Furniture Restorer Hourly Rate Calculator
This free calculator works out the hourly rate a self-employed furniture restorer should charge for their time, starting from the income you need, then builds the per-piece prices clients actually pay out of the hours each piece honestly holds. Nobody books a restorer by the hour; they hand over a chair, a chest, a table with a story attached, and ask what it will cost to make it right. The honest answer starts with an assessment, not a number: one piece needs a joint re-glued and a repolish, the next needs veneer replaced, a leg rebuilt and forty years of wax stripped first. That is priced piece by piece, from the hours you count at the bench — never by the metre, never by the room, and for antiques never before you have seen and touched the piece itself. With the honest presets below the rate lands near $97 an hour, $777 for a full bench day — and the work built from it: an assessment at about an hour, $97; a dining chair structurally repaired and repolished at about three and a half hours, $340; a chest of drawers fully restored at about twelve hours, $1,166 — with finishing stock inside the rate, and identifiable replacement parts billed as their own lines.
The pricing reality for furniture restorers
Restoration is bought per piece and quoted after assessment, and earned at the bench: strip, repair, rebuild, refinish. The piece the client counts is the last of those stages. Two identical-looking chests of drawers work completely differently — one sound under its polish, the other with loose joints, lifting veneer and a previous repairer’s shortcuts waiting out of sight. The photograph cannot see that difference and neither can a price list, which is why the honest quote is built from an assessment first and expressed per piece second.
It is also a different craft from the one it is most often confused with. An upholsterer re-covers a frame in new fabric and foam, assuming the frame is sound. A restorer repairs the object itself — joints, veneer, structure and finish — and when a restored piece then needs re-covering, that is the upholsterer’s job after yours, not instead of it. A cabinet maker builds new pieces to order; a restorer returns old ones to use. Different work, different clock: the new piece is priced from a design, the old one from what forty years have done to it.
The numbers below are starting presets, not a survey: a $52,000 target income, $11,600 a year of expenses — workshop rent share leads, with tools and machinery, finishing materials stock, vehicle and fuel for collections and deliveries, liability insurance including cover for clients’ pieces while they are in your care, abrasives and consumables, phone, quoting and admin, and training — a 25% tax estimate, four weeks of vacation, a 40-hour week and 50% billable time. With those starting numbers the calculator lands near $97 an hour. The billable share is the workshop talking: assessing, collecting, delivering, stripping that cannot be rushed and finishes that dry on their own schedule all take hours no client pays for directly.
Your numbers — furniture restorer presets
Your recommended rate
| Income + expenses needed | $0 |
| Grossed up for tax | $0 |
| With profit margin | $0 |
| Working weeks | 0 |
| Total working hours | 0 |
| Billable hours | 0 |
Your rate is saved on this device only, so the Proposal Generator can show it when you price a project.
Costs furniture restorers forget to put in the rate
- The assessment itself. Looking properly takes time — testing joints, lifting a corner of veneer, reading the piece’s history in its repairs. An assessment given away free on every enquiry is skilled work donated before the job exists; charge it as itself, or credit it against the restoration, but count it either way.
- The space a piece occupies. A restoration in progress sits on your bench and racks for days while glue sets and finishes cure, and no other paying piece can sit there. Workshop rent is in these presets because the piece is renting your space for the whole job, not just the hours you touch it.
- Collections and deliveries. Furniture travels both ways, often two-person lifts and a van run each direction. The piece that arrives in a client’s hatchback still has to get home again; the travel is part of the job’s hours, not a favour wrapped around them.
- Matching materials. The right veneer species, a period-correct lock, wax that matches a century-old finish — sourcing them takes phone calls, suppliers and sometimes a stock leaf you will use once. Stock bought for one piece is a cost of that piece, priced in or billed on, never absorbed silently.
- The pieces in your care. Your workshop holds other people’s heirlooms. Insurance that covers clients’ property while it is with you is a real annual cost, in these presets inside the liability line — one fire or flood without it ends the business and the pieces together.
How this calculator works
Start with the hours you can genuinely sell. Take 52 weeks, subtract your vacation weeks, multiply by your hours per week, then multiply by your billable percentage. With the furniture restorer presets — four weeks off, 40 hours a week, 50% billable — that is 960 billable hours a year: the bench time clients can pay for, once assessing, collecting, delivering and drying time have taken theirs.
Next, work out what those hours must bring in. Add your desired income and your annual business expenses together — $63,600 on the presets — gross the total up for tax by dividing by one minus your tax rate — at a 25% estimate, divide by 0.75 to get $84,800 — then add your profit margin to reach $93,280 and divide by your billable hours. That final number, $97, is the rate below which the year stops adding up.
Now translate the hour into the prices clients actually buy. The piece is the quoted unit, built from the assessment: an hour’s assessment at $97, charged as itself or credited in the quote; a dining chair repaired and repolished at about three and a half bench hours, $340; a chest of drawers at about twelve hours, $1,166; a full bench day at $777. Finishing stock — polish, wax, glue, abrasives — sits inside the rate; identifiable replacement parts, a lock or a set of castors, arrive on the invoice as their own lines. Quoted that way, the client can see what they are buying: your judgement about what the piece needs, then the hours to do it — and a flat per-piece guess, made before anyone has assessed the piece, stops looking cheaper.
Furniture Restorer rate questions
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