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True Trade Cost

Upholstery Cost Calculator: Price a Set of Seats or Chairs From Bench Time

Updated

A set of 8 dining chair slip seats with new 2 inch foam, batting, mid-grade shop fabric and black dust covers comes to $1,139.68, or $142.46 a seat, at a $49 break-even rate with 20% profit. Type in your own bench minutes, setup hours and fabric cost and the job price and the per-seat table redo themselves.

This upholstery cost calculator is for the shop doing the work. It prices a job from your bench time and your materials, then gives you a price per piece at the end. The starting numbers are a simplified copy of the slip seat job in the Upholstery Pricing Calculator spreadsheet.

1. The order
hrs

Fabric picking with the customer, working out yardage, tagging pieces, foam setup and paperwork.

min

Strip, cut foam and batting, cover, staple, dust cover and remount one seat.

$

Fabric, foam, batting, dust cover, staples and glue for one seat. Set fabric to 0 if the customer brings their own.

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.

8 seats$1,139.68 · $142.46 each

An hour a seat: the bench minutes that drive the price

Each slip seat in the example takes 62.6 minutes at the bench: stripping the old cover and staples, cutting foam and batting, laying out and cutting fabric, covering and stapling, then the dust cover and a test fit on the chair. At $49 that is about $51 of bench time a seat before profit.

Stripping is the part owners underestimate. A seat with two old covers stacked on top of each other and a staple every half inch takes far longer than one with a single layer. Strip one seat before you quote the set, if you can, and use that time.

Two seats at $234.55, a dozen at $132.23

The table under the price runs the same slip seat at 2, 8, 12 and 24. Two come to $234.55 each, eight to $142.46, twelve to $132.23 and 24 to $121.99. Sitting down with the customer to pick fabric, working out yardage, tagging each seat and setting up the foam saw take 2.85 hours in the example, whatever the count.

That is why a customer with two kitchen chairs pays more per seat than one with a set of eight. The $150 minimum catches the single seat that would otherwise slip through for less than the time it takes to take the order.

Customer's own fabric: what changes and what doesn't

When the customer brings their own fabric, only the materials box changes. Take the shop fabric out of the example and the seat drops from $142.46 to $118.16. The bench minutes stay at 62.6, because cutting and stapling someone else's fabric takes just as long, and slippery or heavy fabric can take longer. Ask to see the fabric before you quote the bench time, not on the day it arrives.

Keep the pattern allowance line in, too. A stripe or a large print still has to line up across eight seats, and the customer's yard count is often short. Write down who covers the shortfall before you cut; the change orders guide shows how to put that in writing.

What the full spreadsheet adds to reach $147.41 a seat

The quick version leaves out the running cost of your sewing machine, staplers and van, the safety cushion, and the list of upholstery costs owners forget, from frame repairs found after stripping to sweeping staples at the end of the day. With those counted, the spreadsheet's version of the same 8 seats is $147.41 a seat.

The $49 rate is the example shop's. Work out yours with the free true hourly rate calculator, see how overhead and profit stack in the overhead and profit guide, and read the upholstery pricing guide for sofas, wing chairs and boat cushions.

How the math in the Upholstery Shop calculator is checked

Every version of the upholstery shop 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, $49.10 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 ($147.41 each (8 pcs)) has to earn more per labour hour than it costs to run the business. It earns $77.28 an hour against the $49.10 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: Upholstery Shop 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 upholstery shop owners explaining how they price. More on how the calculators are built.

Questions owners ask

How do I work out the cost to reupholster dining chair seats?

Time one seat from stripping to remounting, add the hours you spend once on the job, price both at your break-even rate, add fabric, foam and supplies, then profit. The example set of 8 slip seats comes to $142.46 a seat.

Why does reupholstering 2 seats cost more each than 8?

Fabric picking, working out yardage and setting up the foam saw take about the same time for 2 seats as for 8. In the example, 2 seats come to $234.55 each and 12 come to $132.23 each.

Should I charge less when the customer brings their own fabric?

Charge less for materials, not for labour. Customer's own fabric takes the same bench time and sometimes more. In the example, taking the shop fabric out brings the seat from $142.46 to $118.16.

Can this calculator price a sofa or boat cushions?

Yes. Change the piece count and put in the bench minutes and materials for one sofa, one cushion or one boat seat. Big pieces with few in the job lean hard on the hours paid once, so check that box too.