Furniture, drapery, and rugs, any of these home interior items can give one sticker shock. Which is why I’m going to break it down into prices which are more easy to relate to, fashion. First let me get one thing out of the way, good furniture is expensive as are drapery and rugs. The benefit of having a good designer is customization: the sofa which fits your home and family; the fabric you love not what a store has in stock and wants to sell you; or window treatments which suit your specific decor.
Let’s get started… 
Translating interior items to fashion makes pricing easier to relate to. Do I get the handbag which will get how much use vs custom drapery or a rug which will be in my home to use on a daily basis? It is all in how you look at it.
Interior furniture and furnishings can sound expensive until you relate then to something one is more price conscious of like fashion, and begin to break down how much use one will get from an item. New Miele steam oven or Chanel bag? One can begin to see the prices are not as shocking as they might sound initially.
These are intended to be fun. These are general prices from typical interior products I use for my clients. Of course fabrics can run from $50 to $500 + a yard which can alter the price of upholstered furniture or drapery significantly. Good designers will pepper your home with high and low, much like one’s wardrobe. A pair of great shoes can make a pair of Levi’s look sensational; the same can also happen with let’s say the right lamp.
As a follow-up, because I actually found this exercise to work like magic on my own husband, there will be an additional post next week relating interior prices to man-stuff. Is he whining about the cost of some interior item? I’ve got your ammunition. 
Fashion photos: all shoes via Net-A-Porter, Chanel and Louis Vuitton. Sofa via Sherrill Furniture; Fabric via Calvin Fabrics; and rug via Decorative Carpets.
4 Comments
This post is brillant. I have been thinking about doing one on this for a while. You beat me to it. I still may do one! It’s so true. I think about it all the time
Thank you Lisa. Relating the cost of a sofa to a fashion item works and it’s funny. Fun to turn around too, “so you’ve got 5 sofas on one shelf in your closet.”
Sorry for the late reply but I had an issue with Discuss.
XO
Great Post Lisa.
Only problem with the comparison is that with the expensive pumps and handbags, the ladies get to show off those items much more often to say their local butcher and deli or at the supermarkets.
Can’t exactly do that with the Furniture, Sofas and drapes. Well you could but showing everyone the photos of your furniture and lamps would probably draw some weird looks.
Being a small supplier of relatively expensive furniture in Australia I do often struggle with getting the point across that something like a Moran Furniture piece is worth the Extra money that you pay.
People often aren’t aware of the differences in materials used and what they cost. Paying for handmade quality, hardwoods and premium leathers or fabrics, rather than the generic Chinese mass produces lounges and sofas will pay off in the long run every time.
Now if only I knew how to identify expensive shoes so that I could get your examples into my next sales pitch…
PS – Looking forward to seeing it compared to men’s items (Think Golf Clubs) you can’t go wrong.
Thanks for your comments. The point is a fun way to throw reality into the mix. For instance a woman may think nothing of spending $500 on a pair of shoes yet she takes issue with $2000 for drapery, which is basically 4 pair of shoes. The cost of custom design items gets muddled consumers minds since most of the prices one observes is for retail items often of much lesser quality. When it comes to men this really rings true, as I related a real example in my post today. I also like to compare apples to apples so to speak, there is no Ferrari available for a Chevrolet price. The same applies to home furnishings.
Good luck!
Lisa
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[...] week we related the cost of home furnishings to the costs of fashion items one might find in a gal’s closet. This week, let’s relate interior design costs [...]