Furniture Shopping in the AI Era: How to Find What Fits Your Home

Explore the data, sources and methods behind the guide.

Furniture spending adds a different perspective

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates that real consumer spending on furniture and furnishings reached $254.2 billion in 2025, measured in chained 2017 dollars. That was about 26% above 2019 and about 1% above 2021. Spending fell in 2022, then increased in each of the next three calendar years. “Real” spending is adjusted for inflation, allowing comparison across years.

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Calendar years; inflation-adjusted national spending, all purchase channels. Source: BEA via FRED, DFFFRX1A020NBEA, September 30, 2026 vintage; Totally Home calculations.

National spending and retailer-name searches provide different views of furniture shopping. The BEA series follows spending across purchase channels; the Google Trends series below follows searches for selected retailer names.

Household budgets provide another view. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports average annual spending on household furnishings and equipment of $2,701 in 2021, $2,606 in 2022, $2,508 in 2023 and $2,414 in 2024. That is a nominal decline of about 11% across those years. These current-dollar averages cover all consumer units, including those that made no furniture purchase.

The two spending series describe different parts of the market. BEA tracks inflation-adjusted national spending on furniture and furnishings through 2025. BLS tracks average household spending in current dollars on the broader furnishings-and-equipment category through 2024.

A recent rebound can coexist with a longer decline

Six of the seven retailer terms had lower average search interest in October 2025–September 2026 than in October 2021–September 2022. Yet most rose compared with the immediately preceding year. Looking only at the latest year would miss that longer context.

Each term’s first annual average = 100. Annual periods run October–September. A value of 76 means 24% below that retailer term’s own baseline. Source: Google Trends; Totally Home calculations.

For example, Wayfair’s latest annual average was about 24% below its first-year level, while increasing about 7% from the previous year. IKEA was about 8% below its first-year level and up about 12% year over year. Rooms To Go was approximately flat in the latest comparison, at a lower level than the first period.

West Elm deserves a closer look. Its annual mean rose about 56% in the latest year, but its median weekly index rose only about 7%. A pronounced spring 2026 spike makes the mean look much stronger than a typical week. Removing each year’s four highest weeks reduces the estimated increase to about 38%.

Bed searches tell a different story

The five bed-type groups followed different paths. Comparing the latest full year with the first, Murphy-bed searches were about 25% higher and loft-bed searches about 18% higher. Bunk-bed, daybed and trundle-bed searches ended closer to their starting levels. Each group combines its singular and plural terms.

The same bed-search analysis across all five periods is shown below. The main-story chart compares the first and last of these annual averages.

Each group’s first annual average = 100; periods run October–September. Follow each bed group’s search interest over time. Source: Google Trends; Totally Home calculations.

Murphy-bed interest stayed around its starting level through the middle years before its latest rise. Loft-bed interest followed a different path: three years below the baseline, then a roughly 37% year-over-year increase that put the latest year about 18% above the start.

Bunk, daybed and trundle searches also rose in the latest year, ending roughly 2%, 4% and 3% below their respective starting averages. The recent rebound was broad, while the five groups followed different paths over the full period.

There is more than one furniture-search season

Across the first four annual periods, the grouped daybed and trundle searches reached their highest monthly average in July each year. Bunk-bed searches peaked in July or August. Murphy-bed searches peaked in January in all four. The fifth year brought spring peaks instead.

Plan your purchase around the move, guests or school-year change you have in mind. Allow time for delivery, room preparation and assembly.

How AI is becoming part of furniture discovery

ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude add another place to ask questions, build a shortlist and compare options. Pew Research Center’s February 2026 survey of 5,119 U.S. adults found that 44% had used ChatGPT, 24% Gemini and 6% Claude for any purpose. Respondents could use more than one tool.

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Share of U.S. adults who had used each tool, for any purpose. Source: Pew Research Center, February 2026 survey.

Across retail, Adobe reported that 39% of respondents to its companion U.S. survey had used AI for online shopping. Its analytics showed AI-sourced visits to U.S. retail sites growing 393% year over year in the first quarter of 2026. The research covered over one trillion retail visits and a survey of more than 5,000 respondents.

Furniture buyers have also expressed interest in AI. Provoke Insights’ summary of its Summer 2025 research reports that 65% of recent furniture buyers were interested in using AI while shopping, and 43% were comfortable with AI chat tools.

At Totally Home, U.S. visits classified as AI Assistant referrals landed on both reference articles and bed-browsing pages during June–September 2026. Advice and product browsing were both part of those arrival paths.

AI inside a search engine can change the next step, too. A separate Pew analysis of 900 U.S. adults’ browsing found traditional-result clicks on 8% of Google search visits with an AI summary, compared with 15% without one. The observational study used March 2025 browsing and search results reconstructed in April.

How we built this study

We used Google Trends Web Search, United States, All categories, for October 1, 2021–September 30, 2026, retrieved October 22, 2026. The selected retailer terms were Wayfair, IKEA, Ashley Furniture, Rooms To Go, Crate and Barrel, Pottery Barn and West Elm. Searches for these names include furniture, other products and store-related questions.

Bed groups combine bunk bed + bunk beds; loft bed + loft beds; daybed + daybeds; Murphy bed + Murphy beds; and trundle bed + trundle beds. Google explains how search terms and groups work.

Google supplied 262 weekly buckets per query. We estimated annual averages by weighting each bucket for the days overlapping each October–September period, then set each series’ first annual average to 100. Each series is compared with its own baseline. Percent changes are rounded.

Google Trends uses sampled, rounded indexes of search interest relative to all Google searches. Sampling, term choice, news and seasonality can affect results. Google also excludes internal searches made by AI Mode and AI Overviews. We retained the spring 2026 spike and checked its effect by comparing means, medians and results with the four highest weeks removed.

The added spending series is BEA real personal consumption expenditures for furniture and furnishings, annual 2019–2025, retrieved from FRED on October 22, 2026 using its September 30 revision. BLS figures are nominal average consumer-unit spending for the broader household furnishings and equipment category, 2021–2024. Our reported percentage changes use unrounded source values.

The shopper studies cover different populations and questions. Baymard studies online furniture/home-decor shoppers. Provoke’s overall cross-industry study surveyed 1,500 Americans; its public furniture-buyer summary leaves the subgroup size unspecified. Pew measures general AI use or Google browsing; Adobe covers broad retail referrals and shopping responses. Each percentage is reported within its study’s own sample and question.

Our qualitative search observations use reported U.S. Web queries for June 6, 2025–October 5, 2026, cross-checked against an overlapping July 19–October 16, 2026 export. Coverage depends on reported queries, rankings and our assortment.

Order observations cover January–September 2026 and use explicit selected options in positive-quantity lines from positive-value, currently shipped orders with no recorded refund. Adding awaiting-fulfillment and partially shipped orders preserved the same configuration themes.

First-party AI observations use U.S. GA4 landing pages and recognized AI Assistant referrals for June–September 2026. Google introduced this dedicated referral classification in May 2026, giving us a consistent starting point for this review.