In 2026, The Consumption Of Home Appliances Will Usher in A New Standard: Compulsory Labeling Of Safe Use Years, And Focus On First-Class Energy Efficiency
(Beijing News) Entering 2026, China's home appliance market is ushering in a series of profound changes. With the official implementation of a number of new national standards and the new stage of the national "old-for-new" subsidy policy, consumers will get clearer guidance when buying home appliances, and the whole industry is also accelerating the transformation to the high-quality development direction of "safe, intelligent and green".
1. The new national standard is implemented: household appliances need to be marked as "safe service life", and the intelligence level has a "measure and measure"
Since this year, the mandatory national standard "Safe Use of Household Appliances" has entered the full implementation stage. The standard requires that all household appliances sold in the Chinese market must be marked with their "safe years of use" in a prominent position, and clearly inform consumers of the recommended safe use time of the product under normal use. This is like putting a "shelf life" on household appliances, which aims to guide the public to eliminate old electrical appliances that have expired service and reduce the safety hazards caused by line aging and component wear from the source.
At the same time, the problem of the vague concept of "intelligence" of home appliances, which has been troubling consumers for a long time, is about to be solved. The newly formulated national standard of "General Technical Requirements for Intelligent Household Appliances" has established a grade system from L1 to L5 for the intelligent level of household appliances for the first time. Among them, L1 means having basic networking and remote control functions, while the highest level of L5 means that the product has the ability to perceive the environment, user habitual learning and proactive service provision. The standard is expected to be fully implemented within the year. At that time, a clear "intelligent level" label will become a reliable tool for consumers to identify the degree of intelligence of products.
In terms of energy efficiency, the requirements of some categories have also been further improved. Take the new version of the standard of "Electric Consumption Limit Value and Energy Efficiency Level of Household Refrigerators" as an example, its energy efficiency requirements for refrigerators are about 40% higher than the current standard. This means that the average daily power consumption of the new first-class energy-efficient 500-liter double-door refrigerator on the market is expected to drop to about 0.5 degrees, with significant energy-saving benefits.
2. Adjustment of trade-in policy: narrowing the scope of subsidies and strongly guiding energy-saving consumption
Simultaneously, the optimization and adjustment of the national home appliance "old for new" financial subsidy policy in 2026 will be carried out. Compared with last year, the new policy shows the characteristics of "more focused scope, higher threshold, and clearer orientation".
First of all, the categories covered by national financial subsidies have been reduced from more than ten categories last year to six categories, namely: refrigerators, washing machines, TVs, air conditioners, computers and water heaters. Kitchen appliances (such as range hoods, microwave ovens, rice cookers, etc.) that previously enjoyed subsidies are no longer included in the national unified subsidy list.
Secondly, the energy efficiency threshold of subsidies has been greatly increased. The new policy stipulates that only the "first-class energy efficiency" or "first-class water efficiency" products newly purchased by consumers will be subsidized, and the subsidies for the second-class energy-efficient products will be canceled. This move directly guides market resources to concentrate on the most energy-saving top products.
In terms of subsidies, consumers who buy eligible new household appliances can enjoy a subsidy of 15% of the selling price, and the maximum subsidy for a single item is 1,500 yuan. Compared with the 20% subsidy ratio and the upper limit of 2,000 yuan last year, the policy incentive is more accurate and rational. According to industry insiders, this marks that the initial universal promotion stage has passed, and the policy is entering a new cycle of deepening quality improvement and promoting the upgrading of industrial structure.
3. Industry accelerates transformation: "AI+" empowers intelligent manufacturing, and green low-carbon becomes the core of strategy
In the face of new regulations and policies on the consumer side, home appliance manufacturing enterprises are also actively responding at the production and strategic levels. In the latest list of "pilot intelligent factories" released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the factories of many home appliance giants such as Haier, Gree and Midea have been selected. These factories deeply integrate artificial intelligence technology to realize the whole process intelligence from user customization, research and development simulation to flexible production and quality testing. Take air conditioner customization as an example, through the AI platform, the design cycle of new products can be compressed from the traditional 3 days to less than 1 hour, and the production efficiency and accuracy can be greatly improved.
In addition, the "dual carbon" goal has been deeply integrated into the long-term planning of home appliance enterprises. Haier, TCL, Hisense and other head enterprises have announced a clear carbon neutral schedule, taking green design, green materials, recyclable and carbon emission reduction in the production process as their core strategies. This means that in the future, consumers will not only buy functional products, but also green goods that carry the concept of environmental protection throughout the life cycle.
Experts pointed out that the coordinated development of this series of standards, policies and industrial trends marks that China's home appliance industry has fully entered a new stage of value growth with user safety, experience and sustainable development as the core from the scale expansion period. For consumers, buying home appliances will become more transparent, simple and reassuring.
