Custom Furniture: The Comprehensive Guide
Custom furniture is the ultimate experience. In your home, or your commercial space—custom designed furniture is a tone-setter for how you and your guests will feel when interacting with the piece. At Southloft we have designed and built numerous one-of-a-kind piece of furniture for our clients. Equipped with that experience, we’re here to demystify this ambiguous topic. This is everything you should consider before you design your unique custom furniture.
Custom dining table for residential client featuring a unique pedestal base design.
How custom furniture compares to mass-produced furniture
When deciding on if custom designed and built furniture is right for you, its helpful to see how it would compare to a mass produced version of the piece. Here are several factors of how all custom furniture builds differ from their mass-produced counterparts:
Design: Custom furniture can be designed around the specific space, brand, and use case.
Materials: Custom manufacturing allows greater control over wood species, finishes, upholstery, hardware, etc.
Durability: Construction can be specified around the demands of the environment.
Dimensions: Pieces can be built to exact dimensions rather than adapting the space to standard sizes.
Brand identity: Custom pieces can reinforce a restaurant, hotel, or other commercial brand.
Cost: Mass-produced furniture generally has a lower upfront cost, while custom furniture can offer advantages where fit, durability, and design matter.
| Custom furniture | Mass-produced furniture | |
| Dimensions | Built for your space | Standardized sizes |
| Materials | Selected for your project | Predetermined materials |
| Design | Designed by our in-house team | Limited options |
| Finish | Best-in-class products | Lower quality products |
| Durability | Built with longevity in mind | Varies–material dependent |
| Quantity | Made to order | Produced in bulk |
| Commercial applications | Designed for intended use | Standardized regardless of application |
Budget
Budget is always the first step when beginning custom furniture projects—and for good reason. Every following process will ultimately come back to what your budget is. This can change everything from final dimensions of your piece, the types of materials we use, and how much functionality and customization we can build into your final product.
Custom doesn’t necessarily mean elaborate or expensive. Custom furniture can mean a simple build that needs to fit the exact size of your space or a elaborate design with rare wood species and a unique base design. It simply comes down to your budget, and your vision.
If your budget doesn’t allow for all the extras that go into some custom work don’t worry. We have ready-designed furniture solutions that reduce the starting cost, but are as quality as the most expensive piece. See our products here.
Geometric design storage unit for restaurant.
Inspiration
Typically inspiration is the process that comes easiest to our clients. You may see some bar stools at your local eatery that catches your eye or a dining table online that you know would look amazing in your home. Whatever the case is, having some inspiration upfront always will help us speed up the process going forward.
There isn’t a right or wrong way to provide us with inspiration. Anything from a select group of images, or an online reference will suffice.
Custom media console built for clients home. This piece utilizes walnut hardwood and metal finished in black.
Your space
One of the most critical things to consider is where your custom furniture is going to live. What are the dimensions that will make it feel just right? What temperature lighting do you have? There are many factors to consider when it comes to your space and how it will impact your new custom furniture.
One of the biggest problems custom furniture solves is with store-bought furniture, the challenge is finding something that fits your home’s unique layout. A mass-produced dining table might be too large, or a bookcase might not fit the height of your walls. Custom furniture is crafted precisely for your space, ensuring perfect proportions, functionality, and harmony with your interior design. Here are several ways custom furniture can harder for you space:
- Multi-purpose furniture
- Furniture designed around unusual dimensions
- Hidden storage
- Furniture that eliminates awkward gaps
- Furniture designed to visually open up a room
Another way custom furniture accounts for you space is lighting. It is important to test accurate samples in your space when considering how the final product will look. We provide customers with material and finish specific samples in order to ensure that you love what you’re getting when you build with SouthLoft.
Functionality
Custom conference table with power outlet functionality.
A custom piece can solve a functional problem rather than simply fill a space.
Functionality is always a consideration with our custom pieces, but not a requirement. Anything that can make this piece work harder for you and serve more purpose is always a bonus. Some examples of extra functionality could include storage, power strips, custom lighting and electrical, upholstery, functional materials (whiteboards built into the table).
Customizing your furniture
Dining table at Musume customized to include an epoxy filled inlay of a Japanese woman.
Making your custom piece yours is what it is all about. Here are several aspects to each piece that custom furniture allows you to make to your exact specifications:
- Wood species
- Finishes
- Leg or base design
- Metallic inlays
- Artistic elements
Residential applications
One of the most popular use cases for custom furniture is in the home. We have made a wide variety of furniture for our residential clients over the years. Here’s how a custom piece in your home could come to life:
- Statement headboards
- Dining tables
- Custom bars
- Wooden kitchen counter tops
- Family minded design elements
- Sideboard tables
- Desks
Upkeep & maintenance of your custom furniture
When it comes to the longevity you can be assured that a piece of custom furniture from SouthLoft is going to last the test of time. However, there are some considerations to be aware of before you decide on your final design and finish. Durability and maintenance affect the long-term value of a piece. We build furniture that can be considered an investment or will last long enough to become a family heirloom.
One consideration is how much daily use your piece will get. For daily use pieces like dining tables, a matte finish will hide any imperfections that might occur over time—whereas a gloss finish will highlight imperfections.
Another consideration is cleaning products used on your piece. Chemically abrasive products can ruin the finish of your piece. We recommend simple soap and water mixes to make sure the protective layer lasts the lifetime of your custom furniture.
In conclusion
Our design team consulting with a client on their custom furniture piece.
If you are ready to jump into the fun of designing your 1-of-1 piece we are too. Click here to contact us. Be as detailed as possible and we will contact you with next steps! We look forward to making your vision come to life!