Home Depot Or Lowe's: Which Store Has The Best Toilet Deals For You?

If it's time to upgrade your toilet, you might visit your favorite big-box hardware store to look for a large selection and a good deal. Both Lowe's and Home Depot offer hundreds of toilet designs for sale, giving you plenty of choices for the brand, color, and shape you want to install. But are toilets one of the items you should buy from Lowe's or Home Depot when you need a good value? And does it even matter which store you choose, since both offer similar products and pricing? Home Depot and Lowe's may have many similarities, but the two retailers do occasionally differ when it comes to the toilets they offer.

Before comparing the deals these two big-box hardware retailers offer, it's important to point out that both offer sales with temporary percentage discounts from time to time. They also may provide bulk savings discounts when you buy three or more of the same model of toilet. If you catch the right sale or discount at either Home Depot or Lowe's, you could receive a significant value using one retailer over the other. However, outside of the special deals you might find occasionally, our research shows that the two big-box retailers offer nearly identical deals on new toilets and installation. Here's how Lowe's and Home Depot stack up against each other in terms of deals and installation offers on toilets.

Kohler is one of the best brand names among toilets, and both Lowe's and Home Depot carry several dozen different Kohler models. The Kohler Innate 12-Inch One Piece Smart Bidet Toilet is one of the best smart toilets, and both retailers offer it for the same price of $3,800. If you prefer toilets with a lower IQ (and price tag), the Kohler Adair 12-Inch Elongated Toilet is also available at both retailers for $493. One of the rare situations where the two retailers have different prices on a Kohler product is when shopping for the bowl only with the Kohler Memoirs Elongated Toilet Bowl. Home Depot retails the white model at $219, while Lowe's charges $304.

American Standard is another popular brand that both retailers carry. As with the Kohler brand, both Lowe's and Home Depot offer nearly identical prices on American Standard toilets. The American Standard Cadet 12-Inch Two-Piece Toilet costs $208 at both retailers. On the mid-priced American Standard Champion 12-Inch Two-Piece Toilet, you'll again pay the same amount of $338 at both merchants. For the high-end American Standard Townsend Vormax One-Piece Elongated Toilet, you'll pay $576 at both Lowe's and Home Depot.

Lowes and Home Depot have a similar collection of toilet brands on their websites, but there are some slight differences that might help you secure a good deal. Lowe's carries more Toto-branded toilet products than any other brand, with more than 250 options. Home Depot only has about 40 Toto-branded toilet products, so your chances of receiving a good value on a Toto toilet are higher with the larger selection at Lowe's. You'll find more than 120 toilet products with the Kohler brand name at Lowe's, while Home Depot offers more than 300 toilet products from Kohler. At Home Depot, the five toilet brands with the largest number of products for sale are Kohler, American Standard, Swiss Madison, Duravit, and Glacier Bay. The five brands with the largest number of products available for sale at Lowe's are Toto, Kohler, American Standard, Swiss Madison, and Deer Valley.

If you want Lowe's or Home Depot to install the toilet for you, both big box retailers offer this service. With Lowe's and Home Depot's toilet installation services, the hardware retailers will send contractors to your home to perform the installation. They'll remove and haul an old appliance and test the final installation of the new one. If you need new plumbing lines or a rough-in, you'll probably have to hire a plumber separately for this work. Installation from a Lowe's contractor averages $290, while Home Depot's installation runs from $185 to $400. If you need installation, be sure to compare prices from the two retailers because you might find a better deal at one versus the other.