Is my furniture worth reupholstering?
Your furniture has value both monetarily and emotionally. Both factors should be considered when you ask yourself if your furniture piece is worth reupholstering.
Most modern retail furniture is designed to be replaced rather than reupholstered. This type of furniture is built with compromises to make it lighter, smaller, easier to ship, and more affordable. Many times you can replace this furniture with new, similar furniture for less than it would cost to have it reupholstered. That may be the first question you ask yourself. “Can I buy a new, similar piece for less than it costs to reupholster my current piece?” When reupholstering an $800 sofa can cost $1200 for the labor and another $300-500 for the new fabric, it is easy to conclude that it doesn’t make financial sense to reupholster this type of furniture.
If you have determined that your furniture has a higher intrinsic value than it would cost to reupholster, then this piece could be a good candidate for reupholstering. Other factors to help you know if a piece is worth reupholstering is availability, historical quality, and emotional connection.
Availability - Maybe you’ve found a piece of furniture that is close to your design vision, but it is not available in the perfect fabric. This could be a great candidate for reupholstering. Sometimes the premium cost to reupholster a piece to get your exact vision can be worth it. In this case, it is always a good idea to research the yardage cost for your desired fabrics to get an idea of overall costs. Lounge chairs can average 6-9 yards needed for reupholstering and sofas can average around 18-22 yards.
Historical Quality - Maybe your reupholstering candidate is a piece of furniture constructed decades ago when furniture was built to last many cycles and has intrinsic historical quality. These pieces are perfect for reupholstering. They can be given new life with a fabric refresh to be enjoyed for many more years to come. As a part of our reupholstering labor, we strip the piece to its bare components to reinforce and reconstruct the internal frame and support system. We will make sure that your reupholstered piece of furniture is just as durable as the day it was built.
Emotional Connection - We all have those pieces of furniture you remember from your childhood - the cozy chair at grandma’s or the sofa you watched so many movies on during family movie night. Preserving these pieces can help prolong the memories. Reupholstering your inherited furniture pieces from your cherished relatives can help honor them and the memories you share. It is impossible to put a value on these emotional connections, and because of that, spending the money to preserve and prolong the use of these memory laden furniture pieces makes it a worthy investment. We treat your family heirlooms the same as we would ours. We will do everything we can to restore your furniture’s glory so you can then pass those memories along to the next generation.
If you would like to learn more about our fine furniture reupholstering, just follow this link over to our article showcasing some of our favorite reupholstering projects.