Abby White, Head of PR at Boutique, shares the 2026 PR trends that are reshaping how Home & Garden brands connect with consumers.
This feature forms part of Big Furniture Group’s Marketing Spotlight series shining a light on marketing opportunities and challenges within the Home & Garden sector.
The Spotlight is brought by Boutique, we are an independent marketing agency that’s spent over a decade partnering with brilliant brands across the category helping them grow through smart, joined-up marketing across Media, PR, Influencer, Digital and Social. Our passion for the Home & Garden world led us to launch B@HOME, a dedicated platform created to bring brand marketers together, share knowledge, and spark new connections.
The return of PR glory
With the digital advances of 2025 now firmly ingrained into the fabric of how consumers shop and behave, one thing is clear… PR is returning to its pre-pandemic glory as the catch all for delivering awareness, authenticity and trust. And for 2026, it has the opportunity to be the connective tissue weaving performance, content, influence and customer experiences together.
For the home & garden sector, where emotional connection, tactility and storytelling matter more than ever, PR is the advantage we can leverage.
IRL experiences are back
In-person events aren’t just back, they’re the centrepiece of brand engagement, helping businesses reach consumers, influencers and journalists in one swoop.
Guests WANT to touch, test and experience product finishes. They want to see how a gorgeous lamp illuminates a cosy nook, how a rug grounds a room and how a sofa styles a setting.
Activations and showcases are on the rise as powerful ways for brands to create emotional connections with audiences, strengthening the stories behind collections and building memorable moments for consumers to recall.
Influence is everywhere, and ever evolving
No longer confined to social channels. Influencers are designers, creators, community leaders, advocates and tastemakers.
Dedicated influencer writers are on the rise in national media groups with the Daily Mail appointing the world’s first ‘influencer correspondent’ to its team of journalists. Not just focusing on talent or TV personalities, but on creators who hold genuine connections with communities they’ve nurtured and evolved over time.
Building relationships between brands and creators brings authenticity to content and real influence to potential customers seeking inspiration on their next renovation or home upgrades.
Real homes, real people, real stories
Consumer spending is still under pressure, and audiences are seeking more relatable aspirational content than before.
The rise of the case study captures this perfectly. And it’s exclusives that win the day. Joining up your social media UGC with your PR activity is paramount to success. Social media is filled with real people creating beautifully styled homes, tagging brands, and usually very happy to be promoted.
Journalists are being pitched iPhone galleries to inspire exclusive shoots of real homes that land on real front covers, bringing maximum exposure to the businesses that jump on this opportunity.
Quality over quantity = performance
It’s not a new concept, but it’s now non-negotiable. Highly curated strategies that focus on high-impact coverage, in the right places to the right audience not only have better staying power, they’re also more likely to filter through to AI overview recommendations.
The way consumers shop is changing, the number of touchpoints is increasing, and the quality of the places that brands are visible in matters more than volume.
This means that media and brands must collaborate closely, to provide readers and consumers with helpful, accurate and rich information. A strong PR strategy ensures your brand story is connected across channels, in the places where consumers ask questions.
Strategic engines, not silos
Centralising storytelling at the heart of brands in 2026 can unite influence, experience and performance. Powered by PR but delivered across the entire marketing mix.
Though visibility and discovery are the ultimate goals, PR owns relationships at all parts of the buying cycle, creating stories that connect and resonate with consumers, make advocates of influencers and inspire journalists to share brand messages with their readers.
In a landscape where consumer journeys are fragmented, influence is decentralised and tech is rewriting product discovery, PR becomes the strategic engine that takes brands beyond being seen, it gets them chosen.
OUR HOME & GARDEN PULSE CHECK
Alongside this feature, we’re inviting you to take part in our Home & Garden Marketing Survey, an initiative designed to track how the sector is feeling, what’s changing, and what new opportunities are being embraced. We will share the results of the pulse check with all participants, allowing you to see how the sector is feeling and acting. We’d love your input. Take part in our latest survey here: https://form.typeform.com/to/OwHrRv9U
As a thank you, you will have the chance to win one of two sets of tickets to our 2026 Home & Garden Conference, for surveys completed by 31st Dec 2025.
If you would like to dive into any of the data or commentary we have shared, or would like to be in the room with other leaders at one of our Home Masters sessions drop us a note home@weareboutique.co.uk.
