dampest housing stocks in western Europe, a renovation market that moved through billions of euro during the last tax incentive, and a planning pipeline in which almost half of all permissions are now for extensions or alterations rather than new buildings. This page gathers the current figures on home renovation, repair and decorating in Ireland in one place, each one linked to the Central Statistics Office, Revenue, SEAI, Eurostat or the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland release it came from. It is written for journalists, bloggers, estate agents, architects and homeowners who need a verified Irish number rather than a UK or US one.
Key Home Renovation Statistics for Ireland at a Glance
- Two thirds of occupied homes in Ireland, 1,200,514 of 1,836,728, were built before 2001, and 40.7% were built before 1981 (calculated from Census 2022). Source: CSO Census 2022, table FY033A
- 21.2% of people in Ireland live in a dwelling with a leaking roof, damp walls, floors or foundations, or rot in window frames or floors, against an EU average of 15.6%. Source: Eurostat, ilc_mdho01, 2023
- The Home Renovation Incentive logged 161,694 works on 98,922 properties worth €2.73 billion between 2013 and 2019, an average of €16,870 per work. Source: Revenue, HRI Statistics 2013 to 2020
- Irish households spend an average of €8.85 a week on maintenance and repair services for the dwelling, such as an electrician or painter, and a further €32.48 a week on capital improvements. Source: CSO Household Budget Survey 2022 to 2023
- 29,574 planning permissions were granted in 2025, of which 8,232 were for extensions and 5,469 for alterations, conversions and renovations, which together make up 46.3% of all permissions (calculated). Source: CSO Planning Permissions, table BHA03
- Wholesale prices for paints, oils and varnishes rose 8.4% in the year to June 2026, the fastest increase of any building material the CSO tracks that month. Source: CSO Wholesale Price Index for Building and Construction Materials, table WPM39
- Residential property prices rose 5.6% nationally and 4.6% in Dublin in the year to June 2026, and the median price of an existing dwelling sold in June 2026 was €366,000 nationally and €490,000 in Dublin. Source: CSO Residential Property Price Index, June 2026 and CSO Residential Dwelling Property Transactions, table HPM02
- Each step up the 15 point Building Energy Rating scale is associated with a 2.7% higher sale price nationally and 1.7% in urban Dublin. Source: SEAI, Building Energy Ratings and Property Sales Prices in Ireland, August 2026
- SEAI grant schemes supported energy upgrades in more than 58,600 homes in 2025, and 257,000 home energy upgrades have been delivered since 2019 with over €1.7 billion in Government funding. Source: SEAI and Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment, April 2026
- 8,204 people worked as painters and decorators in Ireland on Census night 2022, up from 7,244 in 2016 and 5,679 in 2011. Source: CSO Census 2022, table F7049
How Old Ireland’s Housing Stock Is
Census 2022 counted 2,112,121 dwellings in the State, of which 1,836,728 were occupied by their usual residents on Census night and 163,433 were vacant, a vacancy rate of 7.7% (CSO Census 2022, table F2095). The CSO’s newer electricity based vacancy series, which uses a stricter definition, put the number of vacant dwellings at 70,149 in the fourth quarter of 2024, a rate of 3.2% (CSO, table VAC12).
Age is the clearest driver of repair and redecoration demand. Of the 1,836,728 occupied homes, 154,290 (8.4%) were built before 1919, 113,788 between 1919 and 1945, 132,276 between 1946 and 1960, 122,685 in the 1960s and 224,733 in the 1970s (CSO Census 2022, table FY033A). Adding those periods together, 747,772 homes, or 40.7% of the occupied stock, were built before 1981, and 1,200,514 homes, or 65.4%, were built before 2001 (calculated from table FY033A). The single largest construction period is 2001 to 2010, which accounts for 450,817 homes, or 24.5%, and those Celtic Tiger era houses are now 16 to 25 years old and entering their second or third full redecoration cycle.
