Darlington is a city of about 6,000 people in the northeastern part of South Carolina, in the heart of the Pee Dee region. Darlington has been a county seat since the early 1800s, and its downtown still has the feel of a small Southern city built around a Courthouse square. The streets closest to downtown are lined with older two-story homes - some dating to the late 1800s and early 1900s - with wood siding, wide front porches, and tall windows. Beyond downtown, the residential neighborhoods are dominated by brick ranch homes built from the 1950s through the 1980s, most on concrete slab foundations or low crawl spaces. Darlington County extends well beyond the city itself, with farmland, pine forests, and rural properties on large lots making up much of the surrounding area.
Most people outside South Carolina know Darlington because of Darlington Raceway, one of the oldest NASCAR tracks still in use, which draws visitors from across the country on race weekends. For the homeowners who live here year-round, the city is a quiet place where older homes are common and the cost of living stays below state and national averages. Many of those homes have not seen significant updates to their insulation since they were built, and the combination of aging materials and Pee Dee climate conditions means most have real room to improve. Nearby Hartsville to the north and Sumter to the southwest share similar housing characteristics and the same regional climate.