Best Furniture to Flip for Profit
Flipping furniture is a super fun way to get creative and make a little extra cash! But what is the best furniture to flip for profit? What do you look for when hunting for pieces to make over and sell? I’ve got all the tips and tricks for you in this guide!
You can also learn about flipping furniture for profit here, and get ready to start confidently choosing the best pieces and updating them into beautiful items worth buying!
Okay, when I very first started painting furniture to sell it, I had absolutely no idea that certain pieces would not sell very well and others would. It did not cross my mind until after I had bought some.
Like, there was this really cool antique rocking chair at a vendor’s market that I fell in love with. It was really cheap, and I bought it. But it took a very long time to sell it, like a few years. I did end up just keeping it for a while and then relisting it.
I remember I did have people come to look at it, but it was just very few and far between, and it just did not sell very well, especially for how much money I was asking for it to make updating it worth it.
My Lessons from Flipping Furniture
I also bought a French provincial dining table, updated it really cute, and then I had it for months. I was living in a two bedroom upstairs apartment, and there was one extra bedroom where we had to store it.
Obviously, I didn’t want to just let it go for super cheap. I needed to get my money back out of it, and so I held on to it until finally the right buyer came for it. Granted, I had put blue and white fabric on the chairs, but the rest of it was neutral and in style for that time.
And through these experiences, I learned what is good or what sells well and what will take a long time to sell.
The Type and Style of Furniture Matters
You need to keep in mind, kind of like I mentioned before, that the style or what you end up doing with the furniture can also hinder how well it sells.
So, for example, if you take a piece that usually sells very well, like a dresser, and you do something really pretty and unique to it. Maybe you use two or three different colors on it. There is only a very specific type of buyer that is looking for that, compared to the masses of people that are looking for something neutral and on trend for right then.
And so, if you want to sell your piece quicker, you have to update it to something that is not unique or super unique, especially with the colors and the patterns. Because those tend to take longer to sell, compared to, for example, painting a dresser white.
Whenever I paint a dresser white, it sells far faster than something I’ve done something unique to. You can get ideas on what color furniture sells best here!
So, keep those things in mind. Number one, the type of furniture matters. And number two, what you do with it matters.
Best Furniture to Flip for Profit
Let’s go through the types of furniture that are best to flip for profit. These sell the quickest, typically, and then we’ll go through the types that sell for more money.
Dressers
If you think about what everyday people use in their homes today, every single bedroom is going to need one to two dressers. Not all the time, but it’s a pretty good average that a bedroom will have a dresser. Tall or long, they do very well. Check out these DIY dresser makeovers you can easily recreate!
Would you like to save this?
We'll email this post to you, so you can come back to it later!
Beds and Bed Frames
And then you think about beds and bed frames. So, every single bedroom where someone sleeps needs a bed, and while it’s not necessary, some people prefer a bed frame with their bed.
I haven’t done very many of them, but when I do a bed frame, they usually sell well. Here’s my makeover of painting a bed frame black.
Nightstands
As long as there’s a set of two, they sell very well. Single nightstands don’t do as well. End tables are similar – as long as there’s a set, they usually sell well. I have a great list of painted nightstand ideas here!
Dining Tables
When was the last time you walked into a home and saw a china hutch in someone’s kitchen? You don’t. Everybody has to have a kitchen table, but not everybody has a china hutch. If you do update a kitchen table to something very neutral, then it will usually sell a little bit better and faster.
See my process of painting a kitchen table with chalk paint in this blog post.
Repurposing Furniture Ideas
But a china cabinet, a buffet, or a side table – those are not things that every single household needs. So now, we are repurposing china hutches into different display cabinets instead, and people with larger homes filling up the space a little bit more with extra things will want them. Check out these painted china cabinet ideas for inspiration.
And something that every household needs is more than likely a TV stand. Most people these days have a TV, and they need a place to set it on or they need a piece of furniture underneath it.
And while you don’t really come across TV stands on their own as much, buffets and side tables, as well as dressers, can be used as a TV stand. Here’s how to turn a dresser into a TV stand!
What type of furniture is in demand?
I give you all these examples just to think about the supply and demand. If almost every single household is going to be looking for this type of furniture, then it’s going to sell better. But if you have a piece like an antique rocking chair, not many people are likely to be looking for it, so that’s not going to attract many customers anyway.
Again, you also have to think about the style of the piece. If it matches the masses, or if it’s very unique and only matches the style of one or two people, then that’s going to affect the demand as well.
Out of that list of items that sell the best, the ones that sell for the most money are the items that are bigger. So, if you walk into a furniture store these days, you will see buffets and sideboards that are for sale for $3,000, $4,000, or $5,000. And then you’ll see nightstands that are $500.
So, the same type of thing is true to a scale when you’re flipping for profit. Big pieces like buffets, sideboards, and big dressers – those are going to sell for more money than the nightstands.
They’re bigger, they fill a bigger space – a large nightstand, or even a small dresser that is a great size for a bedside table, will sell for more money than a teeny tiny nightstand or end table. So, keep in mind that typically you can get more money from a larger piece than a smaller one.
How to Price Furniture
Now, if you want to know how much you should pay for a specific piece, and then how much you should expect to get out of it when you sell it, make sure to grab our free pricing guide below for more help on that!
More Flipping Furniture Tips
- Flipping Furniture In 30 Hours for a $675 Profit!
- How to Sell Used Furniture
- Can you Make Money Selling Furniture on Etsy?
Follow us on YouTube to get more tips for painting furniture. Or share your project with us on our Facebook Group and be part of our community. See you there!