06/10/2026
“Is this piece of furniture worth restoring?”
It’s a question I’m asked regularly.
And my answer is usually another question:
What do you want from this piece?
Do you want to restore it because it works perfectly in your home and you want to keep using it?
Because it belonged to your mother, your grandfather or someone important to you?
Because you love the piece, but it no longer suits your interior?
Or because you hope to increase its value and sell it?
Those are very different reasons — and they lead to very different answers.
Professional furniture restoration is skilled, individual, largely hand-done work. It isn’t a cheap service, and I don’t believe in pretending otherwise.
If the objective is purely financial, some pieces simply aren’t worth restoring. A piece may be old without having significant market value, and the cost of professional restoration may never be recovered when it is sold.
If the value is sentimental, the question changes. Perhaps restoring an entire collection isn’t realistic. In that case, I often recommend choosing one piece: the one you love most, or the one that will be most useful in your home, and investing in preserving that.
And then there are pieces that simply work.
You know exactly how much they hold. You know their dimensions, their quirks, their advantages and their faults. They fit a particular space. Perhaps they are exceptionally practical, but their finish has deteriorated or their style no longer works with your home.
In those cases, restoration — or a carefully considered redesign — can make far more sense than starting again.
Buying new has a cost beyond the price tag, too: searching, measuring, comparing, finding something that fits and discovering whether it actually works for you once it arrives.
So, is old furniture worth restoring?
For resale value alone? Not always.
For function, quality, history, sentiment or because the right piece is already sitting in your home? Very often, yes.
A good restorer’s job isn’t to convince you to restore everything.
It’s to help you understand what is worth preserving — and why.
