by WASHINGTON — Furniture and home furnishings stores remained a weak spot in April’s retail landscape, according to advance estimates released Thursday morning by the U.S. Census Bureau.
On a seasonally adjusted basis, furniture and home furnishings store sales totaled $11.3 billion in April, down 2% from March’s revised $11.5 billion. Year over year, the category was down 3.6% from April 2025’s sales of $11.5 billion. It also makes furniture one of the weakest retail categories in the report. Among major retail sectors, only department stores performed worse year over year, with sales down 1.2% from April 2025 and down 3.2% from March.
The April decline follows a modest gain in March, suggesting that consumers are, at least for now, still prioritizing other purchases over big-ticket items like furniture.
According to the report, some of the strongest categories year over year were non-store retailers (up 11.1%), sporting goods, hobby, musical instrument, and bookstores (up 13.4%) and miscellaneous store retailers (up 12.8%). Additionally, food services and drinking places were up 2.7% from April 2025. Unsurprisingly, gas stations posted some of the largest increases in the report, with a 20.9% year-over-year increase from April 2025, likely reflecting increased gasoline prices.
Zooming out, retail sales as a whole posted their third straight month of gains in 2026. Year over year, retail sales were up 5.2%. In April, retail and food services sales totaled $757.1 billion, up 0.5% from March and up 4.9% from April 2025.
The latest data underscores the soft demand facing furniture retailers, versus other categories, such as electronics and appliances, which rose 7.6% year over year and 1.4% from March. A stagnant housing market and rising household debt have increased consumer sensitivity around discretionary purchases, like furnishings, even as they spend in other categories.
