Hey Design Lovers, I feel your pain. Purchasing furniture is a pain in the wallet.

You decide to FINALLY tackle redoing your “fill-in-the–blank” room, but you tally your purchasing list and aesthetics goals the sinking realization hits: You hate your furniture.

Now what? Tossing it all and starting from scratch may not make sense for the budget, or for your values. What’s your option?

Re-upholstery. The transformative power of re-upholstery is amazing.

Why? For those of you who’ve attended one of my on-line design workshops or used one of my decorating products, you’ll see in the exampled below powerful proof you’ll once again that COLOR alone has the power to massively change something.

This chaise looked worn out and little sad… until it got a purple & cream velvet facelift.

These dining chairs came from VERY well-known on-line furniture retailer/cataloger. They transformed into highly custom-looking game table chairs by applying an accent color (from the window drapery) to the chair backs only! Steal this strategy! Apricot may not be your color, but imagine re-inventing your dining chairs in your accent color.

Here’s another example of transformed dining chairs. The carved wooden back chairs and dining table had HUGE sentimental value. The armed dining chairs had no sentimental value, but were well made and had a good shape. They would have been impossible to find in the exact shade of cream and green desired for the new room. Big transformation, no?

Just to clarify – re-upholstering is not a zero-cost move. It’s a big pay-off move, but the costs include; yards of fabric, re-stuffing materials, pick-up, redelivery, and any repair and tightening needed. All done by experienced labor. Yes, you pay for it all.

Keep your fabric costs to under $75/yard, and re-upholstering is almost always less costly than purchasing a new, like item at the “best made” furniture tier. If you’re working in the middle quality furniture tier, re-upholstering vs. replacing is often an even dollar for dollar swap, BUT you will spare the land fill. Be warned though that at the lowest furniture quality tier, purchasing new is always less costly than reupholstering, (Unless you can do the job yourself.).

Cost, sentimental value, color, goal: Like all things in design, you have to weigh it all.