Interior designers and architects might lose their jobs as do-it-yourself products have gained in popularity, according to the latest Baan Lae Suan poll.

The poll was conducted for the second time by Baan Lae Suan (House and Garden) magazine, a publication under the management of Amarin Printing and Publishing.

From 400 respondents of a sampling group in Bangkok aged between 22 and 50 who earn an average personal income of between Bt10,000 and Bt20,000 monthly, it was found that the popularity in DIY products had increased by 20.5 percentage points from the previous poll.

The second poll found the popularity of the DIY products stood at 88.5 per cent, compared to 68 per cent previously.

Concerning the main reasons for home decoration, half of the respondents said they wanted to change their houses' decorative styles. About one-third said they changed their home decorative items because of restoration, while 22.3 per cent wanted to expand the use of space in their homes.

According to the poll, problems found when home-owners wanted to decorate their houses were a lack of accessibility of interior designers or architects (60.6 per cent), followed by finished work not conforming with design plans (14.6 per cent).

About 12.5 per cent cited misunderstandings between home-owners and interior designers or architects, while 6.6 per cent complained of a lack of trust in them.

However, 73.7 per cent of respondents were still confident in interior designers or architects, with a 75-per-cent satisfaction level for decorating houses by themselves.

More than half of the respondents said they sought information about home decoration from magazines, 34 per cent from exhibitions and fairs, 39 per cent from television programmes, 25 per cent from one-stop-shopping home-decoration stores and 21 per cent from the Internet.

The main requirements for selecting home-decorative products were quality and usage (50.8 per cent), quality guarantees (26 per cent), image and modernity (24 per cent), and promotions (17 per cent).

The results showed the popularity among home-owners for finding information before making their purchasing decisions.