Pricing is a tricky thing to talk about when it comes to furniture because when you start looking around at all the options: online retailers, national warehouses, large retail chains, local furniture stores, and custom furniture makers, the prices seem all over the map. It seems like the price can sway from a few hundred to several thousand dollars, even within one category, like dining tables.
So many factors go into how items are priced. Materials, manufacturing location, sizing, and construction can all shift the price of a piece in one direction or another, but there’s one prevailing sentiment among most consumers: Custom work is more expensive than buying a piece from a warehouse or store, period.
The question is—is that really true?
Comparing Apples to Apples
When you first start diving down the rabbit hole of furniture shopping, it’s easy to fixate on prices. A quick internet search for “dining tables” will result in an option that is $300 and an option that is $2,000, and that’s just on the first page! If you’re looking for an entire dining set (the table plus the chairs), you’ll see the prices swing to $8,000 or even $10,000.
With such a huge range, many people fall for the temptation to go for an option on the cheaper end. This is where you have to be careful and dig into the details because the $300 table may be as similar to the $2,000 table as your house is to the Four Seasons hotel
Materials and craftsmanship are almost always factors in the pricing of furniture. If you are looking for a solid wood table that is crafted with traditional woodworking techniques, that is going to carry a heavier price tag, regardless of where you purchase it.
Custom furniture makers almost exclusively focus on high-quality materials and craftsmanship, so it is only fair to compare their prices to ready-made pieces of similar quality. Once you narrow the comparison down that way, you may find that custom work is even less expensive than some of the mass-produced pieces out there!
A quick note about posted prices: some custom companies, like these custom furniture makers serving Bishop, California, do not list prices on their website. That is simply because the prices can vary too much, depending on sizing and materials used. Do not fall into the trap of, “if I have to ask, I probably can’t afford it.” That’s not necessarily true! You will never know until you reach out. Again, you may find that commissioning a custom piece that fits your exact criteria is more reasonable than you thought, especially compared to other similar-quality pieces.
Think Long-Term Value Versus Short-Term Cost
It’s also critical to think about the cost of a piece over time. This is much harder for people to consider because most of us are concerned about immediate need and are not thinking too far into the future. This is especially true for people who have just moved or who are replacing a piece that’s broken. If you need a dining table to eat at tonight, you might not have thought about whether or not that table will last for multiple years.
This is not to say that your immediate need doesn’t matter. It does. But if cost is a concern for you, then it behooves you to think about the longevity of any piece you purchase, even if it seems like you’re in an emergency.
Most mass-produced furniture is not built to last. Most of it is not constructed from solid wood anymore, and many of the pieces require the customer to assemble it. The quality of the construction and materials simply aren’t meant for years and years of use. This does two things for the companies selling furniture like this: it saves them costs on materials and shipping, and it almost guarantees that you’ll be buying another piece in a couple years when this one falls apart.
If you end up replacing the same piece multiple times over your lifetime, you will likely end up paying more for it than if you had just purchased the custom one, built to your specifications, right from the beginning.
In order to save up for the better-quality custom piece, you may need to do something inconvenient for a little while, like eat in a different room, but it will be worth the investment to have something that lasts a lifetime and can then be passed down to the next generation.
Living within a budget is something we all have to think about. But that doesn’t mean that an investment like working with custom furniture makers is off limits. In fact, it may actually be the more budget-friendly choice in the long run. If you are looking for a specific piece for your home, consider custom furniture makers as an option. You may be pleasantly surprised!