Ask a Designer: Why does furniture cost so much?

And where is it worth it to spend your money?

One challenging thing about buying a house was figuring out how to fill it. We went from a series of sparsely furnished one bedroom apartments to a 3 bed/2 bath house with a whole guest house behind it, and we did not have the furniture to fill it up! In this post, I wrote a little bit about how difficult it’s been for me to love our work-in-progress, and to square my profession (designer) with the reality of our financial circumstances (not millionaires) and priorities (not particularly worried about having the latest and greatest, but definitely with an eye for aesthetics).

So as I planned for our space, I approached the budget with the same advice I give my clients: be strategic about where you spend your limited funds.

In general, my rule is this: the more time you spend sitting, lying on, or touching that piece of furniture or decor, the more you should prioritize it in your budget.

An Education: Why does furniture cost so much?

I’ve become a bit worried in the last few years that fast fashion has crept into the home in harmful ways. Big box stores like Target and Wal Mart and e-commerce sites like Wayfair have figured out how to mass-manufacture better looking low-quality furniture, and now most consumers aren’t sure why they should ever pay more than those very low prices. “Get the look for less” is the name of the game.

On one hand, good-looking pieces at lower price points makes a beautiful home more accessible to a wider-range of people. On the other, millions of consumers are now being trained to see furniture as essentially disposable, and to expect that pieces will last no more than a few years. The western world has a waste problem, and this isn’t going to help things.

I think what’s getting lost in the mix is broader knowledge about why furniture costs what it does and how these companies are cutting costs so deeply on the furniture they offer. (I’ll caveat here that I can’t look into their books; I’m making some generalizations and best guesses based on my knowledge of the commercial design industry and furniture construction.)

So why does furniture cost so much?

Reason 1: Material Costs

The biggest cost of furniture is generally the materials, and this is where I think consumers need to be a lot savvier in their shopping.

For hard furniture like tables, dressers, desks, and nightstands, the piece can be made from solid wood, engineered wood, or some sort of composite material like MDF (medium-density fiberboard) or particle board faced with a material to make it more attractive. Solid wood is the most expensive, MDF/particle board products are far and away the least expensive, and engineered wood is often somewhere in the middle. When you think Ikea furniture, that’s MDF or particle board . There are often other materials in the mix, but we’ll skip that for now.

Solid wood pieces aren’t necessarily made to last forever, but by choosing a solid wood piece, you’ve got material there that could potentially be repaired or refinished in the future and is more likely to last a long time. MDF pieces just won’t, because they’re not made for that — and usually the price reflects it. The laminate material that covers the face can’t take a lifetime of use and frequently peels away from the MDF at the edges, especially when exposed to moisture or force.

With soft furniture like sofas and lounge chairs, fabrics, foams, and other filling materials are a cost factor. Upholstered pieces are almost always going to be more expensive than a non-upholstered version; just go look at the dining room chair page of any furniture website.
Some sofas use down filling in the cushions, which is a luxury product. Foam is less expensive, but with a caveat: some foam is great, and some foam is not, and there is no way the company is sharing what they’re using in the product description. But you can bet your bottom dollar that if a sofa is shockingly cheap, the foam is one place where they cut costs. Lower quality foam either breaks down more quickly or is incredibly firm to avoid that issue. If you’ve had a sofa that sagged after relatively little use, this is the culprit.

The second big cost is the fabric. Higher quality pieces are often upholstered in fabric that has been treated with solvents that prevent UV damage or stains. Lower quality fabrics lack these treatments and may also stretch or pill in unfortunate ways because of the weave or fiber type. In the world of commercial design, I can get the testing information that will tattle on fabrics. But as a normal consumer, I have to guess just like everyone else. Sometimes the reviews give it away, but I just know to keep an eye out for it. Fabrics that are rougher can also be a giveaway, but softness isn’t always a mark of quality. I know! Fabric is complicated!

A Quick Case Study: Bookshelves

So let’s do a real-life comparison using the product that I recommended to a client and the one we ended up purchasing for their space. Let’s look at the difference in price, quality, and construction methods.

