Making a living from upholstery
Last updated:
Free resources for working upholsterers and anyone thinking of going professional. The rest of this site teaches the craft. This part is about making a living from it: what to charge, how to quote, how to keep a workshop solvent, and the awkward situations nobody warns you about.
This is an international resource, and tax, insurance and employment law differ everywhere. Where a topic turns on them you will find the general principle and a link to the official source for your country — never a figure. Nothing here is legal, tax or financial advice.
The hardest part of selling reupholstery is that the customer cannot picture it. Visualiser Pro puts their chair in the fabric they are considering, from a photo, so the conversation stops being hypothetical. Useful at the quoting stage, when a customer is hesitating between three cloths and will not commit to any of them.
Visualiser Pro — £39.99 for 100 images No account, no subscription.
There is no reliable public data on what this work is worth. Rates get passed around as rumour and new workshops price from guesswork. So we are collecting it: shop rates, bench hours by piece, fabric markup, lead times, and which work actually pays — from working upholsterers, in every country.
Anonymous, thirteen questions, about three minutes. No name, no email address. Nothing publishes until thirty workshops have answered, and the results are free for anyone to read or cite.
Every calculator on the site. Free, no account, and the same figures the MCP server returns.
The book this came from
This whole reference is free and always will be — but a screen is a poor thing in a dusty workshop. The Working Upholsterer’s Bible is the same 35 chapters and 72 figures in a wiro-bound A4 edition that lies flat on the bench and takes a thumbprint without complaint. Written by a working AMUSF-accredited upholsterer, thirty years in.
Keep reading
From the workshop