Custom Furniture Basics

Custom furniture making ensures that you, the buyer, are the principal influence on the final product that enters your home.

Custom furniture shopping has a reputation of being expensive, but it often is reasonable and sensible.

In most cases, the customization is not top-to-bottom: The buyer works within the basic framework of the custom furniture maker’s product lineup. This ensures that the individual piece fits as well as possible into the consumer’s living environment.

Simply designating a choice of fabric, wood stain or furniture color is a routine form of customization that shouldn’t prove too costly or time consuming.

Then there are customers who require furniture made to exact and unique specifications, down to the type of fasteners used. This is a far more involved and costly way of buying custom furnishings.

Here’s a way of looking at the cost of customized furnishings: Built-to-order eliminates the exhausting process of looking in showroom after showroom for complementary furniture. Sometimes in vain. Time is money.

Why buy custom furniture?
There are many, many good reasons for going with custom furniture. Here are a few:

Some buyers simply do not want to invest in a piece of expensive furniture that can be viewed in several showrooms in their hometowns. Someone with a significant investment in a piece of furniture wants to hear oohs and ahhs from guests — not the news that a friend of a friend just bought the same piece.

A dream of handing down a family heirloom rarely dovetails with cookie-cutter designs. Furniture passed on from one generation to the next can have powerful associations with the original buyer. All the more reason to customize. If furniture is art, you are the artist.

Sometimes, the buyer needs to match a challenging room or home design scheme. Or fit the piece of furniture into an awkward space. Other customers want to create a mate or accessory for an impossible-to-replace piece of furniture. Or work with a specific type of furniture wood.

Sometimes the custom-furniture customer has practical needs related to health or mobility. For example, seat and back cushions could be filled with non-allergenic blends not usually offered by the manufacturer.

Furniture customization in practice
Few pieces of custom furniture are actually made from scratch to fit the customer’s unique design — although you can always find craftsmen who will undertake such a project.

Typically, customized furniture is a personalization and modification of an existing product line. You’ll want to build from an existing piece of furniture that’s close to the size, shape and appearance of what you envision. This helps hold down costs — and can be a big factor in the final quality and durability of the custom furniture you bring home.

Custom upholstered furniture can be created any number of possible combinations of fabrics, woods, molds, arms, feet, cushions, frames, springs, paints, wood stains — the list of variable elements goes on and on.

In some cases, simply having elements of one piece moved onto another will satisfy your needs. Taking the feet off one designer couch or sofa and attaching them to another, for example.

Upgrading elements of an existing product is another form of custom furniture making. A leather couch could be fashioned from a higher-quality hide. Intricate etched glass from a third party vendor could replace simpler panes in a classic dining room cabinet. Almost all custom furniture makers will work with customers in this fashion.

Having a custom-furniture consultant take you to the makers’ shop often is a good way of ensuring the final product is perfect.

Customization as collaboration
Some versatile furniture shops will re-create pieces seen in old photos, or they will build to match existing antiques. The best custom furniture artists will involve the customer in the creation, sharing photos of the construction process.

Keep in mind that a shop that specializes in, say, dining room and kitchen cabinetry is not likely to retool in order to realize your vision of the perfect baby crib.

Wait times for custom furniture
Made-to-order furniture makers work at their own pace, resulting in a wide range of turnaround times, but in most cases three to four months would be the outer limit. Of course, if you want something very specific and challenging out of a very busy shop, the waits could be much longer.

Availability of raw goods can affect the ultimate delivery date as well. If a fabric choice is backordered, for example, the furniture buyer might want to consider something more readily available. Importing materials almost always creates delays.

Returning custom furniture
Some makers simply refuse to accept returns on custom furniture unless there is an undisputed defect in materials or workmanship. Others will take back goods that are resalable, with a restocking fee that could be anywhere from 10 percent to 50 percent. In general, “not liking” furnishings made to suit your vision is an expensive proposition.

Price quotes
Some custom shops do not offer catalogs or pick-and-choose pricing schemes. Good shops will provide quotes based on your measurements and specifications within a week. Allow more time for furniture-building price quotes based on your drawings, photos, etc.

Deposits
Expect to pay more than you’d expect as a deposit. A 50 percent deposit is customary. Paying the majority of the final price up front is not unusual.