These two pieces are very similar in look and size. They’re both about 72” tall and 30” wide. They both have 5 shelves. But one costs almost 3x more than the other. So what’s going on here?
The top piece is the Rejuvenation Holgate. The shelves are solid wood, the side rails are steel, and the brackets that hold those two pieces together are actually routed into the wood. (Click through - it’s a beautiful piece of furniture!)
The bottom piece is the CB2 Stairway. The shelves are lacquered engineered wood, the side rails are powder-coated aluminum, and the shelves have notches cut into them for the rails to pass through (no photos of the hardware connections).
So CB2 saved money with the shelves: they used engineered wood, and they lacquered it, which means they can use lower-quality pieces of wood. And their frame is powder-coated aluminum, which is generally less expensive than steel. Finally, they used a much less expensive method of connecting the two (more on that in a bit)

Are any of those changes bad? Nope. A powder coat metal finish can last 20 years. Lacquer is a tough, durable finish; the wood might be lower quality, but those shelves should withstand a good amount of wear. The connection point between the two was the only thing to give me pause, but assuming no children will be trying to scale the shelves, it should work just fine.

But the Rejuvenation piece isn’t a ripoff! It’s made of high-quality materials, and if it’s cared for well, that shelf will look just like that in 50 years. So it’s really just a matter of priorities.

The plot twist here is that the client actually tried to buy this Wayfair Kanissa shelf ($183). I hesitate to link to it, because I don’t think you should buy it! Here’s why: it’s got a steel frame, but note that the shelves are just described as “wood.” Yes, MDF is technically wood, but when you look at the reviews you can see photos of where a shelf was banged up, and the laminate pulled away to reveal the MDF beneath. The shelf-rail connections are cheaply done, and several people describe it as wobbly, which means the manufacturer couldn’t be bothered to check their tolerances or quality-check their final product.

So that’s a good example of what I’d call low, mid, and high. The price jump from low-cost to mid-range is almost double, but the difference in quality is massive. From mid-range to high-end, the changes are less obvious, but still there. And really, the difference between mid-range and high-end brings us pretty neatly to the next big cost factor:

Reason 2: Construction Methods

I alluded to this above, but the way materials are joined is a huge factor in their cost. In the Rejuvenation piece, the exact shape of the hardware was routed into the wood. Look at this:

On two different planes of the shelf, a machine was used to make that shape at the exact thickness of the mounting hardware so that it will sit flush with the wood when it’s assembled. That’s a high-end detail.
On the other two, the hardware isn’t shown. The CB2 shelf is aiming for a sleeker look, but the connection is sure to be less finely tuned than this one.
(I’m not a hype girl for Rejuvenation, but this is a nice detail!)

With wood furniture, these connections are a major signifier of quality. If you’re a vintage shopper, keep this in mind when you’re hunting for older pieces, because wood joining is a skill as old as time (seriously - nails used to be very expensive).

I don’t want to get too into this, but here’s a little guide that’s specific to wood (source):

There are so many ways to join wood, and most aren’t that commonly used. The least expensive by far is the butt joint, and for MDF and particle board, it’s pretty much butt or miter. Those materials generally can’t handle the fine working required for anything else.

A lot of great solid wood furniture is made with dovetail joinery. The nightstands I bought for our bedroom from Crate and Barrel (here) have half-blind dovetail joinery in the drawer box, which is made from solid wood. Very pretty!

Other things you may notice when looking at furniture is that higher end pieces will have adjustable feet so that nothing wobbles. Drawers and doors likely have soft-close hardware (though this is becoming increasingly popular at all price points. Good quality furniture has drawers that are on glides. Hardware is usually nicer, not just a nickel knob or a bar pull.

With soft furniture, the markers of quality are usually described rather than seen.

For most of us, our most expensive piece of furniture is our sofa. A high-end sofa will have a solid frame with great joints, a good “suspension system” which is what’s hiding under your cushions, and high-quality cushions.

The suspension: luxury sofas often have hand-tied springs, which is exactly what it sounds like ($$$). Lower end sofas tend not to have springs at all and have a sort of hammock that’s called “webbing,” which can be just as comfortable but will break down far more quickly. Ever have the seat of the sofa cave in? I bet it was the webbing giving out. The most common type of suspension is sinuous springs, and it’s probably what most sofas have.
The frame: material quality and joints come into play here as well. The best furniture uses solid kiln-dried wood construction to prevent warping, whereas the frame of Ikea sofa I’m sitting on as I write this (purchased when we were 23 and broke) is made from mostly particle board and plywood. The connection between the arms and the base are… minimal. Last year one arm gave out, and Joey disappeared into the workshop, reinforced it with 2x4s and brought it back. This only worked because the upholstery is velcroed on. See what I mean?

