3 Questions to Ask Yourself When Getting Your Furniture Custom-made
There are many benefits to having custom furniture made for your home or office. Unique pieces in your space can help to cement your decorative theme and personal style. Just like a custom-made dress is better in fit and form compared to a dress mass-manufactured and bought off-the-rack, custom furniture can give you better aesthetics and functionality. The following are a few factors to consider if thinking about custom furniture for your next purchase.
1. What is my budget?
Custom-made furniture isn't necessarily more expensive than ready-made furniture, but it also isn't necessarily less expensive. If you want a particular piece of furniture with a prohibitive showroom price, consider talking to a custom furniture designer to see whether you can have the same piece made for less. Custom designers/makers tend to have fewer overhead costs compared with large manufacturers, which can translate to cost savings for you. In addition, you can have similar pieces made from less costly materials to bring the price down.
Similarly, you may tweak a showroom piece's design by using more expensive material which would drive the price up. In addition, certain designers have unique styles and material usage methods which may cost more to implement on your custom piece.
2. Do I have time?
Custom-made furniture is best made without a strict clock attached to it. Remember that unlike mass-manufactured pieces, the former are often made by hand in much smaller workshops. As such, you should allow enough time for design, material sourcing and construction, including post-construction revisions. There are also certain elements that require more time to do e.g. hand-carved patters and moulds among other unique detailing. If you have a short time deadline, pick simpler designs or go for ready-made pieces, choosing to custom-make once the rush is finished.
3. What do I want?
It isn't every time that you'll have the exact image of the kind of furniture you want. In such cases, it's important to know what you want the furniture to do. The designer can then give you possible ideas for how the furniture should look like, and you can make a final decision according to your preferences, budget and decorative theme among others.
Custom-made furniture is advantageous in that you can make unique changes to regular furniture designs. For instance, you can request for different-sized chairs to cater for size differences between family members, increasing the comfort of everybody.
Custom-making can also allow you to implement environmentally-friendly practices by choosing the material your furniture is made of. For instance, you can go for recycled/upcycled materials such as reclaimed wood, trees felled by storms etc. Such pieces can add character to a space and are often cheaper than new materials.
