Mattresses, furniture, appliances, and end-of-season outdoor gear are at their best pricing of the year. TVs and laptops aren’t, and Black Friday will beat this week by enough to notice.
Labor Day shopping at a glance
- BUY NOW: Mattresses (15-30% off), Furniture, Major Appliances (Lowe’s & Best Buy), Patio Clearance (up to 60% off), and End-of-Season Apparel.
- WAIT FOR BLACK FRIDAY: TVs, Laptops & Major Electronics.
- THE INSIDER MOVE: Lowe’s MyLowe’s Rewards members get exclusive 2nd-week doorbusters non-members can’t access.
- THE GOLDEN RULE: Always stack store markdowns with promo codes and cash back on the RetailMeNot Rewards app before checking out.
Labor Day gets treated like a leftover of summer. It’s one of the few sale weekends that’s actually honest about what it’s for. Every retailer says everything is on sale, and some of it actually is. The trick is knowing which half you’re looking at. According to RetailMeNot’s 2026 Labor Day Survey, clothing and footwear is the single most common thing people say they’re buying this weekend, ahead of appliances, furniture, and electronics, so let’s start with what’s real and work down.
When do Labor Day sales start?
Labor Day sales start about two to three weeks before the holiday, usually around the third week of August, so by the time the long weekend arrives, you’re closer to the end of the window than the beginning. Retailers treat the weekend as the finish line for clearing summer stock, and most of the best cuts have already landed by the time the holiday shows up. There’s a particular irony to a sale that’s mostly over by the day it’s named after, but that’s the calendar, so the move is to shop the two weeks before, not the Monday itself.
Is Labor Day a good time to buy a mattress?
Labor Day is one of the two best mattress-buying weekends of the year, right behind Memorial Day and roughly tied with Presidents Day, usually 15 to 30 percent off. The reason has nothing to do with the holiday: mattress brands change model years every fall, so what’s marked down right now is last year’s lineup clearing out to make room for the new arrivals. Nobody tells you the mattress you’ve been sleeping on wrong for a year is about to get cheaper on purpose. Furniture runs the exact same pattern, sofas and bedroom sets get cut hardest right before fall inventory lands. If a mattress or a sofa has been on your list for months, this is the weekend to stop waiting.
Is Best Buy’s Labor Day sale worth it?
Best Buy‘s Labor Day sale is really three different sales stacked under one banner, and only two of them are worth acting on now. Appliances are the real strength, refrigerators, washers, dryers, and ranges see some of their best markdowns of the year, right up there with Presidents Day. iPads are the sleeper: Apple won’t discount one directly, a gift card is as good as it gets from Apple itself, but Best Buy and Amazon both mark iPads down this weekend, sometimes up to 30 percent. The TVs and laptops are the third sale, and that’s the one to screenshot and revisit in three months. Best Buy will run promotions on both, but the deepest cuts happen at Black Friday, and the gap isn’t small, even with memory prices pushing every number higher than it used to be.
Is Lowe’s Labor Day sale better than The Home Depot’s?
Lowe’s Labor Day sale is the one to watch this year, and it runs longer than the holiday itself, a full two weeks, from the Thursday before through the Wednesday after. Appliances are the anchor, 30 to 45 percent off refrigerators, washers, dryers, and ranges from Whirlpool, Samsung, and LG. The real differentiator is the MyLowe’s Rewards program: members get doorbusters in the second week that nobody outside the program can touch. That’s one of the only times all year a loyalty membership changes what you can buy, not just what you pay for it, and it’s the thing The Home Depot doesn’t have an equivalent for. Patio furniture gets the deepest cuts of the whole sale, up to 60 percent by the back half of the window, with mums and garden clearance dropping to about a dollar a pot. And if you’ve still got a college student to shop for, Lowe’s runs back-to-campus and tailgate deals in the same window, dorm essentials, coolers, portable grills, so it’s a second stop worth making.
How do you shop Amazon’s Labor Day sale?
Amazon‘s Labor Day sale doesn’t have one clear specialty, it spreads across electronics, home goods, apparel, and basics all at once, usually in the 20 to 40 percent range. That makes it the one sale where you judge each deal on its own instead of trusting the banner. The smartest way to shop it is to know what you want before you open the app, because browsing Amazon’s Labor Day page for inspiration usually ends in a cart full of things you didn’t plan to buy. One tool worth using: ask Amazon’s Alexa for Shopping for the price history on something and it’ll show you up to a year of pricing, so you can tell whether the Labor Day tag is a real discount or just a relabeled price. Amazon calls it a deal. The price history doesn’t always agree.
Are Labor Day clothing and shoe sales worth it?
Labor Day is one of the better clothing and shoe weekends of the entire year, and the survey backs it up, footwear and apparel topped the list of what people say they’re buying. Retailers need summer inventory gone before fall lands, so markdowns get aggressive fast. Nike commonly runs sales up to 50 percent off in this window, and Target and Walmart push similar territory. It also lines up with anyone still finishing back-to-school shopping. Nobody puts “clearance rack” on a Labor Day mood board, and yet here we all are. If you’ve been eyeing something from the summer collection, the price is already good and the selection won’t be for much longer.
Should you wait for Black Friday instead?
For TVs, laptops, tablets, and most electronics, yes, wait. There’s a deal here at Labor Day, it’s just not the deepest one coming. Black Friday is a few months out and still wins that category by a wide enough margin to be worth the patience if you can manage it. Walking past a screen that’s technically on sale, knowing a better price is coming, is one of the harder things to do in shopping, and it’s also the whole skill. For everything else on this list, mattresses, furniture, appliances, outdoor gear, clothing, there’s no better window coming, so waiting only costs you. The rule of thumb: if it’s seasonal or a big-ticket home item, buy it now. If it plugs in and has a screen, hold for November.
Buy it now, wait or save: A Labor Day timing guide
| What you’re buying | Buy it now, wait or save | Strategic reason why |
| Mattress, furniture, appliances, outdoor gear, clothing | Buy It Now | At or near their best pricing of the year, nothing better is coming |
| Booking a future trip (cruise, hotel, tour) | Buy It Now | Real Labor Day discounts on booking ahead, cruise lines especially |
| TVs, laptops, tablets, electronics | Wait | Black Friday beats this week by a margin worth the wait |
| Flights, hotels, rental cars to travel this weekend | Save yourself the trouble | One of the most expensive, most crowded travel windows of the year |
How do you get the real final price?
The sale price is never the finish line, no matter which holiday weekend you’re shopping. The real final price is whatever’s left after everything stacks, the markdown, a promo code, and cash back layered on the same purchase. Most people stop at the sale price, and the better deal is usually a few steps past it. Two retailers can show a nearly identical mattress or appliance at a similar sticker, and what you actually pay can look completely different once the code and the cash back land on top. So compare before you commit, and check the RetailMeNot Rewards app before you check out. That’s how you shop with confidence instead of guessing.
The post What Are the Best Things to Buy on Labor Day Weekend? appeared first on The Real Deal by RetailMeNot.
Mattresses, furniture, appliances, and end-of-season outdoor gear are at their best pricing of the year. TVs and laptops aren’t, and Black Friday will beat this week by enough to notice. Labor Day shopping at a glance Labor Day gets treated like a leftover of summer. It’s one of the few sale weekends that’s actually honest […]
The post What Are the Best Things to Buy on Labor Day Weekend? appeared first on The Real Deal by RetailMeNot.
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