Renovating a home is one of the biggest financial decisions most homeowners will make — and one of the hardest to plan for. Contractor quotes vary wildly, “average cost” figures online are often outdated or regional, and financing options are confusing to compare side by side.
Renolyst exists to fix that.
We publish clear, research-based breakdowns of what home renovation projects actually cost in 2026 — from kitchen remodels to roof replacements — along with honest comparisons of the loans, credit lines, and financing programs homeowners use to pay for them.
What we do
- Break down real renovation costs by project type, size, and region
- Compare financing options (HELOCs, personal loans, contractor financing) side by side
- Explain the trade-offs plainly, without sales pressure
- Update our figures regularly, since material and labor costs shift often
What we don’t do
- We are not contractors, lenders, or financial advisors
- We don’t guarantee any specific price for your project — every renovation is different
- We don’t accept payment for positive reviews
Renolyst is an independent publisher. We may earn a commission when readers click certain links to lenders or retailers, at no extra cost to the reader. This never affects the accuracy of our cost estimates or how we rank options. See our full Disclosure for details.
Have a correction, a cost data point from your own renovation, or a suggestion for a topic we should cover? Contact us — we read every message.
Where our numbers come from
Every figure we publish is traceable. We build each guide from contractor quotes, supplier and material pricing, and published industry cost data for the current year — then we state the range rather than a single number, because a single number is almost always misleading. A kitchen remodel that “costs $26,941 on average” covers a $12,000 refacing job and a $70,000 gut renovation, and telling you only the average helps nobody.
Where a figure comes from a specific source, we say so in the guide. Where something is our own judgement — which of two options we would choose, and why — we mark it as judgement rather than dressing it up as data.
What makes us different
Most renovation cost articles give you a range and stop. The range is the easy part. What actually decides whether your project comes in on budget is the set of line items that are missing from the quote — the rot behind the siding, the drain that sits above your new basement bathroom, the ductwork that has to be replaced before a new furnace is worth anything.
So every guide here has a section on what is not in the quote. That is the part we would want if we were the ones getting three bids and trying to work out why one of them is $6,000 cheaper.
What we are not
We are not contractors, inspectors, engineers or licensed financial advisers, and nothing here is a substitute for a professional inspection or personalised financial advice. We do not accept payment from contractors for coverage, and no company can buy a recommendation on this site.
A cost guide is a benchmark for judging the quotes in front of you. It is not an estimate for your specific house, because no one can price what is behind your walls without opening them. Always get three itemised quotes from licensed local contractors.
Keeping it current
Material and labour costs move, sometimes sharply. We date our figures and revisit guides as pricing shifts rather than leaving a 2021 number sitting under a 2026 headline. If you spot a figure that has gone stale, or you have a real quote that contradicts what we published, tell us — corrections from readers who have just paid the bill are the most useful feedback we get.
You can browse everything we have published in the cost guide index, or start with the renovation cost calculator if you already have a quote you want to sanity-check.
Who writes this
Renolyst is written and run by Ali Raza. It is a one-person site, so it is worth saying plainly what that does and does not make it.
It does not make it a contractor. Nobody here has poured your foundation or hung your cabinets, and no guide on this site will pretend otherwise. What it is instead is careful, sourced research: every figure published here is traced back to named contractor-survey data, and where that data disagrees with itself, the disagreement is shown rather than smoothed into a single tidy number.
That distinction matters when you are reading a cost guide. A contractor can tell you what your job will cost. This site can tell you what the published national data says, what the range around it is, and which line items usually get left out of a quote — which is what you need before the contractor arrives, not instead of one.
Where the numbers come from
Four sources do most of the work here, and each guide names the one it used:
- Angi and HomeGuide — national averages and ranges built from homeowner-reported project costs. Large samples, useful ranges, no regional precision.
- Fixr — line-item breakdowns, which is where the useful detail about labour share and materials sits.
- The annual Remodeling Cost vs. Value report — the only consistent source for resale recouped-cost percentages. It covers a fixed list of projects, so when a project is not in it, we say so rather than inventing a figure.
- Code and tax documents directly — the IRC, the ISPSC, and the relevant sections of tax law, read at source rather than quoted from another blog.
What we will not do
We will not publish a resale figure for a project the Cost vs. Value report does not cover. Pools and skylights are the obvious examples: the guides for both say outright that no reliable recouped-cost number exists, and show the contradictory third-party estimates instead of picking the flattering one.
We will not quote a tax credit that has expired. The federal 25C credit ended for property placed in service after 31 December 2025, and the guides say so, even where a vendor would rather we did not.
And we will not present a national average as your number. Every guide ends by telling you how to build your own estimate, because a $5,200 average that is the midpoint of two unrelated jobs is worse than no average at all.
Money, and corrections
This site carries advertising and may carry affiliate links; neither buys a recommendation. The full statement is on the disclaimer page.
If a figure here is out of date or wrong, tell us on the contact page. Cost data ages, and a guide that is not corrected when its source updates is not research any more. Corrections are made with the change noted.