Census CBP 2023 · NAICS 811420
How many furniture restoration businesses are there in the US?
The smallest industry on this site, and the closest federal code to what furniture flipping is when it becomes a business.
- With employees3,168establishments
- Without employees16,877businesses
- Employees10,920in the employer half
- Annual payroll$444 millionemployer half
Just 3,168 employer businesses nationally, averaging three and a half people. Add the 16,877 nonemployer businesses and the whole industry is smaller than the barber shop trade. Furniture flipping is mostly not a registered business at all, which is exactly why the content audience for it is so much bigger than the industry.
Businesses with staff, and businesses without
These are two different federal surveys covering two different universes, and adding them together without saying so is the most common way this data gets misquoted. They are kept separate here on purpose.
| Measure | Employer | Nonemployer |
|---|---|---|
| Businesses | 3,168 | 16,877 |
| People employed | 10,920 | None, by definition |
| Average staff each | 3.4 | Zero |
| Payroll and receipts | $444 million | $705 million |
| Source | Census CBP 2023 | Census NES 2023 |
furniture repair and reupholstery businesses with employees are 0.038 per cent of all 8,361,342 US establishments with employees
The five states with the most furniture repair and reupholstery businesses
| State | Establishments with employees |
|---|---|
| Florida | 390 |
| California | 373 |
| New York | 268 |
| Texas | 191 |
| Illinois | 148 |
Employer establishments only. The nonemployer side is not published by state at this level of detail, and in most of these trades it is the larger half, so treat this table as a ranking rather than a census of the trade.
Reupholstery and Furniture Repair
Counted here
Furniture reupholstery, refinishing, repair and restoration, and antique furniture repair.
Counted somewhere else
Furniture retail and resale, and furniture manufacturing.
NAICS 811420 · 1 August 2026
What these figures actually say about furniture repair and reupholstery businesses
The whole registered industry, both halves added, is smaller than the barber shop trade, which is exactly why the content audience for furniture flipping dwarfs it.
Just over three thousand employer businesses nationally, averaging three and a half people, plus fewer than seventeen thousand nonemployer businesses. This is the smallest industry on the site by every measure Census publishes, at well under a tenth of one per cent of American establishments with employees.
Furniture flipping is mostly not a registered business at all. Somebody buying a dresser at a kerbside collection, refinishing it over a few evenings and selling it locally is not going to appear in either survey, and the gap between the size of this industry and the size of the audience for the work is the widest in the dataset.
The code covers reupholstery, refinishing, repair and restoration, including antique work. Furniture retail and resale are excluded, and so is manufacturing, which means a flipper selling finished pieces is arguably in a retail code rather than this one even when they do register.
An audience larger than the industry means views are cheap and sales are not. The part of a flip post that converts is the plain one: where the piece is, what it measures, what is not perfect about it, and whether it is still available.
Every figure quoted above appears in the tables on this page or is arithmetic on them. Nothing here forecasts, values a business or suggests a price, because none of the three is measurable from a business count.
Where these numbers came from
Public domain US federal statistics, fetched by hand and baked into this site rather than called at build time. If you quote a figure from this page, cite the agency rather than this site, and use the wording below.
US Census Bureau, County Business Patterns, 2023, United States, NAICS 811420 Reupholstery and Furniture Repair. Accessed 2026-08-01.
Counts establishments with at least one paid employee, measured in the week of 12 March 2023. A business with no employees is counted by Nonemployer Statistics instead, not here.
US Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics, 2023, United States, NAICS 811420. Accessed 2026-08-01.
Counts businesses with no paid employees and at least $1,000 in annual receipts. Sole traders, single-van operators and self-employed contractors land here.
What these workers are paid
Marketing the trade
All the numbers
Common questions
- How many furniture restoration businesses are there in the US?
- Census County Business Patterns counted 3,168 furniture repair and reupholstery businesses with at least one paid employee in 2023, employing 10,920 people on a payroll of $444 million. Nonemployer Statistics counted a further 16,877 businesses with no employees, turning over $705 million. NAICS code 811420.
- Why are there two different numbers?
- Because they measure two different universes. County Business Patterns counts establishments with at least one paid employee. Nonemployer Statistics counts businesses with no employees and at least a thousand dollars of annual receipts. Together they cover every US business, and adding them without saying so would be misleading, so this page keeps them apart.
- What else is inside this code?
- Furniture reupholstery, refinishing, repair and restoration, and antique furniture repair. What it excludes: furniture retail and resale, and furniture manufacturing.
- What does this count tell somebody running one of these businesses?
- The whole registered industry, both halves added, is smaller than the barber shop trade, which is exactly why the content audience for furniture flipping dwarfs it. An audience larger than the industry means views are cheap and sales are not. The part of a flip post that converts is the plain one: where the piece is, what it measures, what is not perfect about it, and whether it is still available.
- How current is this?
- 2023 is the most recent County Business Patterns and Nonemployer Statistics release published by the Census Bureau. Both were fetched and baked into this site on 1 August 2026. This page makes no live API call.
Numbers persuade nobody. The pair does.
Every trade on this page sells the same way: a photograph of the problem beside a photograph of the result. Take the two, and Before and After Video Maker turns them into a 1080p video, a looping GIF or a still.