In a previous post I talked about how materials affect the cost of a custom furniture piece.

In this post I’ll dive into the other key aspect that affects the price of a custom piece: the design.

In addition to quality materials and a quality-built piece, the lure of custom furniture is just that – customization. You’re not limited to what is offered commercially so you can have a piece created to a specific size, a one-off design that fits your home aesthetic, or added personalized details.

The cost to create a custom furniture piece has a direct relation to the complexity of the design and thus the time required and level of difficulty to build it.

It is not always intuitive either. What might look complex from a client perspective may be a relatively easy skill or operation on the part of the woodworker.

The flip side is most certainly true as well. Design features that look clean and simple might require a high level of skill, specialized tools or jigs, and a lot of time.

This post will unpack some of this in the hopes of giving people interested in custom furniture a better understanding of the process.

 

Design Features that Increase Cost

This post won’t get as granular about specific price points like my previous post did, but rather will provide some high-level factors that generally impact the cost of a piece.

Below are some general design aspects that affect cost.

Size

The size of a piece influences cost in a couple ways. If the thickness of a furniture part (like a table leg) needs to be larger than lumber that’s commercially available, it often requires glue-ups. While a fairly simple process, it requires time and extra steps when compared to starting with sufficient sized lumber.

If the overall size of the design is large (think dining table or large entertainment unit), the overall machining and handling of the individual pieces, sub-assemblies, and fully assembled piece may introduce complexity.

Large panels may exceed the capacity of milling tools such as planers and jointers, in which case novel methods need to be employed to flatten or dimension those pieces. A 12.5” board fits easily in a 13” wide planer, but jump up by ½” in width and now that tool is no longer a viable option.

For operations performed on larger subassemblies or a fully assembled piece, the woodworker is limited in handling the piece based on its weight and size. Therefore, it requires bringing the tool to the workpiece vs bringing the workpiece to the tool.

Overall, there’s a positive correlation between size of the design and the cost of the piece.

 

Non-Rectilinear Shapes (i.e. Curves)

Straight lines are easy. The same machine could cut a 5” straight line or a 60” straight line. The same cannot be said for curves.

Curves in furniture pieces often require some form of template to generate the desired shape.

A common process for creating a curve, such as one for a table apron, would be to cut a template out of a thin material such as MDF, draw out the rough size on the material, rough cut the shape on a bandsaw, temporarily attach the template to the workpiece and use a flush cutting bit on a router table to remove the excess material and match the template perfectly. If there are 4 of these pieces, that process is done 4 times.

Another consideration with curves is whether there is a need to produce multiple identical parts, or is aesthetics of the curve is the primary goal. Hand or power carving might be an option if the desired shape is purely for visual purposes and could not be easily produced with templates.

Non-rectilinear shapes can add unique design appeal to a furniture piece, but it is sure to increase labor costs.

 

Door and Drawers

Doors and drawers are a necessary feature of items such as cabinets, desks, or bookcases. There is, of course, a collection of steps associated with these.

For example… in building drawers, the drawer box parts need to be milled, inside faces sanded, assembled (with simple or detailed joinery), false fronts installed, and hardware installed including pulls and slides. Challenges can often be experienced if drawer boxes are not built perfectly square and will bind when the drawer slides are installed. While it is not a complicated process, it is a time consuming process and does have room for error if care is not taken.

 

Joinery

The sky is the limit here. The options for joinery are much greater than the scope of this post.

Joinery selection shall always be based on function/strength and aesthetics.

A cabinet carcass built with butt joints and reinforced with dowels or loose tenons is relatively simple and quick. That process might take under an hour to cut the joinery.

The same cabinet carcass featuring hand cut dovetails joints requires a significant jump in hand tool skill and labor time. The process of cutting this joinery may take an entire day or more of work.

Clients should be informed of this so they can decide where they want elaborate joinery to elevate the design of a piece, and where they just want the simplest, strongest option. Being selective is key as more is not better.

 

General Design Complexity

This is the umbrella category for any other design features that require a special skill, tool or jig, or simply a lot of time.

Below are some examples of this:

-Adding a contrasting wood inlay

-Carved texturing

-Large number of parts and tight tolerances.

-Special woodworking processes such as turning or bent lamination

-Parts with complex geometries

-Multi-part glue-ups

-Use of multiple materials (metals, fiber, fabric, glass)

-Sculptural elements

-Joints of non-standard angles (i.e. not 90 or 45)

 

To give some real-world application to these guidelines, I’ll use three of my past projects and walk through the aspects of each build that contributed significantly to labor time.

