7 Best (and Worst) Things About Shopping at Home Depot

As the weekends warm up and spring barrels toward summer, chances are you’re increasingly drawn to the neon orange Home Depot sign.

As the weekends warm up and spring barrels toward summer, chances are you’re increasingly drawn to the neon orange Home Depot sign. This is the Big Daddy of the DIY/homeowner market—offering everything from mulch and mowers to lumber, power tools, landscaping, and bathroom and kitchen remodeling products, all under one roof.

In all candor, I lean toward rival Lowe’s for my home-improvement shopping. But Home Depot is never out of mind. I’m there often enough, too. Here are the areas where Home Depot excels against other major retail outlets—and where it lags.

Bob Niedt
Contributor

Bob was Senior Editor at Kiplinger.com for seven years and is now a contributor to the website. He has more than 40 years of experience in online, print and visual journalism. Bob has worked as an award-winning writer and editor in the Washington, D.C., market as well as at news organizations in New York, Michigan and California. Bob joined Kiplinger in 2016, bringing a wealth of expertise covering retail, entertainment, and money-saving trends and topics. He was one of the first journalists at a daily news organization to aggressively cover retail as a specialty and has been lauded in the retail industry for his expertise. Bob has also been an adjunct and associate professor of print, online and visual journalism at Syracuse University and Ithaca College. He has a master’s degree from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and a bachelor’s degree in communications and theater from Hope College.