Why is one reupholstery quote so much higher than another?
Because the two quotes are almost never for the same job. The biggest single cause is that one is a recover — a new cover fitted over the existing fillings — and the other is a full reupholster, stripped to the frame and rebuilt. Both get called reupholstery and the difference in work can be double or more. After that come fabric quantity and grade, whether the foam, webbing and springs are being renewed, frame repairs, VAT registration, collection and delivery, and the difference between a workshop with premises and a sole trader working from home. A cheap quote usually means less work, not a better deal.
Anybody who gets three quotes for the same sofa will get three very different numbers, and it unsettles people. It looks like somebody must be trying it on.
Usually nobody is. The quotes differ because the jobs differ, and the customer has no way of seeing that from three figures on three emails. So here is what is actually varying underneath, and the questions that make the numbers comparable.
The big one: recover or reupholster?
These are two genuinely different jobs and the trade uses both words loosely, which is where most of the confusion comes from.
A recover means taking the old cover off and fitting a new one over the fillings that are already there. The foam stays, the webbing stays, the springs stay. It is a legitimate job on a piece that is structurally sound and simply looks tired.
A full reupholster means stripping the piece back to the bare frame, repairing the frame, renewing webbing and springs, replacing fillings, and building it back up. It is the difference between painting a house and rebuilding the walls.
One can easily be double the other, and both will be described to you as "reupholstering the sofa". If you ask nothing else, ask this.
What is being replaced underneath
Once you know which job you are being quoted for, the next question is what specifically is being renewed. In rough order of cost:
- Foam and fillings. New foam of a decent density is not cheap, and the density specified makes a real difference to both price and how the finished piece feels. A quote that reuses tired foam under a beautiful new cover will look wonderful and feel exactly as it did before.
- Webbing. Renewing elastic or jute webbing means getting into the underside or lifting the deck. Not enormous, but not nothing.
- Springs. Re-tying traditional springs is hours of skilled work. Replacing sinuous springs needs the right gauge and clips.
- Frame repairs. Re-gluing joints, new corner blocks, a replacement rail. Only possible once the piece is stripped, which is why it often appears as a variation rather than in the original quote.
If one quote is markedly cheaper, this list is usually where the difference lives.
Fabric — and whether it is even included
Some upholsterers quote labour only and expect you to supply cloth. Some quote inclusive of a fabric at a stated price per metre. Comparing one of each is meaningless.
What you need from each quote is the same three numbers: how many metres, at what price per metre, and is it in the figure or not.
Metreage itself varies legitimately. A patterned cloth needs more than a plain because panels have to be cut to match the repeat, and a one-way cloth such as velvet cannot be turned or nested efficiently. An upholsterer quoting on a plain and another quoting on your chosen patterned fabric will differ by metres, not centimetres. Our yardage calculator will give you a baseline figure to sanity-check against.
Two workshops, two cost bases
A sole trader working from a home workshop with no staff has a very different overhead to a firm with commercial premises, employees, vans, showroom and public liability cover across the lot. Neither is doing anything wrong. They simply cannot charge the same and both survive.
What you get for the higher overhead is usually capacity, insurance, a proper collection and delivery service and somebody answering the phone. What you get for the lower one is often the owner's own hands on your chair for the whole job. Both are legitimate purchases. Decide which you are buying.
VAT, which is invisible and worth 20%
An upholsterer registered for VAT has to add it. One trading below the threshold does not. That is a fifth of the price difference on identical work, with no difference whatsoever in what you receive.
It is not a trick and neither party is doing anything improper — but it explains a chunk of variance that otherwise looks inexplicable. Ask whether the figure includes VAT.
The rest of it
- Collection and delivery. Two people and a van for half a day, sometimes twice. Frequently excluded from the cheaper quote.
- Fixed price or estimate. On an antique nobody knows what is inside until it is stripped. An honest estimate says so and states the basis for any variation. A fixed price on an unknown piece is either optimistic or padded.
- Timescale. A four-week turnaround and a nine-month waiting list are different products.
- Guarantee. Ask what is covered and for how long.
When a quote is too cheap
Some warning signs, none of which are conclusive alone.
- They quoted without seeing the piece, from a photograph, with no questions about what is underneath.
- The quote is a single figure with no breakdown of labour, fabric and materials.
- Nobody mentioned fire regulations. This is the one I would weigh most heavily. Reupholstery work in the UK carries real obligations around fire safety, and any competent upholsterer will raise it unprompted — particularly if you are supplying your own fabric, because that determines whether an interliner is needed. If it never comes up, ask why. Our fire safety checker will tell you what should apply to your piece.
- Large deposit, cash preferred, no written specification.
The five questions that make quotes comparable
Send these to everyone quoting, in writing, and the numbers become readable:
- Is this a recover or a full reupholster?
- What exactly is being replaced — foam, webbing, springs, frame repairs?
- Is fabric included? How many metres, at what price per metre?
- Does the price include collection, delivery and VAT?
- Is it a fixed price or an estimate, and what happens if you find something once it is stripped?
Any upholsterer worth using will answer all five without hesitation, because they already know the answers. The quality of the answers tells you more than the figure does.
And when a quote is too expensive
Expensive is not automatically better, and I would be doing you no favours pretending otherwise. If the higher quote cannot explain itself in terms of specific additional work — more replaced, better fillings, frame repairs included, a more complex fabric — then it is just a higher price.
What you are looking for is not the cheapest or the dearest. It is the one where the answers to those five questions match the number, and where the person answering clearly understood the piece in front of them.
Why the cheapest often costs more
The thing that makes reupholstery expensive is labour, and the great majority of that labour is in stripping the piece and building it back up. If a job is done cheaply and the fillings underneath are left as they were, that labour still gets spent — it simply gets spent again in a few years when the seat collapses under a cover that is still perfectly good.
Doing it once properly is very often cheaper than doing it twice, which is an unsatisfying thing to be told when you are looking at two numbers and one of them is smaller. But it is the honest answer, and it is why the question worth asking is never "how much" on its own. It is "how much, for what".
Common questions
What is the difference between recovering and reupholstering?
Recovering means fitting a new cover over the existing fillings, springs and webbing. Reupholstering means stripping the piece back to the bare frame and rebuilding it — new webbing, springs re-tied or replaced, new fillings, frame repairs. The work involved can differ by a factor of two or more, yet both jobs are commonly described as reupholstery, which is the single biggest reason quotes vary so widely.
Should I always get three quotes for reupholstery?
Getting more than one is sensible, but only if you give every upholsterer the same brief and ask each of them the same questions — recover or full reupholster, what is being replaced underneath, whether fabric is included and at what metreage and price, whether collection, delivery and VAT are in the figure, and whether it is fixed or an estimate. Three numbers for three different jobs tell you nothing.
Is a cheap reupholstery quote a bad sign?
Not necessarily, but it usually means less work rather than better value — most often a recover rather than a full rebuild, or reusing the existing foam and webbing. Warning signs worth taking seriously are quoting from a photograph without inspecting the piece, a single figure with no breakdown, and no mention of fire safety obligations, which any competent upholsterer raises unprompted.
Why does VAT make such a difference to upholstery quotes?
An upholsterer registered for VAT must add it to the bill, while one trading below the registration threshold does not. That is a 20% difference on identical work with no difference in what you receive. It is entirely legitimate on both sides, and it explains a good deal of variance that otherwise looks inexplicable, so it is always worth asking whether a quoted figure includes VAT.