How Much Does It Cost to Reupholster a Chair? A Workroom's Price Guide

It is the question every designer asks before a frame leaves the site, and most answers online are useless — a national average scraped from somewhere, or a range so wide it tells you nothing. So here are our actual numbers, from a workroom that does this every day in Los Angeles and New York.

One thing to set expectations: these are workroom quotes for labor and materials, before fabric. Nearly all of our trade work is C.O.M. — the client's own material — because a designer has usually already specified the fabric by the time the frame reaches us.

The Short Answer: What Reupholstery Costs

A standard dining chair runs $450 to $700. That covers a fully upholstered seat and back on a sound frame, with new foam or wrap, fresh deck, and welt where the design calls for it.

An armchair or club chair runs $1,500 to $2,500. This is the range most of our chair work lands in — down-wrapped cushion, tailored fit, proper welt, and a rebuilt deck underneath.

A three-seat sofa runs $4,000 to $6,500. Same standard of construction, scaled up: down-wrapped seats and backs, tailored slipcover or tight upholstery, and a deck rebuilt to carry the piece for another few decades.

If your piece sits outside those ranges, it is almost always because of one of the four things below.

Size Is the First Multiplier

Scale drives cost more than any single option, and it compounds. A larger frame takes more yardage, but it also takes more hours — more deck to rebuild, more edges to roll, more length over which a seam has to stay straight.

This is why a sectional is not simply a sofa plus a chair. Every additional section adds a joint where the fabric has to read continuously across two frames, and that alignment is handwork.

It is also why the honest answer to 'what does a sofa cost' has to be a range. A compact 72-inch settee and a 110-inch three-seater are different jobs.

Cushion Fill: Down-Wrapped or Foam

Foam is firmer, holds its shape without maintenance, and costs less. A foam cushion looks the same on day one and on day five hundred.

Down-wrapped — a foam core in a down-and-feather envelope — is softer, sits deeper, and gives the relaxed look most designers are after. It costs more in both material and labor, and it wants plumping. That trade is worth naming to a client up front, because the person who wants the look of down and the maintenance of foam will be disappointed by whichever one they get.

This is usually the single largest optional swing on a quote.

Spring Construction: Eight-Way Hand-Tied or Sinuous

Sinuous springs — the S-shaped wire most production furniture uses — are fast to install and perfectly serviceable. They are why a frame can be turned around quickly and affordably.

Eight-way hand-tied springs are coils tied by hand in eight directions across the deck. It is slow, skilled work, and it is the reason a well-built sofa can be reupholstered three or four times across a century rather than replaced.

If a frame already has hand-tied springs in good order, retying is often the better value than replacing. If it has sinuous springs, converting to hand-tied is a real cost, and only worth it on a frame that deserves it.

Handwork: Tufting, Channels, and Detail

Diamond tufting, channel backs, buttoning, contrast welt, and skirts are all labor, and labor is where a quote moves. A tufted back is not a surface treatment — the pattern has to be laid out to the piece, and every button pulled to a consistent depth by hand.

The same is true of a pattern that has to match across a seam or repeat cleanly across three cushions. Matching costs yardage and it costs hours.

None of this is a reason to avoid the detail. It is a reason to specify it before the quote rather than after.

Is the Frame Worth It?

Reupholstery is worth doing when the frame is worth keeping. A kiln-dried hardwood frame with joinery that is still tight will outlive several fabrics, and reupholstering it is straightforwardly better value than buying new at the same quality.

A stapled softwood frame from a production line is a harder case. Once the labor to rebuild it approaches the cost of a better frame, the honest advice is usually to put the money into the frame instead.

We will tell you which one you have before you commit to the work.

How to Get an Accurate Quote

Send photographs of the piece from the front and the side, a note on the dimensions, and the fabric you intend to use if it is already specified. If you know what is inside it — hand-tied springs, down cushions, a maker's mark under the deck — tell us, because it changes the number.

We quote from that, and we would rather give you a real figure early than a low one that moves later.

Related reading: Bench-made vs production upholstery frames · What custom drapery costs in New York · What is a slipper chair?