Reason 3: Labor and Profit

Feels like I’d be skipping something if I didn’t mention this: it costs less to make things if you don’t pay people a living wage. And this is something that’s difficult to check into as a consumer, but it lies beneath all of our purchases. Some of the best furniture in the world is made in America (particularly in High Point, North Carolina, where a lot of luxury American brands manufacture), but not all furniture made overseas is unethical or low quality. It just depends.

And then there’s the profit margin: it’s not always the case that higher cost is higher quality. There are certainly some well-known brands that are justifying their prices through aesthetic rather than quality. It’s just one of those things that’s difficult to know without peeking under the hood, so to speak. It’s much easier to spot low-quality than high, unfortunately.

So where should you spend your money?

I can’t tell you that! But I can tell you where we’ve chosen to spend ours, and I’m also going to be specific with numbers. For what it’s worth, I consider all of these to be at the lower end of mid-range. They’re at the price point where we’ve made a big leap in quality and cost, but nowhere near what luxury furniture costs. Nevertheless, every single piece we’ve purchased for this house was out of reach for us just a few years ago, and I deeply understand the frustrations of quality furniture being financially out of reach.

Any piece of furniture that will bear our weight for long periods of time. Our bed is a (sadly) discontinued Lulu and Georgia bed, and we love it; it’s pretty similar to this one. I have $300/chair budgeted for dining room chairs, and I expect to spend in the $2,000 - $3,000 range when we replace our Ikea sofa (purchased for about $600 four years ago). We also spent a lot of money on a task chair for Joey while he was in grad school; a good task chair is in the $350+ range, but even at our most broke, that money felt worth it.
Any piece of furniture that is high-use and/or I never plan to replace. Our nightstands are from Crate and Barrel Kids, but that green color cannot be beat, I love the soft-close drawers, and they are such a great size and shape. We bought this dresser from West Elm in 2021. It felt like an unreasonable amount of money, but it’s solid wood and marble. I’d been looking for that piece for over a year, and I knew it when I saw it. It’s very beautiful in person - the leg detail is my absolute favorite.
Any piece of furniture that will be exposed to the elements. Sunlight and moisture do bad things to materials, so leveling up on outdoor furniture is a very good idea, or you’ll need to replace regularly. Good outdoor furniture generally has anti-microbial foam and Sunbrella protected fabric to help keep it from fading. Regardless, buy furniture covers. We got the Article Arca Sofa and have been very pleased. For our outdoor dining table, we went with the Crate and Barrel Alfresco, which I really love. The slats keep water from pooling, and the legs are adjustable, so no wobbly outdoor dinners! It’s gone through 2 unprotected Alabama summers with no signs of fading. For dining chairs, we got the Article Dot chairs in white as a concession to the budget. I’ve been pretty pleased with them. By midsummer, I thought maybe the white was a mistake, but we spray them down with a diluted bleach solution once a season and they look good as new. They also stack, so they can be put away for winter.
Big art. Art can make a space, and while we’re paused on upgrading our living room area (all our expensive furniture is in our bedroom), I got two large pieces that make me smile every day. They totally make the room, and I’ll be building around them as we go (piece 1, piece 2, and I bought both framed in the 30x40 size). But even if you’re not ready to go big, I just love Minted in general for their art. The quality of their prints is excellent, and they also sell art unframed. Head to Target for the best budget-friendly frames I’ve found.

Where should you save money?

