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The increased figures show that a decline across the sector has been reversed. Figures for the six months ending June last year showed a 3.5% drop across all titles and heavy losses for the market leaders.

While top-selling Ideal Home dropped 0.5% to 245,729, this compares favourably with the title's previous figures for the six months to July last year, when it saw a 5.2% drop.

Similarly House Beautiful's circulation dropped 1.5% to 198,112 between July and December, compared with a 6.6% drop in the previous six-month period.

Others to perform better include Conde Naste's House & Garden, which rose 0.2% to 140,361 and IPC's 25 Beautiful Homes, which rose 5.7% to 113,281.

Despite these successes a number of key titles in the sector are still struggling to reap the benefits of the more buoyant house and home market.

Circulation for IPC's Homes and Garden, which dropped 2.3% in the six months to July last year, continue to plummet, with latest figures showing a further drop of 7% to 136,088.

Essential Publishing's Your Home dropped 7.2% to 120,900, despite appearing to do well in the previous six months when its circulation rose by 2.5%.

The renewed interest among readers in the home and house magazine market had already been anticipated, with a number of publishers launching new titles this year.

Next month, News International is set to launch a homes magazine called Sunday Times Inside Out and in the same month Channel 4 is set to launch a magazine called 4homes.

This follows the launch this month by Hubert Burda of Living and Gardens, and last September IPC launched a TV show called 'Livingetc', based on its magazine of same name, which conversely saw its circulation drop 6.1% to 88,285, according to the latest ABCs.

Channel 4 had previously just licensed its house and home programme brands to magazine publishers, including 'Grand Designs' to Media 10 and 'Location Location Location' to Brooklands Group.

Elsewhere, National Magazine Company's Country Living was up 0.8% to 191,225; BBC Worldwide's BBC Good Homes was up slightly to 135,690; IPC's Wallpaper was up to 110,246; BBC Homes & Antiques slumped 11.4% to 101,054; IPC's Country Homes and Interiors was down 8.3% to 77,677 and Conde Naste's World of Interiors was down 1.9% to 64,656.

Also down were Hachette Filipacchi's Elle Decoration, which dropped 1.2% to 64,656, and Real Homes was down 13.6% to 56,554.

Period Living and Traditional Homes, which was sold by Emap to Centaur in January for £1.5m meaning Emap now has no house and homes magazines, also performed poorly, down 11.8% to 48,792.

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