Vicky Parry
9th Dec 2025
Reading Time: 6 minutes
Whether you’re a rental tenant or homeowner, home insurance should be on your annual budget. But we’re going to show you why it doesn’t have to be expensive AND how it can actually save you money on more things than you might expect.
Which Cover Do You Need?
First things first: what is home insurance and why do you need it? Well, home insurance can help cover the cost of accidents, damage, and theft of your property and belongings. If something happens, such as you’re burgled or there’s an accidental fire, it could be thousands or tens of thousands of pounds out of pocket without insurance. Even more if you end up in a legal dispute!
Policy Types
A home insurance policy can come in three different types: contents only, buildings only, or a combination of contents and buildings.
A contents only plan covers your belongings but not anything structural within the home. An easy way to think about it is this: anything you can physically take out of the house is covered by a contents-only insurance.
A buildings only plan covers the fixtures, fittings, and structural elements of a property. If you couldn’t pick it up and take it out with ease, it probably comes under a buildings policy.
A combined contents and buildings policy covers everything for total peace of mind.
Rental tenants tend to have contents only policies, because their landlord is responsible for the building’s part. And, in reverse, landlords of unfurnished properties often opt for buildings only.
Homeowners get the most peace of mind with a combined contents and buildings policy.
So now we’ve covered what home insurance is and why you need it. Let’s look at more reasons why home insurance with companies like Lemonade could save you even more money than you might think.
Introducing Lemonade
Lemonade is a digital-first insurance company designed to be flexible around life’s changing needs. There are no cancellation or adjustment fees, so you can adapt your home insurance as your life changes around you.
1. Your Belongings Can Be Protected Anywhere
You might think that ‘home insurance’ means your things are only protected if they are in the home at the time of an incident. But with the optional Anti-Theft Policy add-on, for just £4.20 a month you’re covered anywhere in the world.
So if your bag is stolen while you’re travelling, or you drop your laptop while working in a café, there’s a strong chance the repair or replacement cost will be covered by your Lemonade policy.
And base coverage is £2000 for each item, so you only need to top up your policy for individual items worth more than that.
2. Legal Cover Extends Beyond the Home
Legal cover on home insurance policies is there to provide assistance if you need help with things like boundary disputes.
Your civil and property liability is covered up to £1,000,000 on a base policy, which is cover for if you accidentally cause damage to others or their property. For example, if you accidentally break someone’s window while playing football in your garden, the repair is covered on the base insurance with buildings cover.
But you can extend it even further with adding the legal protection add-on.
This cover is important to help you with things like boundary disputes. Did you fall in a shop due to a wet floor? Perhaps you know a restaurant gave you food poisoning. The Lemonade extended legal protection add-on starts at £1.90 a month for unexpected life events like this.
3. Get New Value Replacements
If something happens to your belongings, you will get new value replacement cover. That means, rather than looking at what something was worth at the time it was the time it was damaged, lost, or stolen, a current comparison is made with a like-for-like model on the market.
This means you don’t need to worry about replacing items you’ve spent years building up, as the cost of the current equivalent is covered.
4. Clumsy? No Worries!
Lemonade Home Insurance includes accidental damage cover from £1.20 a month. You can add the mobile electronics add-on for an additional £1.50 per month (available only with accidental damage cover), making it £2.70 a month in total for both.
So, as well as covering your belongings from theft inside the home and while you’re out and about worldwide, you can also have peace of mind for if you damage something, too. The cost of repair or replacement can be a huge problem when you drop your smartphone or accidentally knock over your TV, but this cover gives peace of mind.
These are handy and very affordable add-ons for people who are clumsy with their belongings, or those with kids running around to cause accidental damage!
5. No Emergency Call Out Fees
If you’re someone who often loses their keys and needs to call a locksmith, or you have a boiler that’s at risk of breaking down in the middle of winter, these costs can add a huge annual bill to your life.
Home Emergency cover with Lemonade is £3.20 a month and ensures you can access emergency electricians, locksmiths, and plumbers exactly when you need them – not having to wait for when you can afford them out of pocket. The whole process is handled by HomeServe via Lemonade’s partner, AVIVA. Some policy excesses may apply, depending on your customised cover, so make sure you check what is covered in your personal policy.
6. No Adjustment or Cancellation Fees
Lemonade understands that life can throw you curveballs and adventures. That’s why they offer flexible insurance cover without charging fees for adjustments or cancellations.
Their streamlined online-first process makes it super easy to make changes to your policy, and you don’t have to worry about admin fees added to your policy charges.
One Bonus for Buildings: No Set Rebuild Limit
For those opting for cover with buildings insurance included, they will be reassured to know that there is no set limit for rebuild costs following damage.
Many home insurance policies will only cover up to a certain amount, which means homeowners can’t account for unforeseeable changes in the cost of rebuilding damaged parts of their property. If their insurance doesn’t cover this, they’re stuck with a damaged property and a hefty out-of-pocket bill.
Lemonade buildings insurance uses experts to assess the level of damage before agreeing to the rebuild cost, with experts factoring in depreciation for normal wear and tear. The cover offered will reflect what repairs or rebuilding will cost, not what the limit of the policy is.
How to Find Lemonade Home Insurance
Lemonade home insurance is easy to find online here. They offer comprehensive, modular policies that are flexible according to your needs.
Base cover includes generous allowances such as individual item cover up to £2000, civil and property liability up to £1,000,000, and no set limit for rebuild costs (types of base cover vary depending on whether you choose contents, buildings, or combined contents and buildings insurance). You can choose higher coverage when you get your insurance quote, such as an upper limit of £2,500,000 on civil and property liability cover.
Tenants can cover their belongings with contents insurance from just £4 per month, property owners can claim buildings insurance from only £9 per month, and combined policies begin at £11.50. When you need extra cover, such as Anti-Theft, Accidental damage, Legal Assistance, or Home Emergency, you can pick which ones you need as add-ons, when you need them (and cancel without fees to change the policy, too).
Check Lemonade home insurance out here to get a quote and see how much you could save.
All pricing examples in this article are subject to change and are based on a hypothetical individual. Your actual quote will depend on your individual circumstances.