How Do You Find a Good Upholsterer in New York?
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You called three shops on Monday. One said he'd get back to you in twenty minutes and didn't, one never picked up, and the third gave you a number over the phone without asking a single question about the sofa. Meanwhile you keep reading stories about a shop that took somebody's couch and went quiet for months, and you're not handing yours over until you know who you're dealing with.
That caution is reasonable. Most of what separates a shop you'll be glad you found from one you'll be chasing shows up in the first phone call, if you know what to listen for.
What a Good Shop Looks Like From the Outside
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The best upholsterer for you in New York is a working shop that answers the phone, quotes in writing with labor and fabric listed separately, and gives you a timeframe before anything leaves your apartment. It should also be able to tell you what it'll do inside the piece, to the springs and the padding, and not only what fabric goes on top. Where the shop is matters less than it used to, because most quotes start from photos and most shops pick up across the boroughs.
The Shop Doesn't Have to Be Around the Corner
It's natural to search for an upholsterer in your own neighborhood, and for a lot of trades that's the right instinct. Upholstery works a little differently in New York, because the work happens in a workshop and workshops need space. Plenty of good ones sit on side streets and upper floors that you'd never walk past, in parts of the city you wouldn't think to look.
What matters is whether the shop comes to you. A sofa isn't going in a cab, so ask where they pick up and how the charge for that works. We're based on the Upper East Side and pick up across the five boroughs and beyond, with the pickup and delivery charge shown on the written quote.
So widen the search. The shop that's right for a tufted Victorian settee might be three neighborhoods away from the one that happens to be closest, and you'll only see either of them twice.
What the First Phone Call Tells You
The first test is the plainest one, which is whether they call back. A shop that can't return a call about a job that would pay them isn't going to get better at it once your sofa is in their workshop.
Then listen to what they ask you. A shop that knows its work wants photos, the front and the side and the underside, and wants to know how old the piece is and what's wrong with how it sits. A price given with none of that is a guess, and guesses tend to grow.
Ask for the quote in writing, with labor on one line and fabric yardage on another. That split is what lets you compare two shops honestly, and it's where surprise fees show up if there are going to be any. Ask what happens if they open the piece and find something broken that nobody could see. The answer you want is that they stop and call you with a price before doing anything extra.
Ask for a timeframe too, before pickup. For most sofas we quote two to four weeks, and it depends mostly on how long the fabric takes to arrive. Any shop can be slow when a mill is slow, but you should know that going in.
Traditional or Modern, and Which One Your Piece Needs
People search for "traditional upholsterers" and "modern upholsterers" as if they were two kinds of shop, and sometimes they are. The difference is in what goes under the fabric.
Traditional work means coil springs tied by hand with twine, horsehair and cotton for padding, edges stitched into shape, and tacks holding the cover. It's slow, and it's what an antique was built with, so antique furniture should go to a shop that does it. Modern work uses webbing or sinuous springs, foam cut to the firmness you want, and staples. That's the right method for most furniture made in the last sixty years, and there's nothing second-rate about it when it's done carefully.
A useful question for either is whether they'll strip the piece back to the frame or only recover it. Recovering means new fabric over whatever's already in there. Sometimes that's all a piece needs. If the seat has gone flat or the springs have dropped, though, new fabric on top won't change how it feels to sit in, and a good shop will tell you that before you pay for fabric.
How to Read Reviews and Photos
Reviews help, but read them for detail more than for stars. A page of hundreds of perfect scores with nothing specific in them doesn't tell you much. Look for people describing the things you're actually worried about. Did the shop keep them updated, and did the piece come back when they were told it would? The most useful review of all is one where something went wrong and you can see what the shop did next.
Photos tell you more than reviews do. On a tufted back, the buttons should sit in straight lines. On a patterned fabric, the pattern should line up across the cushions and run down the front, with no flower cut in half at a seam. Welt cord should run straight along the edges, and you shouldn't see a staple anywhere. In-progress pictures are the best sign of all, since a shop that photographs a frame stripped bare is a shop that strips frames.
And be a little careful with anyone who tells you they're the best in the city. The upholsterers worth hiring tend to talk about your sofa.
The Building Questions Only New Yorkers Have to Ask
Before you book anyone, ask your super or management office what the building needs. Most Manhattan co-ops and condos want a certificate of insurance from any company moving furniture, and many want the freight elevator reserved. Without the certificate the elevator stays locked, and that's a wasted morning for everyone.
Getting that paperwork together is the upholsterer's job. We send the certificate of insurance with the quote, made out the way your management company asks for it. If you're in a walk-up, tell the shop which floor and whether there's a tight turn on the stairs, because that changes how the piece gets wrapped and how many people come.
Those are all fair things to ask us, too. You deal with Marcos and the workshop by name. The written quote lists labor and fabric yardage separately, you get a timeframe before pickup, and if we find hidden damage once the old cover is off, you hear about it and approve the price before any extra work is done. Send photos of the piece and its underside and we'll tell you honestly whether it's worth doing. Quotes from photos are free. Call us at (914) 449-4334, or read more about sofa reupholstery in New York and how getting a chair recovered works.