Choosing the right furniture for your home isn’t a decision that should be taken lightly. Those deciding between bespoke furniture and off-the-shelf furniture, for instance, have a lot to take into consideration. Here are some of the pros and cons of purchasing both bespoke and mass-produced items to help you make up your mind.
Budgeting
We’ll start off with what will be the most important factor for many people: money! There’s no denying the fact that fully bespoke furniture will cost more than all but the most high-end off the shelf pieces. As well as paying for the raw materials (which you’d have to do when purchasing any furniture), those ordering bespoke furniture must pay not only for the build time (again, a charge applicable to any furniture) but also to the time it takes for the craftsman to design and plan the build. Learn about direct and indirect costs of furniture manufacturers and how these can impact on the final price of your item here.
Time
Again, in terms of time there’s no substitute for off-the-shelf furniture. If you purchase from a large retail chain, even the highest quality items will usually be already sat waiting for you in a warehouse, and will often be in your home a week or so later. That’s simply not going to happen with bespoke furniture, as the design process will need to be negotiated and signed off first. As well as this, many reputable bespoke furniture builders will normally have a waiting list of anything up to 12 months depending on the size and scale of the project.
The ‘wow’ factor
Rustic Furniture Workshop
This is perhaps the most evenly divided point between the two markets. When you go bespoke, you will undoubtedly be getting an item of the very highest quality. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will give you the ‘wow’ factor. The simple fact is, every single person will have their own viewpoints on the style of their furniture, and their opinion is completely subjective. That means that even those who were completely sold on bespoke furniture may one day suddenly fall in love with a relatively cheap set from their local department store. There’s no accounting for taste – it’s each to their own, after all!
Quality
Though off-the-shelf furniture is usually of a very high quality, especially if you’re looking at items in the top price ranges, there is simply no substitute for the sheer skills of a craftsman with years of experience in creating the very, very best furniture. One look at their job description conveys how much training and hard work goes into becoming a qualified furniture maker.
As long as your item is ordered from a design house with a glowing reputation, bespoke furniture will never be anything less than a lifetime’s investment.The furniture created in a workshop by an expert will outlast you, and probably your children, too. It’ll also look absolutely stunning and make use of the very best materials.
Is it unique?
Here, again, the bespoke furniture side takes the gold. There’s something enduringly appealing about a piece of furniture (or indeed, a whole suite) that no-one else has. There are few things more frustrating than going out and finding a classy piece of new furniture that no-one else has and then seeing the same piece in a friend’s home! When you order bespoke, you can be almost 100% sure that no-one else in the world owns that piece of furniture. This, in itself, is invaluable.
In Conclusion…
All of the above factors will form part of the decision making process. It’s therefore important to make sure that you take them all into account before choosing whether or not to invest in a bespoke design or go for a mass-manufactured item.
Featured image:
License: Royalty Free or iStock source: www.sxc.hu
Nick Halls is the founder of Rustic Oak, a bespoke furniture design and manufacturing company in the UK. He runs a team of fully qualified and experienced furniture makers, so knows exactly what it takes to create unique items from scratch.
