Upholstery Finder/Guides/What reupholstery actually costs in California

What reupholstery actually costs in California

Here's the first thing to know, and it's annoying: of the 88 shops listed here, not one publishes a price list.

I went looking. That's what this site is built to find out, what each shop says about itself, in its own words, and on price, the answer across the whole of California is silence. A handful mention a free estimate. Nobody says what a sofa costs.

That silence isn't shops being cagey. It's the job. A sofa's price depends on the frame underneath it, how many yards it eats, whether the springs are sound, and whether somebody has been at it before with a staple gun and bad intentions. Quote that blind and you either lose money or scare off a customer who'd have been fine.

But you still need a number to plan around. So here are the ones that exist.

The published figures

These come from Valley Studio in Los Angeles, trading since 1985, one of the very few California shops to put ranges in public:

• Dining chair: $450 to $700 each
• Armchair: $1,500 to $2,500
• Three-seat sofa: $4,000 to $6,500

A separate San Francisco metro average puts a mid-range job at $873 to $1,219, which sounds like it contradicts the sofa figure until you notice it's an average across piece types, not a sofa price. Small pieces drag it down.

All of these exclude fabric.

Fabric is a separate bill, and it's not small

Upholstery is quoted as labour plus materials, and materials means yardage. A three-seat sofa can take 14 to 18 yards. At $40 a yard that's another $560 to $720; at $90 a yard for something heavy and woven, closer to $1,600.

You can supply your own, the trade calls it COM, "customer's own material", and where shops charge a handling fee for it, published figures sit around $15 to $20 per yard. That fee exists because your fabric arriving short, flawed or railroaded the wrong way becomes the shop's problem, and they'd rather it didn't become their loss too.

Why the estimate matters more than the range

Given all that, the number that actually governs what you pay is the estimate, not any figure on this page. Some useful arithmetic from the shops listed here:

• 42 of 88 shops state that estimates are free
• 30 will quote at their own premises, if you bring the piece or the cushion
• 19 will come to your house
• 20 will quote from photographs

That last one is worth more than it sounds. Getting an armchair into a car to collect four quotes is most of a Saturday. Sending four shops the same three photographs is twenty minutes, and the shops that accept photos have decided that's a reasonable way to work.

The catch is that a photo quote is provisional by definition. Nobody can see a cracked rail or perished webbing in a phone picture. Expect the number to move once somebody has the piece on a bench.

What makes a quote go up

Roughly in order of how often it bites:

1. The frame needs work. 17 of the 88 shops here do frame repair and 16 do spring replacement, which tells you it's common enough to be a named service rather than a rarity.
2. Somebody got there first. Stripping a previous bad job is billable time before the real work starts.
3. The fabric has a pattern that has to line up. Matching a repeat across a sofa back costs yardage and hours.
4. It's an antique. 35 shops here name antique restoration as a specialism, and they charge for the care it needs.

So is it worth it?

That's a different question with a real answer, and it's the one worth asking before you collect any quotes. I've written it up separately: reupholster or replace.

When you're ready to get numbers, the shops are listed by city with what each one takes on and how it quotes.