The Relation between Building Energy Efficiency, Appearance and Marketability

Although there has been a worldwide interest in achieving buildings energy efficiency, only a marginal reduction in the total energy demand was reported in the building sector due to multiple reasons such as lack of popularity and marketability of energy-efficient buildings. In other words, efforts need to be made to increase the number of energy-efficient buildings, resulting in more energy saving, rather than merely focusing on the energy efficiency. Aesthetically enhanced energy-efficient buildings can be thus a solution in elevation of the popularity of the energy-efficient buildings. The potential influence of aesthetics was also anticipated in several previous studies. Therefore, this study aims to propose a multi-disciplinary approach to investigate the relation between energy efficiency, aesthetic and marketability of buildings. This research focuses on feasible strategies to adapt the design of energy-efficient buildings toward the further visual satisfaction of customers. For this purpose, a comprehensive survey was firstly designed and conducted to collect data from real-estate agencies (n=289) in 26 UK cities. The focus was then employed to investigate the current building market trends, to understand the relation between energy efficiency, aesthetic and marketability, and to determine the most dominant building exterior parameters that influence the later parameters. According to the conducted survey, position, number and total area of windows have been found to be the most dominant exterior parameters, respectively. Surprisingly, a reverse correlation between marketability and energy efficiency was observed as the latter was seen to have low market value in the eyes of customers. Inversely, a directly proportional correlation between attractive appearance and marketability, was further recognized in this study.