Within the Same County, Home Depot and Lowe's Shoppers Look Alike

In national data, a Lowe's shopper and a Home Depot shopper can look like different people. At Lowe's, 31% of card spending comes from cardholders flagged as Republican, against 25% at Home Depot. People over 65 account for 25% of Lowe's spending and 21% of Home Depot's.

Much of that gap comes from where the stores are. Half of Lowe's stores are in the South, against 38% of Home Depot's, and Lowe's leans toward smaller cities. Among visitors who live in the same county, the two chains draw from neighbourhoods that are about as rich and about as Republican as each other.

The business gap does not fade in the same way. A Home Depot gets 15% more visits than a Lowe's in the same state. Its shoppers made 6.8 purchases a year there, against 5.4 at Lowe's, at nearly the same average purchase.

Where the stores are

The two chains split the country. Lowe's has more stores than Home Depot in 20 states. They run from North Carolina, its home state, through the Southeast from Virginia to Louisiana, and into Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Missouri. Home Depot leads in Texas, Florida and Georgia, and across the West, New York, New Jersey, New England and the upper Midwest.

Lowe's is also the small-city chain. Six in ten Home Depots are in the 50 largest metro areas, against 45% of Lowe's stores. Of Lowe's stores, 52% are in smaller metro and micro areas, against 38% of Home Depot's. In the big metros, a Home Depot is busier, with 10,140 visits a week per store against 8,240 at a Lowe's. In smaller metros the two are level, at about 10,800 each.

Lowe's shoppers come from a wider area. 10.8% of Lowe's visitors live in a county with no Lowe's, against 7.8% for Home Depot. Lowe's needs 230 home counties to reach half its visitors. Home Depot needs 125. That fits a chain that shoppers drive to from surrounding counties. Menards, which has fewer and very large stores, draws 23% of its visitors from counties without one.

Who shops there

The card data show a clear national tilt. At Lowe's, 31% of spending comes from cardholders flagged Republican, against 25% at Home Depot. 25% comes from people over 65, against 21%, and 90% from homeowners, against 87%. In other groups the two are close. Among the 291 largest card-spend brands, Lowe's is the closest match to Home Depot's mix of customers. Home Depot ranks fifth for Lowe's, after two regional grocers (Ingles and Weis), Tractor Supply and SiriusXM.

The card data have no geography, so phone data are needed to test whether the tilt is about place. Nationally, 19.6% of residents in Lowe's visitors' neighbourhoods are flagged Republican, against 12.6% for Home Depot. Home Depot's neighbourhoods have more top earners, 9.4% against 6.7%, and more people who live in flats.

Among visitors who live in the same county, most of that difference goes away. Across 2,361 counties, Home Depot's visitors came from the more Republican neighbourhoods in 46% of counties and from the richer ones in 52%. That is close to a coin toss. The same holds for home values and the bottom income bands. These measures describe visitors' neighbourhoods, not the income or politics of individual shoppers. They suggest the national profile owes a great deal to where each chain operates.

The phones seen at the stores differ a little. 38% of devices seen at Home Depot are iPhones, against 36% at Lowe's and 55% across all U.S. places. Both sit well below the median chain, as do the other home-improvement and farm chains: Tractor Supply is at 30% and Harbor Freight at 27%. State for state, Home Depot's iPhone share is about 1.10 times Lowe's and higher in 42 of 45 states. A state is a bigger area than a county, though, and within a state Home Depot is more often in the big metros.

The two chains also share many customers. In July 2025, 26% of Lowe's 1.25 million card-panel customers also bought something at Home Depot that month, and 23% of Home Depot's 1.63 million bought at Lowe's. Both shares rise in the spring, to 28% and 25% in April and May. Each chain is the other's first rival in the category, far ahead of Tractor Supply, Harbor Freight and Ace. These are lower bounds, because the cross-shopping lists are truncated.

Visits and spending

An average Home Depot draws about 10,390 visits a week, against 9,590 for a Lowe's. Only Menards, a Midwest chain with very large stores, is busier, at 13,680. Comparing stores in the same state widens the gap. There, a Home Depot gets 1.15 times the visits of a Lowe's, and it is busier in 35 of the 45 states where both chains have at least five stores. Lowe's is strongest where it has the most stores, which flatters its national average.

Card spending points the same way. A Home Depot customer spent an average of $168 a month at a store, against $157 at a Lowe's. State for state the gap is slightly wider, at 1.10 times, and Home Depot is ahead in 42 of 45 states. The exceptions are North Carolina, Kentucky and West Virginia. Home Depot customers made more trips in 37 of those states and spent more per trip in 40.

Among all brands, the two chains sit side by side. A Home Depot customer made 1.83 trips a month to the same store, at $92.09 a transaction. A Lowe's customer made 1.77 trips at $88.64. The average place in the panel has a $40 ticket. Home Depot also books more card-not-present spending, such as app and online orders picked up or charged at a store: 2.8% of its spending, against 1.6% at Lowe's.

Over a full year, the gap comes mostly from how often customers return. A Home Depot shopper spent $577 there in the 12 months to Aug. 9, against $467 at Lowe's. Home Depot shoppers made 6.8 purchases, against 5.4 at Lowe's. The average purchase was about the same, at $85 and $86. Only Menards shoppers spent more, at $634. Home Depot gets more spending per shopper in all 28 demographic groups in the card panel.

When they go

Both chains follow the garden and project calendar. Spending peaks in May and bottoms out in December. Lowe's swings more: May runs 22% above an average month, against 17% at Home Depot. Both fall about 20% below average in December. Menards, Ace and True Value swing even harder. Tractor Supply and Harbor Freight barely move.

There is no contractor rush at dawn. Only 14.0% of Home Depot visits and 13.6% of Lowe's visits fall between 5 a.m. and 9 a.m., barely above the median chain at 12.9%. Sherwin-Williams, the paint chain that sells to professionals, is far more of an early stop, at 18.2%. Home Depot peaks at 11 a.m. and Lowe's at noon.

Lowe's gets a slightly larger share of its visits on Saturdays, 19.1% against Home Depot's 18.3%. Home Depot is a little busier from Monday to Thursday. The difference is small but consistent. Lowe's weekend share is higher in 39 of 45 states, and its Saturday share in 42.

Momentum

The two chains' spending has moved together. Both chains' shares of card spending have fallen since the 2021 home-project boom. Home Depot's fell from about 2.0% to 1.3%, and Lowe's from 1.3% to 0.7%. Home Depot has taken 1.76 times Lowe's spending every year since 2022, up from 1.70 in 2021. Over the latest 12 months both were down 2.1%. The data describe two close competitors with different footprints and shopping rhythms. Neither is pulling away from the other.

For Lowe's, the question the data raise is less about which customers it attracts. It is how to get the customers it already has to come back one more time.