Custom hotel furniture: what counts, how long it takes, and the terms

The designer has a color in mind for the ballroom chairs, and it is not on the list. That is a fine place to start, as long as everyone understands that a custom finish is a decision with a calendar and a contract attached. The swatch is the last step, not the first. Before the color, settle the dates and the terms.

Custom hotel furniture means something specific on our site. It covers three things only: upholstery outside the options a product lists, a finish or stain ordered specially, and a top or frame in a size or shape the listed range does not include. Everything else you configure from the option lists is a standard order. Below is how to tell the two apart, what custom costs in time and terms, and how to decide whether the room truly needs it.

Listed or custom: the test

Here is the rule of thumb. If you can pick it from the option list on the product page, it is standard. If you have to describe it in the order notes, it is custom.

The lists are longer than most people expect, so read them before reaching for custom. The fully upholstered wood dining chair for a hotel restaurant lists 11 wood finishes, 40 vinyl choices and 100 fabric choices for its padded seat. It is also listed as BIFMA certified. A restaurant can usually find its color in a list that long, and a chair chosen from it stays a standard line with standard terms.

Some records carry the word custom inside the option list itself. The metal chiavari ballroom chair offers copper vein, gold vein, silver vein and sun gold frames, and then a custom metal finish. It is 17 inches wide, weighs 12 pounds and stacks. The laminate inlay tabletop with a wood edge does the same with its edge: six listed wood finishes and a custom one. Choosing that last option turns the line into a custom item, with everything that follows from it.

Size works the same way. The inlay top lists 23 sizes, from a 24-inch square up to a 60-inch round. A larger round for a ballroom, or an odd rectangle to fill a bay window in the restaurant, sits outside that list and is custom. Many more shapes and edges are under configurable tops.

What custom adds to the calendar

Standard items are ready in 14 to 21 business days. Custom items take longer, up to about 8 weeks, and transit is added after that as an estimate. So a ballroom that reopens on a fixed date needs the custom order confirmed roughly two months plus transit ahead of it, and the sample stage comes before that.

Work it backward for a spring wedding season. Say the first wedding is on the second Saturday of May. Eight weeks before is mid March. Take off the transit estimate and a week for receiving, setting and checking the chairs, and the custom order needs confirming in early March or sooner. Swatches need to be chosen and approved before then, so the sample request goes out in February.

The terms that come with it

Custom lines are paid in two parts: 40% when we confirm, the remainder before the delivery date. Say the custom lines on an order come to $10,000 before freight: $4,000 goes in with the confirmation and $6,000 follows before the furniture leaves. Standard orders, by comparison, are paid in full before shipment.

The second term matters more. Once we confirm a custom item, it cannot be cancelled and it cannot be returned. A custom line already in production cannot be changed either. A standard order can be cancelled in writing before it enters production, and stock items can come back under the terms on the returns page; custom items have no such route.

That is why the mistake to avoid is approving a custom color from a screen. Monitors shift colors, and an approval made in a hurry cannot be undone once production starts. Ask for the physical sample first, look at it in the room where the chairs will stand, and only then confirm.

Samples, then a conversation

Free samples are the first step for any finish decision. Fabric and vinyl swatches, stain chips, metal finish pieces and squares of tabletop material all travel UPS Ground, normally 2 to 3 business days on the way, and an email confirms each request within one business day. The request form is on our samples page. Compare the listed swatches to the designer's reference before deciding the custom route is needed at all.

When it is, talk it through with one of our specialists. Book a callback on the specialist page and choose a window, or write to sales@hotelandresortfurniture.com with a subject line that opens with ORDER, followed by the project name. Describe what you need in plain terms: the product, the finish or fabric, the size, the quantity, and the date the room opens. Every order, custom lines included, is read by a person and confirmed by email before anything is charged.

Mixing custom with standard

A room rarely needs custom everywhere. A sensible pattern is one custom element, such as the frame finish on the head table chairs, with the rest of the room drawn from listed options. The banquet chairs and upholstered chairs offer enough finishes to match most custom pieces closely, and the chiavari chairs list four metal frames before the custom option.

Keeping the custom part small keeps the risk small. Fewer lines are locked against cancellation, and the standard lines keep their usual terms.

Putting the custom line in writing

Open a property plan for the room and add the custom item as its own line, with the finish, fabric or size spelled out in the line's notes. Add the standard items around it. Download the project sheet and send it with your request, so the specialist sees the custom piece in the context of the whole room.

For how this fits a larger order across properties, read what to settle with hotel furniture suppliers, and for how each configured line is priced, the hotel chair price guide. Mark the first event date at the top of the sheet. Every date in the custom calendar counts back from it.