The kitchen remodeler's year: when consultations come in, when they do not, and the slow-season plan
Kitchen demand runs on the calendar, from January planning to the pre-holiday rush. How to time ads, email and showroom events, and what to do in the months when the phone goes quiet.
Kitchen remodeling has a calendar, and most firms market as if it does not. They run the same budget every month, wonder why August is quiet, and then cannot keep up with January. Here is the year as it actually runs for a design-build firm, and the plan that matches marketing to it.
The year, month by month
January and February: planning season. Homeowners come off the holidays having hosted in a kitchen they hate. Consultation requests peak. These projects sign in March and April and build in late spring. This is the single most important marketing window and most firms are under-spending in it because December was slow.
March to May: signing season. Consultations from the winter convert. Cabinet orders go in. Referral activity is high because people are talking about spring projects.
June to August: build season, and the quietest lead months in most markets. Homeowners are traveling and nobody wants a kitchen torn apart in July. Leads that do come in are often for fall builds.
September and October: the second peak. The "done by Thanksgiving" homeowner shows up in September, which is already too late for a full remodel in most firms, and the "done by next spring" homeowner starts researching. This is the window to sell early-winter build slots.
November and December: quiet for new leads, busy for finishing. Nobody books a consultation the week of Thanksgiving. But the January planners are starting to browse, which is why retargeting and email in December pay off in January.
Markets vary. Florida and Arizona run a snowbird calendar with a winter build peak. Check your own signed-contract dates for the last three years and map them before you plan.
Spend when they are looking, not when you are slow
The instinct is to spend more when the phone is quiet. The better move is to spend most in January through March and September through October, when the people searching are the people who sign, and to shift the summer budget into pipeline work.
A reasonable shape for a $4,000 monthly average: $5,500 in January, February, March, September and October; $3,500 in April, May and November; $2,000 in June, July, August and December. Same annual total, matched to demand. See the Google Ads guide for the campaign structure.
The slow-season plan: June through August
The quiet months are when you build the things that pay in January.
- Photograph every project finished in spring. Hire a real estate or architectural photographer for a half day at $400 to $900 per kitchen. These photos are your gallery, your ads and your Houzz profile for the next two years.
- Film the designer. Ten short clips, one per finished project, explaining one decision each. This is the fall and winter Meta creative. The Meta guide covers the format.
- Collect the reviews you did not ask for. Go back through spring completions and send the two-text sequence from the reviews guide. The median kitchen remodeler has 9 reviews; a quiet summer is when you get ahead.
- Write the question pages. Cost in your city, timelines, permits, cabinet lead times. These are what AI assistants and Google quote, and they take weeks to get picked up, so summer writing shows up in the fall and winter search.
- Run a lower-ticket offer. Cabinet refacing, a countertop and backsplash package, a pantry build-out. These sell in summer because they do not wreck the house for ten weeks, and the clients come back for the full remodel.
- Call the referral partners. Agents are busy in summer and have sellers whose kitchens are killing the listing. Offer a pre-listing assessment with a budget range in 48 hours.
The fall push: September and October
Theme the marketing around the build calendar. "Book your design consultation in September for a January build" is a real deadline, because cabinet lead times of 6 to 12 weeks mean a December order is needed for a January start. Say that in the ads, the email and the showroom. Homeowners respond to a reason to act now; most firms never give them one.
A showroom event in late September, with a cabinet rep, a countertop rep and 20-minute design slots, fills a Saturday with people who then book full consultations in October.
December: plant for January
Hold the ad budget down but do not go dark. Keep retargeting running on everyone who visited the gallery this year. Send one email in the first week of December to past clients and open leads: one finished project, a note about January build slots, and the consultation offer. The homeowner hosting Christmas dinner in the old kitchen reads it on December 26.
Schedule January's ad budget increase before the holidays so it is live on January 2. The firm that is already running when the planning searches start wins the first two weeks of the year's best window.
Staff the follow-up for the peaks
In January and September, consultation requests can double. The firm that answered every form in an hour in July will take two days in January unless someone is assigned. Decide in December who owns inbound leads in January, and set up the text-back and form replies from the follow-up guide so the first touch happens even when everyone is in consultations.
Frequently asked
We are busy year-round from referrals. Does the calendar still matter? Yes, for growth. Referral firms coast on the peaks without knowing it. If you want to add a second designer or a second crew, the capacity has to be sold in January and September, and that requires marketing timed to those windows.
Should we stop ads completely in summer? No. Drop the budget, keep the brand campaign and retargeting, and keep the lower-ticket offer live. Going fully dark resets the account's learning and you pay to rebuild it in September.
What about the holiday deadline leads in October? Be honest. "A full remodel cannot be done by Thanksgiving, but a refacing and countertop refresh can, and we have two slots." Converting the deadline lead to a smaller project this year and a full remodel next year is better than losing them to a firm that over-promises.
If you want the year's budget shape and the seasonal campaigns set up for your market, that planning is included in the free 14-day trial of any service.
Steven has spent the last several years running growth campaigns for local service businesses, kitchen remodeling companies among them, and builds the benchmark datasets on this site from public Google listings. About the editor