Our Research
The Research Behind Creating Design Clarity
This isn't a marketing claim. It's the reason the business exists.
Creating Design Clarity wasn't built on a hunch. It was built on more than three decades of professional practice, an independently commissioned study of over 1,200 New Zealand homemakers, and a body of international research that - again and again, from directions nobody at CDC was involved in - keeps confirming the same underlying pattern: most people don't love their finished renovation, and the reason has almost nothing to do with workmanship or budget. This page sets out exactly what we know, how we know it, and where every figure on this site actually comes from.
What We Found When We Asked 1,200+ Homemakers
In 2020, Kristina Cope commissioned Endless Definition Research, led by researcher Kalym Lipsey, PhD, to study homemaker satisfaction across New Zealand - not to prove a marketing point, but to find out whether what she'd observed across thirty-five years of practice actually held up at scale.
It did, and the findings were more sobering than expected:
None of these figures came from a customer survey or a marketing panel. They came from an independent research house, fielded and analysed at arm's length from CDC.
What Changed for the Homemakers Who Did This Work
Follow-up research with CDC's own course participants shows a second pattern, tracked over time rather than at a single point:
Independent Research That Corroborates It
This is the part we think matters most, and the part most businesses in this space skip entirely: research CDC had no hand in, that keeps landing on the same underlying story.
On Home and Happiness
The GoodHome Report, a study of 13,000 people across Europe commissioned by Kingfisher, found that home happiness accounts for roughly 15% of a person's overall life happiness - more than income, more than career.
On Renovation Fear, Across Four Countries
A cross-market survey spanning New Zealand, Australia, the UK, and the USA found hidden costs to be homeowners' single biggest renovation fear - consistently, in every one of those four markets.
On the Ripple Effect
A UK survey of 1,000 recent renovators found that a renovation's effects extend well beyond the budget - into general wellbeing, work life, and relationships with partners (35%), children (28%), and even neighbours (26%).
On Rework, Internationally
Academic construction-rework research goes back to the early 1990s. The fuller body of that research - dozens of studies across many countries - clusters between roughly 4% and 10% of total project cost, with individual studies ranging from under 1% to more than 20%, and the overall trend declining over three decades as documentation and communication tools have improved. We cite this full range deliberately, rather than leading with only the highest figures, because the honest number is also the more interesting one.
On Colour
The seasonal colour framework taught inside our full course is grounded in the work of Dr Angela Wright, a British colour scientist whose Colour Affects System established that colour affects human emotion and behaviour in genuinely consistent, testable ways - a rigorous, evidence-based tradition, distinct from a great deal of what gets marketed as "colour psychology" without any research behind it at all.
What Practitioners See (The Part No Survey Captures)
Not everything worth knowing shows up in a formal study. Some of what informs our approach comes from decades of conversations with the people who actually do the work.
Kristina's husband and CDC business partner Simon began his working life as an electrician, and his father, Sam Cope Snr, built 72 homes over his own career. Between Simon, his father, and the builders they've stayed close with, a pattern shows up that no official rework statistic captures: paint quietly repainted and never mentioned, furniture resold at a loss and filed away as "it just didn't work out," tradespeople absorbing the cost of a client's changed mind rather than itemising it, and fixed budgets absorbing mistakes not as extra cost but as quietly downgraded quality. We believe this means official rework figures - including our own - are a floor, not a ceiling.
This is practitioner insight, not a cited academic study, and we present it as exactly that.
For Journalists and Researchers
Creating Design Clarity is a New Zealand-based home design education company founded by architect and interior designer Kristina Cope, built on independently commissioned research showing that 75.4% of homemakers are dissatisfied with their finished renovation, and that up to 29.6% of the average renovation budget is lost to rework caused by decisions made before the homemaker actually understood what they wanted.
"The problem was never taste, or budget, or workmanship," says Cope. "It's sequencing. Almost everyone starts a renovation by asking what it should look like, when the only question that actually matters is what it needs to feel like - and by the time anyone asks that second question, the tradesperson is already on site."
Cope holds qualifications in both architecture and interior design - an unusual combination that underpins the company's Austin Home Method®, which draws on architectural investigative practice as well as interior design's visual and sensory training. The seasonal colour component of the method is grounded in the peer-reviewed Colour Affects System developed by British colour scientist Dr Angela Wright.
Full data, sourcing, and methodology notes for every figure above are available on request.
For media inquiries: creatingdesignclarity.co.nz/contact
Full Source List
- CDC Primary Research
- Creating Design Clarity homemaker satisfaction study, 1,265 NZ homemakers, commissioned 2020, independently fielded and analysed by Endless Definition Research, led by researcher Kalym Lipsey, PhD,
- CDC Outcomes follow-up research, course participants, ongoing
- Independent Research
- The GoodHome Report, Kingfisher (2019) — 13,000 respondents across Europe
- Refresh Renovations cross-market renovation fear survey - NZ, Australia, UK, USA
- Toolstation UK Renovation Regrets survey — 1,000 respondents
- Construction rework cost studies, multiple countries and decades (1991–2024) — full list available on request
- Wright, A. & Murphy, D. — The Colour Affects System
Full citation list with links continues on request - see our complete Research Index for the underlying document set.
— Kristina Cope, Founder, Creating Design Clarity