In November 2022, the National Upholstery Association held our second annual Pricing Survey, where we asked respondents how much they charge for various upholstery services. Our questions were weighted toward residential upholstery services, though several questions applied to commercial, marine, and other specialties as well.

The survey collected data from 218 US-based upholsterers and workrooms, nearly equal to the 215 responses we collected in 2021. We chose to keep the questions identical to last year’s survey, as we wanted to accurately compare prices year-over-year.

A few key insights include:

• Year-over-year, the price of upholstery services as surveyed increased by 8.2%. Over the same period of time, the US inflation rate was 7.1%.*
• Out of 22 services surveyed, 2 services yielded overall median prices lower than 2021. All other individual services saw increases of 0% to 18%.
• There is currently no official pricing standard for residential upholstery. Some upholsterers charge by the piece, others by the hour, some by the inch/foot/percentage, etc. We received several comments from respondents noting that they price differently than surveyed.

Click the button below to view the results. You must be a member of the National Upholstery Association to access this data. Results are presented in a dynamic visual format, allowing the viewer to filter results by geographic area, service area size, and shop size.

Survey Results

This year we received a few inquiries about our decision to restrict the survey to US-based upholsterers. This is a fair question, as our member base includes Canadian workrooms. We considered opening the survey to all; however, this came with a couple tricky issues. First, Canada and the US have different currencies with ever-changing exchange rates. And second, we have only a handful of Canadian members, so even if we surveyed them as a separate group, the survey would yield too few data points to return meaningful insights. We may find a way to solve this challenge in the future, but in the meantime, if you are one of our valued Canadian members, our best advice is to filter the results by a metro area most similar to yours and then do the currency conversion to compare pricing in your area.

If you are not a member of the National Upholstery Association, please consider joining! Membership gets you access to the pricing survey results, as well as other exclusive benefits. Check out our Membership Overview page for details.