Excellent description of Home Depot and Lowe's. We are equally distant from each of them. Home Depot seems far more in touch with small contractors. There are plenty of employees, often going to and from something or somewhere. Often not easy to find someone to help you. Lowe's appears to have gone after the upper 1/3 of the Home Depot market. Stores are cleaner and employees more avaialble, knowledgeable and helpful.

I live pretty close to both stores and visit both often. I can't say I like one more than the other--each has its purposes. Home Depot has more hard core supplies for projects. But Home Depot has a very limited selection for each item it stocks. In other words, if you want a sump pump, Home Depot only has one, maybe two, brands of them. But there may be 25 different companies who make those pumps. But you won't see that choice in Home Depot. I wish HD had more variety on its shelves.

And everything in both stores is made in China. That is our national downfall.

Both stores about the same distance. We usually go to the Home Depot. There seems to be plenty of seasoned vets and knowledge there. Great tool selection!

Their both "big boxes", Home Depot has the poorest safety record on injuring or killing customers than
Lowes. Lowes is still a growth company continuing to take market share away from Home Depot every year. They continue to expand into Home Depot's territory, i.e. expansion into Canada this year, thus making the "Pie" from Home Depot sales much smaller. This trend will continue for years to come. Lowes is definitely amore friendly, cleaner and shoppable environment for familes versus Home Depot.

Being a former Lowes employee of 6yrs it is apparent that Lowes caters to the female and h/d caters to the male .Lowes twinks everything thing to make it sparkle . The female makes 98% of the choices in the home ( it's her castle ).h/d has more older employees .But lowes has a co-match 15%discount on stock purchase & 10% employee discount
& a retirement program that kicks butt. I'm proof.

As a female, I prefer Home Depot. I find there employees more knowledgeable and they have workshops and for kids also! Lowe's is more for the finishing touches which mostly the women like to pick out, but for me, Home Depot is my store of choice and both stores are equally distant from my home. Plus Lowe's is in the practice of treating their employees awfully and there is a class action lawsuit against this problem as I type. So unless absolutely necessary (which is almost NEVER) do I ever shop at Lowe's. Again, being a female, I would LIKE to know how to do something, rather than just pick out something. I have learned to do sheet rock, build things and fix toilets, replace plumbing, install garbage disposals, hang doors and the list goes on.....Plus, men are not the only ones that do this type of work. Doesn't Trading Spaces have a female carpenter? Just my 2 cents worth, thanks.

home depot is dirty, aisles crammed like a flea market with misc. junk. i have found good help in both stores. but at least in my area, lowe's is spotless, bright, and the bathrooms are spotless and up front which is handy. contrast that with dirty home depot where the bathrooms are almost impossible to find and filthy.

and i have news for you. i have almost never found something at home depot that lowes didn't have more of. and usually lowes offers an upgrade model whereas home depot only has builder grade stuff. i did a tear down and built my own house last year, and was at one of them morning, lunch and evening six days a week feeding my carpenters material. i bought literally everything for a 4000 sf house there except the hvac equip.

the home depot was 10 minutes away and on the way home and back. the lowes was 20 minutes out of the way. but i only went to home depot if i absolutely had to. (or for tool rental)

and i got news for ya. i bought the first batch of studs and plates at home depot and my carpenters almost revolted. twisted, knotty, and brittle. lowe's top choice lumber is far and aways better, and always the same price. it's hard to believe how filthy home depot is too. i could never walk out of there without greasy dust all over me, esp in the lumber stacks. lowes is amazingly clean.

used to be comical that i'd spend so much time in there picking out lumber that i'd go in while it was light and come out pitch dark.

one story is telling. the contractor desk guys got used to me coming in and loading up flat carts with hand picked studs/plates/plywood. they'd always watch for me at the checkout and grab the forklift so i didn't have to hand load two carts by hand onto my trailer.

one miserable rainy night the guy looked at my soaking wet 8 ft trailer overloaded with 12 ft 2x4's and knew my cheap tiedowns weren't gonna cut it. so he told me not to leave, he'd be right back. he came back with a banding machine on a pallet and banded my lumber to my trailer. i hardly ever went to home depot again. i'd stop at taco bell and use the extra ten minutes to eat lunch. just my personal opinion and experience.

also ever try to get a fully loaded cart through home depot? good luck even in the commercial aisle. it's a joke. the more i think about it home depot just sux. lowe's is everything home depot wants to be.

also also when i didn't need to hand pick lumber, lowe's delivery was way better. home depot had a contractor who would not take the forklift off the street unless you begged him. the lowe's guy would put it wherever i wanted, even on top of my scaffolds we used because he couldn't put it on my second floor because it was to high. the home depot guy almost had a heart attack when i asked for that. i was lucky he'd bring it down the driveway and then we'd hand load the scaffolds. god home depot drove me nuts before i just started planning better and going the distance to lowe's. by the way there is a new lowe's right across from home depot now. i cruise right past HD and chuckle as i pull into lowe's.

but that's just me. lol

As a woman I prefer Home Depot. Their employees are very knowledgeable and willing to go above and beyond to help you. As an added bonus Home Depot is now becoming a "green" company, which to me, is very important

I prefer Lowe's.....I can take my dog in there shopping with me!!! I prefer dog friendly stores. Besides, Lowe's has a clean crisp atmosphere, great product selection and good pricing. My dog loves walking up & down the aisles. The employees are friendly & helpful.

