Key findings
- Heated airer rose 161.7% week on week, the largest move of the twenty terms we track.
- The four fastest risers were all damp or heating items: heated airer, dehumidifier at 61.3%, smart thermostat at 57.9% and moisture absorber at 46.9%.
- Tower fan fell 18.6%, the steepest fall in the set. Burglar alarm was next at 11.5% down.
- The damp turn landed in the week of 16 August 2026: the week UK dehumidifier searches took the lead over fan searches and held it.
Every Friday we measure how far UK search interest moved for the products we write guides about, and publish the movers with the method attached. This is the edition for the seven days from 28 August to 3 September 2026, measured on 4 September 2026 against the seven days from 21 to 27 August.
Editions are not rewritten. Next week gets its own page and this one stays as published, so the run of weeks can be read back later. The live version, which always shows the current week, is on our trending page.
Movers, week to 3 September 2026
The two middle columns are mean daily Google Trends search interest for that term, on that term’s own 0 to 100 scale. Each term is requested separately, so a 90 on one row and a 60 on another do not mean the first term is searched more. Only the change column compares like with like.
What moved
The top of this week is one story told four times. Heated airer, dehumidifier, moisture absorber and smart thermostat are all bought for the same reason, which is a house that has started to feel cold and wet. Nothing in the weather made headlines in that week, so the more likely trigger is the calendar: the first week of September is when British households stop drying washing outdoors and start paying attention to the heating.
Slow cooker at 22.0% and sunrise alarm clock at 16.5% belong to the same turn. So, less obviously, does carbon monoxide alarm at 14.0%, which tends to move when people think about switching the boiler back on.
At the other end, tower fan at 18.6% down is the summer letting go. Burglar alarm at 11.5% down is the odd one out and worth watching rather than explaining: it is the only fall in the set that does not have a seasonal reading.
The damp turn, 2026
Put tower fan, dehumidifier and heated airer into a single Google Trends query for Great Britain and all three sit on one shared scale. Over the twelve months to 3 September 2026 that query shows fans leading dehumidifiers through the summer, then losing the lead and not getting it back.
The last week fans led was the week of 9 August 2026, at 18 against 13. The next week it was 7 against 14. Then 4 against 15 in the week of 23 August, and 3 against 21 in the week of 30 August. Heated airer went 1, 2, 4, 6 across the same four weeks.
We call that switch the damp turn: the week UK search demand stops being about moving air and starts being about removing water. In 2026 it landed in the week of 16 August.
The catch. These are small numbers on a shared scale, so any single week could flip on sampling noise. What makes this a turn rather than a wobble is that the gap has widened three weeks running, and that the separate seven day measurements in the table above point the same way.
What this does not measure
This is search interest, not sales. It says how many people looked, not how many bought, and it cannot tell a buyer from someone reading about a product. It is also not a count of searches: Google Trends reports a relative index, so a term can rise on the index during a week when total UK search volume fell.
We track the terms we have guides for, so the set is a sample of the market and not the market. Cost indexes and claims audits that do not map to a single product term are left out rather than forced into a term that would not be honest.
Method
- Source: Google Trends, Great Britain, daily series, one request per term.
- Each request covers 21 August to 3 September 2026, so both weeks come out of one normalisation and the two means are comparable.
- Change is the mean of 28 August to 3 September against the mean of 21 to 27 August, to one decimal place.
- Google Trends resamples, so re-running a query can return a figure a point or two out from ours. Each row links to the exact query so anyone can re-run it.
- Measured on 4 September 2026. Nothing on this page comes from a retailer and no figure here is a sales figure.
Written by Jacob Whitmore, Whito Ltd. See our methodology and how we make money. Guide links go to our own pages, which carry Amazon affiliate links.
How to cite this
Look Into (2026) UK Demand Index: week to 3 September 2026. Whito Ltd. Available at https://lookinto.co.uk/trending/uk-demand-index-2026-09-03/ (measured 4 September 2026).