Dublin’s stock is older than the national average. In the Dublin City Council area, 33,576 homes (14.9%) predate 1919, 28,894 (12.8%) were built between 1919 and 1945 and 33,167 (14.7%) between 1946 and 1960, so 42.4% of the city’s 225,519 occupied homes were built before 1961 (calculated from table FY033A). Across the four Dublin local authorities there are 518,490 occupied homes, and 366,521 of them, or 70.7%, were built before 2001 (calculated). Fingal is the youngest of the four, with 31.1% of its homes built between 2001 and 2010, while South Dublin has the largest 1970s cohort at 23.1%.
Tenure matters because owners, not tenants, commission most decorating work. Census 2022 recorded 1,210,925 owner occupied households, 65.9% of the total, of which 531,207 had a mortgage and 679,718 owned outright. A further 330,632 households (18.0%) rented from a private landlord and 153,192 rented from a local authority (CSO Census 2022, table FY034A; shares calculated).
The stock behind these renovation figures, how many homes Ireland has, their types, age and vacancy county by county, and what their BER ratings show, is set out in our housing stock statistics for Ireland.
Housing Condition: Damp, Leaks and Rot
Eurostat’s housing deprivation indicator asks whether a household’s dwelling has a leaking roof, damp walls, floors or foundations, or rot in window frames or floors. In 2023, 21.2% of the Irish population answered yes, compared with an EU average of 15.6%. Ireland’s figure has risen sharply: it was 12.4% in 2019 and 16.3% in 2020, and the indicator is now collected every three years (Eurostat, ilc_mdho01). On those figures roughly one Irish resident in five lives with the kind of water ingress that shows up first as stained ceilings, blown plaster, peeling paint and swollen window frames.
The older stock described above is the main reason. Homes built before the 1990s typically have solid or poorly insulated walls, single glazing or early double glazing, and no continuous damp proofing, so redecoration after damp repair is one of the most common jobs a painter and decorator in Dublin is asked to price.
How Much Irish Households Spend on Maintenance and Improvement
The CSO Household Budget Survey 2022 to 2023 put average weekly household expenditure at €1,007.47. Within that, housing accounted for €184.56 a week. Households spent €8.85 a week on services for the maintenance and repair of the dwelling, which the CSO defines with the examples of an electrician or painter, and €32.48 a week on capital improvements to the home. Urban households spent €33.72 a week on capital improvements and rural households €30.32 (CSO Household Budget Survey 2022 to 2023, table HBS01).
Over a year those weekly figures work out at about €460 on maintenance and repair services and about €1,690 on capital improvements per household, or roughly €2,150 combined, which is 4.1% of all household spending (calculated from table HBS01). Spending on household durable goods such as furniture and decorative items added another €34.98 a week.
What the Home Renovation Incentive Revealed About Irish Renovation Work
The Home Renovation Incentive (HRI) ran from October 2013 to the end of 2018, with a short tail into 2019 for works that already had planning permission. Because every qualifying job had to be registered by the contractor with Revenue, it produced the most detailed public record of Irish home renovation activity to date. Revenue’s final statistics show 161,694 works registered on 98,922 individual properties, with a total value of €2,727,709,177 and an average value per work of €16,870. A total of 14,520 contractors registered works, and 77,421 homeowners claimed €170.52 million in credits (Revenue, HRI Statistics 2013 to 2020).
Activity built every year the scheme ran: 3,740 works in the final quarter of 2013, 25,053 in 2014, 32,946 in 2015, 33,037 in 2016, 30,293 in 2017 and a peak of 36,199 in 2018. September, October and November were the busiest months every year, which matches what decorators see on the ground as households finish work before Christmas.
| Type of work under HRI | Share of total value | Share of number of works |
|---|---|---|
| Home extension | 34.57% | 8.74% |
| General repairs and renovations | 26.63% | 14.28% |
| Window replacement | 10.31% | 22.86% |
| Kitchen renovations | 9.58% | 17.54% |
| Bathroom, shower and en suite improvements | 3.50% | 7.36% |
Source: Revenue, HRI Statistics 2013 to 2020, page 3. The five categories above cover 84.6% of value and 70.8% of works (calculated); painting, plastering, flooring, plumbing and other categories make up the remainder.
