Barnes is home to well-qualified, well-paid families who bought in and stayed. Most households own their home. Two in three adults have a degree. Household incomes before tax run past six figures. Underneath all that money sits a steady base of social housing that most visitors walk straight past.
All the population figures here come from the 2021 census, which counted about 16,742 people in 7,005 households. About 58% of households own their home, about 26% rent privately and about 15% rent from a council or housing association. That social-housing share includes the 1930s council estate between Castelnau and Lonsdale Road, built largely as "Boot houses" by the Henry Boot company. Barnes is less uniform than its high street, and the estate has been part of it for nearly a century.
The typical resident is 43. About 26% of residents are aged 25 to 44, the years when most people are renting, saving or starting out. Barnes is mostly where people land once those years have already paid off, and they don't tend to leave again.
The Office for National Statistics models average gross household income, before tax, at about £105,000 across Barnes for the financial year to March 2023. That's a modelled estimate for the area, not a figure from any one household's payslip. A six-figure household income goes a long way almost anywhere else. In Barnes it's roughly what it takes to keep up with the neighbours.
The census shows a mix of households. About 30% are one person living alone, and within that, about 14% of all households are a single pensioner. About 24% are couples with dependent children and about 9% are lone parents. So the family homes and the people living alone are found side by side, often on the same street.
Barnes is a highly educated place. About 65% of residents aged 16 and over hold a degree or equivalent, about 8% have no formal qualifications, and full-time students make up about 1%. The people who studied here mostly did it a while ago and somewhere else, and they came back with the mortgage.
About 89% of residents described their health as good or very good in 2021. Richmond upon Thames as a council has a preventable mortality rate the national health profiles rate better than England's, and an adult smoking rate of about 9%, similar to England. Those two are borough-level measures and don't describe Barnes on its own.
Barnes has one of the most settled, educated and healthy populations in London. The money is obvious, but the social housing and the share of people living alone make it a broader place than the delis would suggest.