It is not a surprise that home is an inalienable good for Italians: as confirmed also by the 2015 Home Observatory by Leroy Merlin that has surveyed that home is one of the top priorities for 72% of interviewees or at least they judge it very important. A priority with which is satisfied more than half of the sampling, considering that for 55% of them it is a pleasant place where to live. Besides, according to the Observatory, it has acquired functional, technological, qualitative and eco-sustainable aspects that make it even more liveable. In particular, the satisfaction grows for all those aspects that make home easy to manage, more and more autonomous and cost-saving: relying on low management and maintenance costs and better energy saving (respectively sixth and seventh item in the ranking of the most important home aspects) are considered the elements most liked by Italians today. According to the Home Observatory, even greater importance will be given to management and maintenance costs (first in the ranking), in particular improving the thermal and acoustic insulation, and to health, aiming at further improving the air and water quality, as well as to the absence of architectural barriers. Concerning instead the home maintenance and decoration, one of the most diffused tendencies that outline the future trends in our Country, according to the Home Observatory by Leroy Merlin, is smart protection, that is to say the remote control of home appliances through smartphone. A not very diffused trend in Italy, yet – even if its users will certainly go on doing that in the future – but with excellent development prospects. According to the research data, on average only 29% of interviewees on a national scale have used at least once the remote control of household appliances through smartphone, habit that is more diffused in Southern Italy (34.6% of interviewees in southern regions has used it at least once). Among those who have already used the smartphone to control their homes, about 80% will keep on doing that. On the other hand, among those who have never used the remote control for home appliances, 42% probably/certainly will start doing that in the next few months, witness that the trend is still in strong development phase. According to the Observatory’s data, 59.2% of interviewees think that the trend will further spread next year.