Dublin dominated the scheme. Summing Revenue’s local authority table, the four Dublin councils accounted for €1,424.9 million of the €2,728 million in estimated value, or 52.2%, and 72,217 of the 161,694 works, or 44.7% (calculated from the Revenue table). Dublin City alone registered 23,812 works worth €524.0 million, Dún Laoghaire Rathdown 19,224 works worth €461.6 million, Fingal 15,140 works worth €239.1 million and South Dublin 14,041 works worth €200.3 million. Kildare (€130.6 million), Wicklow (€97.2 million) and Meath (€84.3 million) were the largest counties outside Dublin by value.
Planning Permissions for Extensions and Renovations
Planning data is the best live indicator of larger renovation projects. In 2025 the CSO recorded 29,574 planning permissions granted across all construction types, up from 25,785 in 2024. Of the 2025 total, 6,622 were for new dwellings, 8,232 were for extensions and 5,469 were for alterations, conversions and renovations (CSO Planning Permissions Granted, table BHA03). Extensions and alterations together therefore made up 13,701 permissions, or 46.3% of everything granted in 2025 (calculated), and extensions alone outnumbered new dwellings.
Looking only at dwellings, 7,193 permissions for house extensions were granted in the State during 2025 and 2,502 of them, or 34.8%, were in Dublin (calculated from CSO table BHQ13). A further 4,138 permissions for alterations and conversions of dwellings were granted nationally in 2025, 1,782 of them in Dublin (43.1%, calculated). The first quarter of 2026 continued the trend with 1,792 extension permissions and 1,240 alteration permissions for dwellings nationally, against 1,723 and 778 in the first quarter of 2025.
Paint, Materials and Labour Costs
The CSO Wholesale Price Index for building and construction materials stood at 131.2 in June 2026, up 3.1% in twelve months. Paints, oils and varnishes were the fastest rising category at 145.1, up 8.4% year on year, while plaster was flat at 144.9 (up 0.1%), wooden windows and doors were up 2.6%, insulating materials up 1.9% and glass up 4.0% (CSO Wholesale Price Index, table WPM39). Measured from January 2021, when the paint index was 97.8, wholesale paint prices have risen 48.4%, against a 40.0% rise for all building materials (calculated from table WPM39).
At the consumer level, the CPI sub index for materials for the maintenance and repair of the dwelling was up 3.7% in the year to July 2026 and services for the maintenance, repair and security of the dwelling were up 0.9%, against an all items rate of 3.4% (CSO Consumer Price Index, table CPM24). Over five years the picture is different: from July 2021 to July 2026 the services index rose from 89.0 to 106.5, an increase of 19.7%, and materials rose from 88.2 to 103.8, an increase of 17.7% (calculated from table CPM24).
The Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland reported in November 2025 that house rebuilding costs rose by an average of 7% nationally over the previous twelve months, with Dublin up 5%. The minimum rebuild cost of a standard three bedroom semi detached house in Dublin was put at €3,381 per square metre, or €331,340 for a 98 square metre home, and the SCSI attributed the increases mainly to labour costs and contractor availability (SCSI, House Rebuilding Cost Guide, November 2025).
The full seller-side picture, price growth, county medians, sales seasonality, buyer profile and the value evidence, is collected in our Irish property market statistics.
House Prices, Sales and the Renovation Premium
Renovation and redecoration activity tracks the second hand housing market, because most homes are repainted within months of a sale. The CSO Residential Property Price Index rose 5.6% nationally in the year to June 2026, with Dublin up 4.6% and the rest of the country up 6.4%. Within Dublin, house prices rose 3.6% in Dublin City, 4.8% in Dún Laoghaire Rathdown, 3.2% in Fingal and 3.8% in South Dublin (CSO Residential Property Price Index, table HPM09).
In the twelve months to June 2026, 61,550 market sales of dwellings were executed nationally, of which 41,551, or 67.5%, were existing rather than new homes, and 21,607 were in Dublin (calculated from CSO table HPM02). The median price of an existing dwelling sold in June 2026 was €366,000 nationally and €490,000 in Dublin.
