en.Wedoany.com Reported - Amid persistently high interest rates and rising construction costs in South Korea, the burden of full-scale home renovations is increasing, making "partial renovations"—repairing only outdated or inconvenient spaces—a new residential consumption trend. The direct construction business of lifestyle platform "Today's House (오늘의집)" has grown in line with this trend, with contract values in June this year approximately tripling compared to the same period last year, and the kitchen category skyrocketing 16-fold within one year of the service's launch.
Cost burden is the direct driver behind the rise of partial renovations. According to data from the Construction Cost Management Center under the Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology, the construction cost index for building works reached 137.67 in May this year, an all-time high, up 5.07% year-on-year and about 40% higher than in December 2019 (98.63) before the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, the number of homes requiring repairs continues to grow: according to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport's national building statistics, the proportion of buildings over 30 years old rose to 44.4% by the end of 2024, with residential buildings accounting for over half at 53.8%. Demand structure is also driving this shift—between January and April this year, the number of jeonse (lump-sum deposit) and monthly rent transactions reached approximately 950,000, 4.3 times the number of sales transactions (about 220,000). Jeonse and monthly rent tenants find it difficult to carry out large-scale construction without the landlord's consent, leading to growing demand for partial renovations such as wallpaper and flooring that can be easily restored to their original state. These small-scale projects yield low profits, often avoided by large renovation companies, creating a "market gap" with high demand but few reliable options.
Against this backdrop, the building materials and renovation industry is responding swiftly. KCC Glass (KCC글라스), through its renovation specialty brand "Home CC (홈씨씨)", has launched the "Home CC Space Package," allowing consumers to choose any space—such as the entrance, living room, kitchen, bedroom, or bathroom—for construction, thereby reducing the cost burden compared to full-scale renovations.
Platform companies are also targeting this market. Today's House has moved beyond its intermediary role to expand into "direct construction," carrying out partial renovations such as kitchens, wallpaper, wood flooring, and floor coverings in the Seoul metropolitan area. Starting with wallpaper in 2024, it gradually expanded to flooring and kitchen services in 2025, with plans to further extend to bathrooms and film application. Full-scale renovations continue to follow the existing model as an intermediary service connecting certified companies. The platform adopts a "responsible construction" strategy, offering a one-year warranty after construction, providing rapid after-sales service through its headquarters customer center, coordinating schedules and managing construction processes with dedicated in-house managers, issuing "direct quotes" covering all items including material costs, labor costs, and additional expenses, while ensuring price competitiveness by eliminating intermediate distribution channels. Additionally, in March this year, Today's House opened its first offline renovation hub, the "Pangyo Lounge (판교라운지)," in Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi Province. The core space of this venue is the showroom for the direct construction brand "Today's House Kitchen (오늘의집 키친)," where visitors can physically touch and operate cabinets, countertops, faucets, and sinks to experience a complete kitchen. It also features a "Material Library" where approximately 150 different materials—such as wallpaper, wood flooring, tiles, and floor coverings—can be compared across various specifications, and collaborates with smart lighting brands to display the actual colors of materials as they change with illuminance and color temperature, reducing the common gap between expectations and actual results in partial renovations.
Today's House stated that as rising prices and construction costs increase the burden of full-scale home renovations, partial renovations that repair only selected spaces are becoming a rational choice for actual consumers. Since the smaller the project scale, the harder it is to pre-judge price and quality, the company is committed to creating a construction environment that consumers can trust and rely on.
