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True Trade Cost

Furniture Pricing Calculator: Price a Custom Table or Commission

Updated

A solid walnut coffee table, 48 by 24 inches with breadboard ends and tapered legs, comes to $1,944.86 delivered at a $58 break-even rate, 50% on lumber and 10% profit. Put your own piece in the yellow boxes and the price follows as you type.

This furniture pricing calculator builds the price from shop hours, lumber and the time a commission takes before and after the build. The starting numbers are a simplified version of the designer's coffee table in the Woodworking Pricing Calculator spreadsheet, finished in hardwax oil and built to the designer's plans.

1. The order
hrs

Design and cut list, calls and messages, the finish sample, photos, wrapping and delivery.

min

Milling, joinery, glue-ups, sanding, finish coats and final fitting. 570 minutes is 9.5 hours.

$

Board feet of rough lumber with waste, plus finish, abrasives and fasteners.

2. Costs that come with every order

The ones owners leave out most. Put 0 if it doesn't apply.

$
$
$
3. Your rate and profit
$/hr

What each labour hour has to bring in to cover wages and overhead.

%
%

Don't know your break-even rate? Work it out in two minutes with the true hourly rate calculator.

1 tables$1,944.86 · $1,944.86 each

Why a walnut coffee table is priced as one piece with shop hours

A coffee table is not priced by the board foot, even though the lumber bill is the first number you see. The example uses about 31 board feet of rough walnut, plus finish, glue, abrasives and fasteners: $476.70 at cost, $715.05 with the 50% markup.

The build itself is 9.5 shop hours: milling rough stock, ripping and tapering legs, gluing up the top and fitting the breadboard ends, flattening, joinery, the base glue-up, three coats of finish and the final fit. At $58 an hour that is $551. Lumber and shop time together are most of the price, but not all of it.

Design, calls and delivery: the 7.5 hours outside the build

The example carries 7.5 hours that happen once per commission: working out the cut list, calls and messages with the designer, a finish sample for approval, pictures for your portfolio, sweeping the shop down after the job, and wrapping, loading, driving and carrying the table in. That is $435 at $58, a fifth of the price.

Leave those hours out and the table looks like it pays well while the week disappears. If the customer collects it themselves, take 1.5 hours off and set the delivery box to 0, and the table comes to $1,820.01.

A matching pair of walnut tables, or a set of four

Ask for two and the design work, the finish sample and the trip are shared. Two tables come to $1,668.76 each, or $3,337.51 for the pair. Four come to $1,530.71 each and eight to $1,461.68.

The per-table price falls but never by as much as people expect, because the lumber and the 9.5 shop hours repeat on every table. That is the useful answer when a designer asks for a volume discount: show the break table, not a percentage off. The woodworking pricing guide goes through the same example in more detail.

What the quick furniture estimate leaves on the bench

The $58 break-even rate is the example shop's. Yours comes from your rent, insurance, tools and how many of your shop hours you can really bill: work it out with the free true hourly rate calculator, and see the overhead and profit guide for what belongs in it.

The spreadsheet also charges the jointer, planer, table saw, drum sander and joinery tool by their own hourly cost, adds a 5% cushion, asks about the lumber yard trip and changes after approval, keeps a lumber price list by the board foot, prints a customer quote and logs whether each piece made money. Its version of the same table comes to $2,027.16 rather than $1,944.86.

The $150 minimum stays on. A small repair or a single cutting board done to order still pays for getting the tools out and the shop swept.

How the math in the Woodworking & Furniture calculator is checked

Every version of the woodworking & furniture spreadsheet goes through an automatic test before it ships. The test rebuilds the file, recalculates it in a separate spreadsheet engine, and fails the release if any of these is off.

  • The example's break-even rate, $58.29 an hour, is worked out a second time outside the spreadsheet and the two have to agree to the cent.
  • At all four quantities on the quote, the price each times the quantity has to equal the order price, the price each may never go up as the quantity goes up, and the customer quote has to show the same four prices.
  • The example quote ($2,027.16 each (1 pcs)) has to earn more per labour hour than it costs to run the business. It earns $87.26 an hour against the $58.29 break-even.
  • Then the test tries to break it: every yellow box on the quote emptied, nobody on the crew billable, a material price 400 days old, an order of zero. No cell may show an error, and the checks box has to flag the missing customer name and the out-of-date price.
  • The formulas only use functions that work the same way in Excel and Google Sheets.

Last test run: Woodworking & Furniture passed, along with 39 of the other 39 trades. The example job and the list of easy-to-miss costs come from research into 9 videos of woodworking & furniture owners explaining how they price. More on how the calculators are built.

Questions owners ask

How do I estimate the price of a custom coffee table?

Add the lumber and supplies to the shop hours at your break-even rate, add the hours that come once per commission, put a markup on the lumber and profit on top. The example walnut table, 48 by 24 inches, comes to $1,944.86.

Should I enter build time in minutes or hours?

Minutes, per piece. The example walnut table takes 570 shop minutes, which is 9.5 hours, from rough lumber to the final fit. Design, calls and delivery go in the once-per-commission hours instead, since a second table does not repeat them.

Why is the second matching table cheaper?

Because the design, the finish sample and the delivery are done once. In the example one table is $1,944.86, two are $1,668.76 each and four are $1,530.71 each.

Is 10% profit enough on custom furniture?

It is the example's figure, and it sits on top of a break-even rate that already pays the maker's wage and the shop's costs. It also sits on a 50% markup on lumber. Raise it if your work is in demand or the design is risky.