Energy performance now carries a measurable price premium. SEAI analysis of almost 50,000 sales recorded by MyHome in 2023 and 2024 found that each one step improvement on the 15 point BER scale is associated with a 2.7% higher final sale price nationally, 2.8% for houses and 2.2% for apartments. The effect was 4.7% in rural areas, 2.7% in urban areas outside Dublin and 1.7% in urban Dublin (SEAI, August 2026).
Energy Upgrades and Grant Funded Retrofits
Deep retrofits are the largest single category of renovation in Ireland today, and almost every one ends with plastering and repainting. SEAI grant schemes supported energy upgrades in more than 58,600 homes in 2025, including more than €230 million spent on fully funded upgrades in 8,100 energy poor homes (SEAI, August 2026). Since 2019, 257,000 home energy upgrades have been delivered with over €1.7 billion in Government funding (SEAI and Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment, April 2026).
Budget 2026 allocated a record €640 million to home energy upgrades with a target of 73,000 homes in 2026. SEAI processed 29,000 grant applications in the first quarter of 2026, up 96% on the same quarter of 2025, including more than 7,000 applications for the new windows and doors grant, more than 1,730 for attic insulation and more than 1,000 for cavity wall insulation (SEAI, April 2026).
The Painting and Decorating Trade in Ireland
Census 2022 recorded 8,204 people at work as painters and decorators, of whom 6,062 worked within the construction sector and the rest in manufacturing, property, retail and other industries. The trade has grown at every census: 5,679 in 2011, 7,244 in 2016 and 8,204 in 2022, an increase of 13.3% since 2016 and 44.5% since 2011 (calculated). Plasterers numbered 5,018 in 2022, up from 4,285 in 2016, and construction and building trades supervisors 3,613 (CSO Census 2022, table F7049).
The wider construction sector had 81,043 active enterprises in 2023, with 206,446 persons engaged and 150,762 employees, and 11,409 new construction enterprises were born that year (CSO Business Demography 2023, table BRA31). Most painting and decorating firms sit in the under ten persons size class, which is why the 14,520 contractors who registered HRI works between 2013 and 2019 is a useful indicator of how fragmented the Irish renovation market is.
The trade behind these renovations is profiled in our painting and decorating trade statistics for Ireland: 8,204 painters and decorators at work, 58.9% of them self-employed, with a statutory craft rate of €23.74 an hour from August 2026.
Method and Sources
All figures on this page were checked at source in August 2026. Housing stock, age, tenure, vacancy and occupation figures come from CSO Census 2022 tables F2095, FY033A, FY034A and F7049, and the electricity based vacancy series from CSO table VAC12. Housing condition is from Eurostat indicator ilc_mdho01 (2023 reference year, extracted August 2026). Household spending is from the CSO Household Budget Survey 2022 to 2023, table HBS01. Renovation scheme data is from Revenue’s Home Renovation Incentive Statistics 2013 to 2020, published January 2021. Planning permissions are from CSO tables BHA03 (annual, 2025) and BHQ13 (quarterly, to Q1 2026). Price data is from CSO tables WPM39 (June 2026), CPM24 (July 2026), HPM09 and HPM02 (June 2026). Energy upgrade figures are from SEAI press statements of 21 April 2026 and 17 August 2026. Rebuild costs are from the SCSI press release of 4 November 2025. Construction enterprise counts are from CSO Business Demography table BRA31. Where a percentage or a Dublin total is described as calculated, it was derived by OS Decor from the named table and the working is available on request. The page will be refreshed after the CSO’s next Census housing release, each quarterly planning and property price release, and SEAI’s year end statement in January 2027.
How OS Decor Helps
OS Decor is a Dublin painting and decorating company working across the older terraces of Dublin City, the 1960s and 1970s estates of South Dublin and Dún Laoghaire Rathdown, and the newer homes of Fingal, Kildare, Meath and Wicklow. If the figures above describe your house, from damp repair and replastering to a full interior or exterior repaint after a renovation or a sale, our house painting Dublin team can survey the job and give you a written quote. You can also read our guide to how much painters charge in Dublin or contact us directly.