I’m on firmer ground with this one. It’s your money, so if you’ve got the cash and it speaks to you, go for it. But here’s where I save:

Decorative Lighting. Lamps have gotten very good and much less expensive in the last few years. They’re one of those items that as long as it’s not super cheesy and you buy a decent bulb (please, just use these all over your house), no one will know if you paid $300 or $50. In particular, I think that anything you find from the Target + Studio McGee line will probably be a winner. I’m underwhelmed by a lot of celebrity designer collaborations, but I’ve looked very closely at a lot of these pieces, and I’m impressed. The design team is doing a very good job of duping high-end fixtures.
Pillows (kind of). I’m on team mid-range pillows. The $20 ones have garbage inserts that will quickly be lumpy with any sort of regular use and/or fabric that will pill or tear, but there’s no need to spend $200 either. Get a nice cover and you can get a pillow insert on Amazon that’s 2” larger than the cover. In the $50-$70 price range, I think West Elm, CB2, and Lulu and Georgia have my favorite selection.
Items that will be out of style within five years. This is a bit of a judgement call. I’m not a particularly trendy person, but if you’re on a budget and drawn to rapidly-changing trends, then don’t spend a lot of money on those pieces. I wouldn’t get a trendy sofa (jewel toned velvet or fringed) or pay a lot of money for a very particular side chair or table (remember when everyone was into lucite?) My advice is to spend money on more classic furniture pieces that ground the space, and then layer the trends on top of it. Pillows, rugs, throws, lamps, etc. This is probably the spot where we walk a fine line of treating things like they’re disposable, and they shouldn’t be! So just try to be a conscious consumer and do your best. These are also items where I think Target is killing it.
Pieces that will be infrequently used. I don’t anticipate spending a lot of money on our guest room. When we finish it out, the furniture will surely be a step up from the newlywed Ikea pieces that are living in there now, but it will probably be firmly lower mid-range. The nightstands in particular I will probably go hunting for something inexpensive. For example, I could see myself getting this solid wood Ikea nightstand and refinishing it to make it look a bit higher end. These are also the items that I end up putting on a list and looking for on Target, Overstock, and Wayfair using the tips I taught you above. Lower cost items don’t have to break down quickly - the Ikea pieces we bought as newlyweds look worse for wear after 3 moves, but they’re still very serviceable, and I will try to hand them off to someone who can use them when we’re ready to move on.

How do I know when I’m actually paying for quality, and at what point am I being ripped off?

How much is too much?

When I “pitched” this idea to my Instagram followers, someone asked me to weigh in on how much is too much to pay for furniture. I think the underlying question there is really this: *How do I know when I’m actually paying for quality, and at what point am I being ripped off?*
The answer to that is complicated. Like I mentioned above, the differences get more subtle as you move up the price range.
I’m absolutely certain I’m about to step in it, but here are some off-the-cuff numbers for a variety of pieces.

These prices are a range of what I’d expect to pay for a piece that’s crossed that first major quality threshold before hitting the luxury mark. Material costs can vary a lot even in mid-range, so I’m trying to capture that. It isn’t necessarily what I personally would pay for these pieces, but what I think could be reasonable. [Insert 1 million other caveats here. Please be nice to me.]

Pillows: $50-$150

Table Lamps: $50-$200
Floor Lamps: $100-$300, but lighting is complicated, so it wouldn’t be insane to get into the $500 range
Side Tables and Nightstands: $300-$700, sometimes more if there are drawers or really special finishes
Beds (including frame/footer): $1,500-$4,000 for a Queen, depending on upholstery and other materiality
Dining Chairs and Side Chairs: $200-$700
Upholstered Lounge Chair: $600-$2,000
3-seat sofa: $1,700-$4,000 depending on cushions, upholstery, and other detailing
Dressers, Sideboards, and Credenzas: $1,000-$3,000 depending on size and details

In this world of quality and price point, I tend to look at the following sites: Lulu and Georgia, Crate and Barrel, CB2, Room and Board, Interior Define, Article, and West Elm. Pottery Barn. Arhaus, and Restoration Hardware probably also fit with this group, but they don’t tend toward my preferred aesthetic and I think they are priced a bit high, which is probably the result of being huge legacy brands.

In Conclusion!

Furniture is where we live our lives, so it’s important, and I believe it is worth spending our money on. But furniture - and the industry responsible for making it - is complicated, and it’s very understandable that it’s a confusing thing to navigate for consumers.
While it’s by no means exhaustive, I hope this primer was useful to help you begin to be able to see quality differences as you shop for your own home.
Have any more questions? I’d love to try to answer them in the comments!

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