Recently, more and more Internet giants have entered the home decoration track, empowering the industry in all aspects from platform models, supply chains, fund custody, digital tools, and offline experiences.
Although these actions have solved many long-standing pain points in the home decoration industry, due to the characteristics of the industry itself, it is still a big challenge to truly achieve profitability and scale.
JD.com recently launched a self-operated decoration store
app, this is a one-stop platform that can meet the needs of rough house decoration, old house renovation, fine decoration house renovation and even villa decoration. It also provides services such as free door-to-door measurement, apartment planning and detailed quotation list.
At the beginning of this year, Alibaba Tmall launched Tmall Decoration Bao, a one-stop pick-up app specifically for home decoration companies.
In addition, Ant Financial launched Home Decoration Bao on Alipay in November last year, which mainly solves the problem of dedicated funds in the home decoration industry.
Kuaishou also launched Kuaishou Dream Builder last year and started recruiting agent service providers across the country to enter the home decoration field in a big way.
The strategies of these major Internet companies to enter the home decoration industry are very different from before.
In this wave, they have carried out a two-way layout. They not only provide ordinary owners with standardized services such as decoration, bureau reform, financial guarantee and content explanation, but also open digital tools, financial solutions, supply chain channels and traffic resources to offline decoration companies and building materials manufacturers, deeply empowering the B-end, which is very different from the early days of only doing information matching or selling building materials.
The home decoration industry is a trillion-level market and the entrance to household consumption. With home decoration traffic, subsequent consumption of furniture, home appliances, soft furnishings, housekeeping, etc. will continue. This is the reason why major manufacturers are rushing to enter.
The models of these major manufacturers in the home decoration business have also changed.
At first, they only sold building materials online or helped decoration companies with information docking. They relied on diverting traffic to collect service fees from offline decoration companies, which was an asset-light operation.
Starting from the second half of 2025, the platform will increase asset investment.
For example, in May 2026, Tmall launched Tmall Designer, an underlying AI home decoration platform, and also opened offline experience stores, connecting AI design, building materials supply chain, construction control and capital guarantee transactions. At the same time, it opened digital tools to small and medium-sized decoration companies, hoping to become industry infrastructure.
Tmall uses the traffic of Taobao and Tmall to gather owners of the same community to negotiate prices through community group purchasing, lowering the main material procurement cost and construction price, solving the pain point of low retail decoration bargaining power, and promoting the efficient integration of supply chain and construction resources.
Alipay’s Home Decoration Bao will be launched in September 2025
The fund custody service is launched every month. Through the node acceptance and segmented loan processes, it avoids the risk of decoration companies running away with money or funds being misappropriated. Within two months of its launch, leading regional companies such as Chongqing Thangka and Guizhou Xibaibai have joined the service.
ByteDance was the first to incubate the self-operated home decoration brand Zhuhaojia. Later, due to strategic adjustments, it no longer engaged in self-operated construction. It merged the Zhuxiaobang platform into Douyin Life Services, relied on Douyin traffic to provide home improvement content services, and deeply cultivated home decoration in the same city.
Kuaishou launched the recruitment of nationwide agent service providers in August 2025, with heavy deployment in third- and fourth-tier cities. In 2026, it will continue to strengthen home decoration live broadcasts and local group purchases, attract users through short videos, and guide online traffic to offline transactions, forming a complete closed loop.
JD.com takes the route of self-operation and heavy delivery, with heavy investment and ecological integrity.
It built tens of thousands of square meters of warehousing by itself, and unified the procurement and distribution of main materials. In May 2025, it opened a self-operated offline flagship store in Beijing, and released its own building materials brands Jingpin Doors and Windows and Jingyue Warm. In June, it acquired Sichuan Life Home and expanded its offline service network to 126 cities. In August, it reached a cooperation with IKEA to connect design and delivery.
In March 2026, JD.com released AI smart home decoration, using JoyAI large models to make whole-house decoration solutions. It has an industrialized delivery platform, manages more than 5,200 industrial workers, abandons the traditional subcontracting model, has a professional purchasing team of more than 500 people, and offline stores are stationed in Jingdong MALL nationwide, with the goal of covering 30 countries in 2026.
This city launched a new bureau renewal strategy during June 18th this year, providing services such as elderly-friendly decoration, zero-interest installments, and million-dollar protection insurance.
Now that real estate has entered the era of stock, the market demand and scale of the home decoration industry have changed, and the mainstream has become renovation of old houses, partial renovation and redecoration of second-hand houses.
China’s home decoration development report shows that the size of the home decoration and furnishing market will reach about RMB 5 trillion by 2025, and may reach RMB 7 trillion in 2030. The demand for renovation of existing houses will become the absolute protagonist of the market.
The home decoration industry has a high unit price per customer, which is the entrance to family consumption and can lock in family consumption for a long time. This is why major platforms are flocking to it.
The traditional home decoration industry has pain points such as low standardization, opaque prices, no guarantee of financial security, and the inability to supervise the construction process. Internet majors can use technology and resources to make changes. For example, Alipay Home Decoration Pay solves the problem of financial security, and JD.com reduces material costs, controls quality, realizes visualization of the decoration process, and unified after-sales service.
Because the home decoration industry is non-standard, heavy on delivery, has low gross profit margins and is fragmented, even if major Internet companies invest heavily in transformation, it will be difficult to achieve large-scale profits in a short time. In the future, the industry will coexist with Internet platforms, national chain companies and local decoration companies, and the industry reshuffle has just begun.
For consumers, decoration will be more transparent and safer; for practitioners, they need to embrace digitalization and standardization to survive.
In short, major Internet companies are pushing the home decoration industry to develop in a more standardized and efficient direction, but the nature of the industry is focused on service and offline experience. Whoever can capture users will have the last laugh.
