The Ideal Home Show is a National Institution and this year was its 118th year. How incredible is that.
I’ve been an ambassador for the show and hosted the event since 2010, so I’m very proud to be associated with the event for 16 years now.
The numbers are pretty amazing. At the event this spring there were 136,219 visitors over the 10-day event with the 4-month marketing campaign leading up to and during the event reaching millions of people.
There were close to 500,000 website users, 14 million people reached through TV and Radio campaigns, 6.1 million people connected to via partnerships and over 8 million social media impressions.
This is why The Ideal Home Show is the largest consumer show in the UK.
The Show demonstrated how to bring ‘comfort’ into homes in a clean, green and sustainable way
George Clarke TV presenter, architect, writer and Ecodan Ambassador
Make yourself comfortable
Mitsubishi Electric was at the very heart of the show with the most fantastic stand that was visited by tens of thousands of people over the course of the event.
The main focus of the stand was ‘COMFORT’ and how advanced heating and cooling technologies can provide total comfort in your home all year round.
“Comfort is cosy winters. Comfort is chilled summers. Comfort is peace of mind.”
I’ve been banging the drum about ‘comfort’ for years. Very few architects actually talk about ‘comfort and cosiness’ in design, but I think it is critical.
It is not just about your home ‘looking beautiful’ it is also about ‘feeling beautiful’ and that can only happen if you are comfortable. You can be in the most stunning home on earth, but if you are freezing in the winter and boiling in the summer you aren’t going to like it as much as you should!
Free money
So, with Mitsubishi Electric being at the heart of The Ideal Home Show, comfort was very much at the heart of our stand.
We featured the M-Series range of stylish air conditioning units as well as the market-leading Ecodan Air Source Heat Pumps.
A major part of the communication to visitors was about how the technology worked, how it can truly benefit the levels of comfort in their everyday lives, how they can benefit from clean and green forms of heating and cooling and how they could financially benefit from the government’s Boiler Upgrade Scheme.
This is where the government will give £7,500 toward the capital cost of replacing your old gas or oil-fired heating system with a new and approved Air Source Heat Pump. I’ve written about this before because that is not a loan, it’s a grant, so it is essentially ‘free money’.
As part of an extension to the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, the government also recently announced a £2,500 grant for the installation of residential air-to-air heat pumps (air conditioning) in England and Wales.
The stand also featured the ‘FindME’ tools –Ecodan and Air Conditioning Selector Tool that allows anyone to find the right system for their home and connects them with local Mitsubishi Electric Approved Installer.
These tools are an enormous benefit for potential new customers who are searching for the right ‘comfort’ product.
A cool technological choice
A new feature on the Mitsibushi Electric stand this year was the ‘Air Con Pod’.
This was a beautiful, small, glass pod that included a live M-Series system, controlled by MELCloud Home to show the power of air conditioning in your home.
I have to say that it was such a ‘comfortable’ temperature enclosed space that I spent most of my day in there. It was a fantastic space and showed how valuable temperature control, air quality and comfort are…even in the middle of a hot and balmy Kensington Olympia!
As well as the stand being a huge success, I was lucky enough to be part of two amazing sessions for Mitsubishi Electric on the Main Stage.
An Ideal purchase
The first session was with Phil Payne, a new Mitsubishi Electric customer who had recently bought a new Ecodan Air Source Heat Pump system and joining us on stage was Gary Hamilton, the approved installer at Phil’s home.
What gave me so much joy, is that Phil and his partner Zena, came to the Mitsubishi Electric Ideal Home Show stand in 2025, to learn more about heat pumps and following that visit, they made the decision to go ahead with their new, clean, green ASHP install.
The Ideal Home Show inspired them to make that choice!
The one-hour session on stage explored Phil and Gary’s (and Phil’s partner Zena’s) experience of making the transition from an oil-fired heating system to a renewable ASHP system.
It was an absolute joy to hear how much their everyday lives had been transformed and improved by making that transition.
Creating the Ideal Town
Next up, following the session with Phil and Gary, we made the leap a story about an individual home, to the story of a whole town!
We wanted to discuss what an ideal home look would look like in an ideal town?
The session was chair by Russell Dean Deputy Divisional Manager for Mitsubishi Electric. My job as a panellist was to talk about The Ideal Green and Sustainable Home and I sat alongside Sebastian Loyn, Director of Planning and Development at YTL Developments.
Seb is involved in one of the government’s New Town Developments, called Brabazon and the West Innovation Arc.
The site is located just 5 miles north of downtown Bristol at the former Fulton Airfield, a site that is planned to deliver up to 40,000 homes over the coming decades. 6,500 homes are being delivered in the first phase with hundreds already completed and occupied. Seb even moved into one of the houses on completion, with his family, to test them out first-hand!
It was a fascinating session where we discussed how to roll out truly sustainable homes, using Air Source Hat Pumps at scale. The amazing thing is that heat pumps are also being used for the offices, schools, shops and other buildings being built as part of the development, helping to make Brabazon a truly sustainable town.
A renewable future
From an individual home installation created over a period of days to the creation of thousands of green and sustainable communities created over many years both of our Ideal Home Show Main Stage talks were an inspiration for me, the team and for our exhibition visitors.
The 2026 Ideal Home Show at Olympia Kensington was a phenomenal success. I’m proud to have been part of it and I’m proud that Mitsubishi Electric were part of it too.
It connected with consumers in the most amazing way to show how we can transform the levels of ‘comfort’ in their homes in a clean, green and sustainable way.
The future isn’t burning fossil fuels to heat and cool our homes. The future for an Ideal Home is renewables.
George Clarke is a TV presenter, architect, writer and Ecodan Ambassador
