There is a particular smell that greets you at the entrance of a B&Q warehouse. It is a complex aroma of fresh timber, paint, fertilizer, and optimism. It is the smell of possibility. And over the past few years, millions of Britons have been drawn to it, filling their trolleys with plasterboard, paintbrushes, and power tools. The DIY boom is real, and it has transformed our relationship with our homes.
The boom had many fathers. The lockdowns, of course, played a huge part. With nowhere to go and nothing to do, we turned our attention to our immediate surroundings. That leaking tap we had ignored for years suddenly became a project. The bare wall in the hallway called out for a gallery of our own making. The garden, once a place for occasional sitting, became a landscape to be shaped and tamed.
But the trend predates the pandemic. It is rooted in a deeper shift in how we view our homes. They are no longer just places to eat and sleep; they are expressions of ourselves. We want them to be unique, to reflect our tastes, to tell our story. And the only way to achieve that, for most of us, is to do it ourselves. We cannot afford an interior designer, but we can afford a weekend and a pot of paint.