As a Home Depot employee, I can't disagree with what a lot of what's being said here. However, I would blame upper management for most of the problems at Home Depot. With the release of Bob Nardelli, and Frank Blake taking over, many improvements are being made to improve customer satisfaction. Home Depot is going back to their "Old Ways". Each store is once again hiring certified master plumbers and electricians. I know in our store the staff is very knowledgable in each department. I cant disagree that our store is not as clean as the local Lowes, but they don't have the foot traffic either. It is very hard to clean up after 3000 people a week, trust me!! If you haven't been to a Home Depot lately, try again. I think you would see vast improvement. Though the store may still be a little cluttered, we as HD employees are making every effort to assist customers. You can always voice your opinions to Home Depot Corporate too.

Having worked at both Home Depot and Lowes, I would like to have a say. H/D has better trained employes than Lowes . If I spent over 5 miunts with one person I would be called on. At Home Depot
I stayed with one customer for over 1 hour, at the same time anwsering questions for other customers.

H/D has a better trained staff than Lowes, because they pay 3 to $5 more per hour along with standerd over time, were as Lowes pays Chananess O/T. As a manager at Lowes I would be paid as little as $2.13 an hour, I'm talking 20 hours of o/t. When I moved over to The Home Depot I would take home as much as $250.00 a week, for the same hours. Employees at H/D are paid to help the customers and not to just sweep floors. What more can I say.

Home Depot is my choice. Plenty of help and knowledgeable stock personnel. There is a great workshop there for the kids too.

The Home Depot store near our house seems to be clean and well stocked. I wont go back in a Lowe's store since they found a rattle snake in a plant order!!!!!

I only shop at Home Depot

After shopping in both stores for several years - (distance is almost never an issue - it seemed that Lowe's has made a point to build each of its stores near the earlier established Home Depots) - I have concluded that Home Depot, while not as glitzy, is not only less expensive for the same products, but consistently seems to have twice as many employees - and the Home Depot employees seem to be twice as helpful and knowledgeable than the Lowe's employees, who are hard to find. Right there, as least for me, the two most important issues are covered by Home Depot - (a) Price and (b) Sales Help/Customer Service. I don't care about the warehouse atmosphere at Home Depot; I actually find it comfortable.
Three true stories: (1) At Home Depot, I had bought a lawn mower and expressed that I was not sure I could get it in my car. The cashier immediately called another employee who accompanied me to my car with rope in hand and made sure my new mower was secure for the ride home. All unsolicited ! (2) I was visiting my parents in FL and needed to get something for a home repair. I went to Lowe's, as I had passed it in my travels and did not know where there was a Home Depot. After some time I located a Lowe's sales person. He was taking care of 2 other customers. I waited. I learned he was not from that department - and he was on the phone, paging someone who was. The page went out for an employee from that department - in English AND in Spanish. This loud paging was repeated 2 times - in 2 languages. I asked the sales person, who spoke perfect English - why the EMPLOYEES were being paged in SPANISH? Don't Lowe's employees have to speak English here? He said he didn't know and he laughed, as did the couple standing there who needed the paged employee. I asked again at the cashier why an employee would be paged in Spanish, and she said - in confused agreement (and she was Latina) that she did not know. On the way home I determined that Lowe's was willing to double all the annoying loud noise and din simply to pander to the Latin population, proving in some way - that they were Spanish friendly. Luckily, I found out the Home Depot was just down the road, for future shopping trips. (3) I was in a NJ Lowe's with my neighbor, who had responded to an AD in a flyer for an appliance. We went to the proper department and waited. There was one guy there who could not answer any of our questions, or those of the other angry customer's. We went to the Store Manager (at my suggestion) and we were told by the store manager (North Bergen, NJ) that we should WAIT another 1/2 hour until that employee was back from lunch. That was the store manager's solution. My neighbor is a Home Depot customer now.

If you really want to look for power tools, neither place is particularly good. I've been using tools for years and used to be in the trades. Time was that there were local tool stores that stocked amazing quantitiies of power tools and specialty hand tools that were hard to find. They are, at least most of them, gone. If you want to get a good deal on tools with very savvy advice, go to a tool show some weekend if there's one within a couple of hours' drive from where you live. If not, go online.

And keep in mind that neither Lowes nor Home Depot is really a lumber yard or a hardware store. The lumber at Home Depot is usually barely framing grade, and neither has all those nifty parts drawers that you can still find in a few of the remaining urban and suburban hardware stores. That's where you should go for parts and such. For lumber, scout out local lumberyards: they still exist. The lumber you buy will be infinitely better and probably not much more expensive.

Home Depot for me too. Best and largest selection of power tools.

When choosing for a place to shop for my next big project I have to say it has always been LOWES. They have not only the best customer service but also the better quality product. Their employees are well trained and knowledgeable of the product they sell. They are also more than willing to go the extra mile to help you find exactly what you are looking for. The fisrt time I went to Home Dumpot I could not find anyone that would help me find what I needed, the place was dirty and when someone was actually willing to help he had no idea what I was talking about! Best of all it was his deptartment! It was not a very good shopping experiance overall. This is why I choose to drive the extra 15 minutes to LOWES. Another thing is that the product they sell at HD seems to be contractor quality material which tends to be cheaper for the contractors to buy. Most contractors are going to be looking for the cheapest product to buy, which means it is not as durable or good quality. This is why I choose to make my dreams a reality at LOWES!

Only HOME DEPOT for me. Their service is great