Parade of Homes People's Choice Awards: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the People's Choice Awards are and who runs them

Unlike the media-run readers' polls it sits beside in Utah, the People's Choice Awards are administered by the Salt Lake Parade of Homes itself. The organizer is a home show, not a newspaper or a broadcaster, and it runs the voting page on saltlakeparade.com, its own domain. The market is Salt Lake City, Utah, and the awards sit in the best-of vertical: homes are honored by category rather than competing for a single overall title.

That ownership shapes how the vote behaves. Because the home show controls its own ballot, no outside voting service sits between the visitor and the vote, and the rules a supporter must follow are printed on the same page as the ballot itself. The site also carries the apparatus of the show around the awards: ticket sales, the home list, an app, a map, and a magazine archive stretching back to 2008.

The fixed points of the program, as the voting page presents them:

Those category phrases are the labels the page carries, not a stated complete roster, and the ballot for each cycle governs which of them are actually open to a vote.

The dated history of the People's Choice ballot

The vote is annual and tied to the parade season. Documented editions cover 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026, an unbroken run that shows the People's Choice format has become a fixed part of the show rather than a trial. Each of those editions was anchored to that year's Salt Lake Parade of Homes, and the organizer reinforces the pattern by publishing a fresh magazine for every cycle alongside dedicated awards pages for 2025 and 2024.

The date fixed for the 2026 edition is the close: voting ran through August 17. The voting page itself now states that voting has closed for 2026, which is the honest status of the program between seasons. The 2027 edition is the next expected run, and it should follow the same general shape as the editions before it, timed to the show's own calendar.

The home show has not printed a standing opening date, a full category roster, or any per-supporter frequency limit beyond the home-visit gate; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. That gap is normal for a home-show ballot, because the rules are set fresh for each parade and published on the voting page while the cycle runs rather than in a standing rulebook.

For anyone planning around the program, the reliable anchors are the ones stated above: an annual cadence, editions from 2022 through 2026, and an August 17 close for the most recent cycle. Everything else shifts with each show.

How a supporter votes on the Salt Lake Parade ballot

The mechanic starts in person, which is what separates this ballot from every click-to-vote poll in the state. The voting page states its gate plainly: you must visit 8 homes to vote. A supporter therefore tours parade homes during the show, reaches the visit threshold, and only then becomes eligible to cast People's Choice votes at saltlakeparade.com. The sequence is deliberately designed to reward actual attendance, so every eligible voter is somebody who walked through the homes.

Once eligible, the vote itself is a plain public vote on the organizer's domain. The ballot carries the home-design labels described above, phrases such as Best Kitchen and Best Outdoor Space, and the supporter picks favorites within whatever the current cycle presents. No nomination round appears on the page; the homes on the parade are the field the vote works from.

Timing follows the show rather than an independent calendar. The 2026 vote closed on August 17, and the page flipped to a closed message after that date. During a live cycle the same page is where the vote happens, which keeps the whole process, from the eligibility rule to the ballot, in a single place the home show controls.

For a builder or designer hoping to gather support, the practical implication is that the likeliest voters are the visitors already standing in your home. A sign at the door or a reminder from the tour host, once those visitors have met the visit requirement, is the most natural fit for this mechanic. Nothing about the ballot asks for anything more elaborate than attendance plus a click.

Where this ballot sits among Utah's best-of programs

Utah has a crowded best-of field, and the People's Choice vote differs from all of it in the same way: the organizer owns the ballot. Neighboring programs include Best of Davis County from the Standard-Examiner, Best of Northern Utah, Best of SLC, Best of Southern Utah from Canyon Media, Best of State Utah, and Best of Utah. Each of those is a general readers' poll covering businesses, services or personalities across its region, run by a media or awards publisher rather than by the entities being honored.

The People's Choice Awards invert that. The home show is honoring its own exhibit homes, on its own site, with a voting gate that only parade attendees can clear. The subject matter is homes and home design instead of the broad best-of spread, and eligibility comes from touring rather than from simply finding the poll. A supporter who can vote in Best of SLC with a click needs to have visited 8 parade homes before the Salt Lake ballot accepts a vote.

For readers deciding where a vote matters, the contrast is useful. If you want a statewide or regional readers' poll, the sibling programs above serve that purpose. If you want to back a specific builder, designer or home that appeared in the Salt Lake parade, this is the only ballot of the group that covers it, and the only vote whose winners are chosen exclusively by people who walked the show.

That makes cross-programming pointless in both directions: a vote in any readers' poll carries no weight here, and parade attendance earns nothing in the media polls.