A broad mix, which is what Isleworth is like. About half own their homes. Plenty of the rest rent, privately or from a social landlord. The typical resident is in their late thirties. Nearly half have a degree. Isleworth has neither gentrified completely nor been left behind.
At the 2021 Census, about 52% of Isleworth's 17,272 households owned their home. About 27% rented privately and about 19% rented from a council or housing association. That's a genuine three-way split. Private renting, at more than a quarter of households, gives a steady flow of new arrivals. Ownership, at just over half, keeps a settled core who have watched the street change around them.
The median resident is about 38, and about 33% of people are aged 25 to 44. A third of the town is at the age of careers, mortgages and first children.
The Office for National Statistics models gross household income, before tax, at about £84,000 for the financial year to March 2023, averaged across the area's neighbourhoods. That's a modelled average, three years old. It comes in before tax, and it's spread across owners, renters and social tenants alike. It describes a comfortable typical household and hides a wide range on either side.
The 2021 Census also shows how those households are made up. About 23% are couples with dependent children and about 13% are lone parents. About 26% are one person living alone, and about 9% of all households are a pensioner living alone, counted within that 26%. The rest are mostly couples without children at home and shared or multi-generation households. Isleworth is a family town that also has a fair number of people living on their own.
About 48% of residents have a degree-level qualification and about 15% have none. Full-time students make up only about 2% of residents, so the qualified half are working adults who finished their studies some time ago. Isleworth has long attracted people who could choose where to live: the 18th century filled it with mansions built for aristocrats and high achievers. The mansions are fewer now, but people still move here for the same parks and riverside.
At the 2021 Census about 86% of Isleworth's residents described their health as good or very good, and about 4% as bad or very bad. Across the London Borough of Hounslow, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities rates the rate of deaths from preventable causes as better than the England average, and the smoking rate as similar to it. Both are borough-wide comparisons, not measures of Isleworth alone.
Only 252 people live in communal settings such as care homes. That's too few to affect any of the shares above.
Isleworth's population is ordinary for the suburb it is: middling, mixed and broadly comfortable. Couples starting families and renters starting out share the streets with owners who have been there for decades.