 

Example 1: Japanese Corner Cabinet

This cabinet was a solution to an awkward corner in a hallway that needed some character.

The inherent nature of corner cabinets makes them a little more time-consuming compared to a rectangular cabinet, but not by too much. The top, bottom, and internal shelf were made from laminated (glued) panels of white oak and then cut to precise dimensions with a track saw, giving them the pseudo baseball diamond shape.

The joinery of the cabinet was intentionally simple – butt joints reinforced with dowels. Precision in layout of the joinery is key, but not really a huge time sink. The cabinet was meant to take a back seat to the door panel detail.

The door panels reflect a rising sun pattern and were constructed using thin strips of white oak that were inlayed into the back side of the door frames. This process involved milling the strips to size, marking out the locations of the inlays on each door frame, then using a tapering jig on the table saw to cut out the various dados (grooves) that would accept the strips. The strips were milled to a ¼” width to perfectly match the dado black stack used on the table saw. Then each piece was glued into the door frames, and once dry, the excess was trimmed. Once finish was applied, the door frames were then backed with a decorative rice paper, common in Japanese style furniture. This decorative feature was a significant contributor to labor time, as it should be when serving as the focus of the piece.

 

Example 2: Little Man’s Crib

Reflecting on this project, there are two aspects that consumed a lot of the build time – the number of parts, and the CNC carved end panels.

Let’s just zero in on the side rail assemblies which contained a top and bottom rail, side rails (or stiles), and 15 balusters each. This meant 38 pieces needed to be milled to final dimension (over multiple sessions to allow acclimation), cutting joinery, sanding, glue-ups, routing edge profiles, and finishing. All simple processes but made more time-consuming as the part count increases. These are the parts of the build where efficiency truly comes into play.

The CNC carved end panels required milling and glueing of two large white oak panels, creating the design of the CNC file, executing the actual CNC cut (which took about 2.5 hours per panel).

For the finish, I used a hard wax oil with a white tint (Rubio Monocoat Oil Plus 2C “Smoke 5%). With the detail of the carving, the finish was applied with a scotch bite pad, and then excess finish had to be painstakingly removed from all the carved spaces where it had pooled. This was done with a toothbrush and toothpicks… there was swearing involved. I could have used a spray finish for the panels, but I didn’t want to run the chance that the crib would look incoherent with different finishing methods.

 

Example 3: Kumiko Media Cabinet

This thing was my Everest, in the best way possible.

There were some unique geometries and design details with this piece that took some thoughtful planning and execution, but for the purpose of this post I will just focus on the elephant in the room – the Kumiko door panels.

Kumiko is a Japanese art of constructing wood latticework in many different designs or combinations of designs. Kumiko had traditionally been used for shoji screens, doors, and decorative pieces to be hung on a wall. Pieces for the in-fill patterns are hand cut individually using handsaws, chisels, and specialized jigs to create precise, friction-fit joints (although glue is typically used to ensure strength and endurance).

I started with the rectangular framework which is assembled using half lap joints cut on the table saw. Any errors here in spacing meant that the gridwork would not assemble square and that would affect the fit of the in-fill pieces to come.

Then each in-fill piece was rough cut to length with a handsaw, precise angles cut with a chisel and a Kumiko jig and tested until the fit was right. If you get the gridwork nice and square, then once you nail the fit for 1 of the in-fill pieces, you can lock in the jig and subsequent pieces cut should fit perfectly throughout the pattern.

Building these door panels took me a couple months. I would say this was 60% of the entire time spent on the build. But oh is it therapeutic.

Once you dial in the fit on all the in-fill pieces, its just you, a sharp chisel, clean shavings, and a quiet shop – the most zen puzzle you could ask for.

 

Conclusion

Custom furniture is inherently inefficient to build. Each piece is a unique design that requires different tools, specialized jigs, processes, and skills.

For a woodworker trying to maximize their efficiency and profit, focusing on one design and consistently producing that design is the way to go. While I appreciate efficiency and profit, the enjoyment of the work is diminished when I build the same thing repeatedly. New designs create new challenges which forces me to think critically and expand my skillset at the cost of efficiency – and I’m ok with that.

I hope you took away something valuable from this content. If you have an idea for a custom furniture piece, send me a message or fill out the custom furniture inquiry form on my website!

Thanks all.