Twenty twenty-five was not the year construction anticipated. Prolonged uncertainty led to lower levels of housebuilding, and while November’s budget provided welcome clarity, it also brought the cancellation of the ECO scheme.

Over its lifetime, ECO delivered improved insulation in well over a million homes, yet recent quality issues driven by poor scheme design and oversight must be corrected if its just-published replacement, the Warm Homes Plan, is to deliver for households.

Signs for optimism include a reformed Energy Performance Certificate that may allow installers to differentiate their work on quality rather than just price. A concern remains though that the Plan may jump to solely deploying alternative technologies such as heat pumps. A well-insulated home is a comfortable, affordable, low-energy home. Insulation must remain central to any Warm Homes Plan.

The Future Homes Standard is the other signature demand-driving legislation. Publication is imminent at the time of writing, but we can already draw some conclusions on how it will affect merchant sales.

First, wider walls. 150mm wall cavities are becoming the new normal in masonry construction. Sixty six percent of builders already have plans to build with 150mm cavities when the Future Homes Standard comes into effect, with a further 23% considering it¹. Because of the performance it offers to the building and the builder, we expect most of those cavities to be fully filled with mineral wool insulation, often premium products with a lower lambda value.

Second, deeper lofts. Two layers of loft insulation, 270mm deep has been the baseline for over a decade, but builders are increasingly going far beyond that, adding a third layer of insulation to reach up to 500mm. This trend started with Part L 2021, with large housebuilders finding more efficient lofts an easier win in their overall compliance calculations. We expect it to be an even more popular choice under the Future Homes Standard.

Habits are changing, and with that comes opportunities for merchants. To increase the volume and value of the insulation they sell, and the accompanying ancillaries, to enable the new normal.

¹ Survey of Professional Builder readers, conducted Q4 2025