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.
Want the full story these numbers tell?
Everything on this page — the 75.4%, the 29.6%, the methodology notes — is unpacked in plain language in our free book, Home Design DNA: Why 75% of Renovations Fail Before They Start. It's free, takes about the time of a cup of tea, and is the natural next step after this page.
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.
What Is Confusion Actually Costing You?
This isn't about workmanship or budget size — it's about the small, quiet costs that build up when decisions get made twice. Enter what's already happened, or what you're worried might happen, and see a conservative, honest estimate. No emails, nothing saved — just numbers.
What This Actually Cost You Instead
On a fixed budget, $0 doesn't disappear — it gets quietly redirected, away from the things you actually wanted.
Something permanent: roughly .
Something you can (technically) fix later: roughly .
A benchtop edge isn't getting redone next year — that's one you live with. A curtain swap feels temporary at the time... but "eventually" has a way of becoming permanent too. Either way, it's a quiet irritation you didn't choose, sitting in the room with you every day.
The Cost That Doesn't Fit in a Spreadsheet
Money is the easiest cost to count here — and probably the least important one. Independent research across 13,000 people found that how happy you are in your home affects your overall life happiness more than your income or your career does. And 75.4% of homemakers don't love their finished renovation. That's not a dollar figure. That's years of a room that doesn't quite feel like you, every morning you walk into it.
For some, it shows up in quieter ways too — other research has found that renovation stress commonly spills into relationships with a partner, kids, even neighbours, long after the invoices are paid. None of that fits neatly into the numbers above. It's just as real.
Conservative NZ estimates only, not a quote. A repainted room assumes a 5m × 4m lounge with a standard 2.4m ceiling — roughly 43m² of wall, or about 86m² across two coats. At standard coverage of 10–12m² per litre, that's 7–8 litres, meaning two 4L tins of premium interior paint (~$130–$190+ NZD each) plus rollers, brushes, and tape (~$30) — this calculator uses the lower end of that range, ~$290 per repainted room. A returned or resold furniture item assumes a typical ~$800 piece at a ~30% resale or restocking loss (~$250); a décor item assumes a typical ~$150 piece at a higher ~65% loss when resold or given away (~$100). An extra trade call-out assumes a standard NZ call-out or half-day rate (~$180); extra professional hours assume roughly 2.5 hours at a blended NZ design-professional rate (~$300). Structural and service materials (framing, gib-board, rewiring, replumbing) assume an average material-only baseline of ~$1,800 per square metre based on standard New Zealand renovation cost breakdowns. The permanent/replaceable trade-off examples above use a real NZ shower-fitting price guide for the shower comparison, current NZ lighting retailer and installer pricing for the statement-pendant-versus-basic-downlight comparison, and figures supplied by Kristina Cope from real project experience for the curtain, benchtop, and TV comparisons. All figures are illustrative — your actual costs may run higher or lower depending on your project, region, and suppliers.
This is exactly the kind of cost a documented plan exists to prevent — before it happens, not after. Two free ways to start:
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