CUSTOM FURNITURE IN THAILAND
FOR EXPATS AND CONDO OWNERS

Most people who commission furniture in Bangkok did not plan to. They arrived on a contract, took a condo, and discovered that the furniture available off the shelf was either sized for a different kind of home, finished for a showroom rather than a tropical climate, or priced as an import. Custom furniture in Thailand solves those problems — but only if you plan around the things that are specific to living here. This guide covers them in the order they tend to come up.

1. START WITH THE UNIT, NOT THE CATALOGUE

Bangkok condos have a recognisable shape. Living rooms tend to be long and narrow, with the window wall at one end and the kitchen or entrance at the other. Bedrooms are often sized around a bed and a wardrobe with little to spare. Ceiling heights in many buildings are modest. Furniture designed for a European or American house — deep sectionals, wide armchairs, tall dining chairs — can technically fit and still make the room feel like a corridor.

Before you think about style, measure three things: the clear wall length where the sofa will sit, the distance between that wall and whatever faces it, and the ceiling height. Those numbers decide more about the finished room than any fabric choice. If you are unsure how deep a sofa should be for your room, our sofa size guide for Bangkok condos walks through it.

2. THE LIFT, THE CORRIDOR AND THE DOOR

The most common reason a piece of furniture fails in a Bangkok condo has nothing to do with the room. It is the route. A sofa has to travel through the loading area, into the service lift, along the corridor and through your front door — and every one of those has a limit.

Measure the service lift's internal width, depth and height, and its door opening. Measure the narrowest point of the corridor and any turns. Measure your front door with the door open, not the frame. A made-to-measure piece can be designed around those limits from the start: a long sofa can be built in sections that join on site, a wardrobe is delivered as carcasses and assembled in the room, a dining table can have a removable base. None of that is possible once a piece has already been built to the wrong size.

3. YOUR BUILDING HAS RULES ABOUT DELIVERY

Every Bangkok condo has a juristic person office — the building management body — and it controls when and how furniture comes in. Expect some combination of the following: deliveries booked in advance, service-lift reservations, fixed working hours, floor and wall protection in common areas, and sometimes a deposit against damage. Built-in furniture that requires drilling or fixing to walls may need prior approval, the same way renovation work does.

None of this is difficult, but it catches out people who are new to the process. If the furniture is part of a wider renovation, the approval is handled as part of the project — see how we manage it on our condo renovation page. For a standalone furniture order, we schedule delivery and installation around the building's rules rather than asking you to negotiate them.

4. DESIGN FOR THE CLIMATE YOU ACTUALLY LIVE IN

Bangkok is humid all year and hot for most of it, and condos are often air-conditioned in some rooms and not others. That matters for materials. Solid timber moves with humidity, so frames and tops need properly dried timber and joinery that allows for movement. Some fabrics hold moisture and odour; others shrug it off. Leather needs ventilation and care. Low-quality board used in wardrobes can swell if the room is closed up for weeks while you travel.

Sunlight is the other factor. Many condos have full-height glazing, and strong afternoon sun will fade some dyes and dry out some finishes within a few seasons. Ask where the piece will sit relative to the window before choosing a colour. We cover the fabric question in detail in choosing upholstery for Bangkok's humidity.

5. TIME IT AROUND YOUR LEASE OR YOUR MOVE

Custom furniture is not fast. Our lead time is 8–12 weeks for most pieces from design approval, and up to 14 weeks for more complex commissions. Design development — drawings, material samples and a fixed quote — usually takes one to two weeks before that. If you are moving into a new unit, work backwards from the date you want to be living in a finished room.

A sensible pattern for people relocating to Bangkok is to start the conversation as soon as the unit is confirmed, use the time between signing and moving to approve drawings, and live with a minimum of temporary pieces for the first couple of months. If you are moving in before the furniture is ready, tell us at the start; it changes the order in which pieces are built.

6. SHIP YOUR OLD FURNITURE, OR BUILD NEW?

This is a genuine decision, not a sales question. Shipping furniture you already own makes sense for pieces with sentimental value, pieces that are genuinely irreplaceable, and pieces that will fit a Bangkok condo. It makes less sense for large upholstered items bought for a bigger house, which often arrive and turn out to be too deep, too tall or simply wrong for the room — after you have already paid to move them.

A useful exercise: list what you own, mark each piece “fits a condo” or “doesn't”, and only ship the first list. Build or buy the rest here, to the room you actually have. If you expect to leave Thailand again, think about which new pieces you would want to take with you and design those to break down for shipping.

7. WHAT TO BRING TO A FIRST CONSULTATION

The more you bring, the more useful the first conversation is. In order of importance:

A floor plan. The developer's sales plan is fine as a starting point, even if the dimensions are approximate.
Photographs of each room, including the window wall and the ceiling.
Your own measurements of the walls where key pieces will sit, plus the lift and door dimensions described above.
Reference images of furniture or rooms you like — and ones you dislike, which are often more informative.
A budget range. It decides materials and construction, and it is easier to design to a number than to cut back afterwards.

The first consultation is free, and so is a site visit and measurement within Bangkok. You can also see frames, fabrics and finishes in person at our showroom in Wang Thonglang, by appointment. We work in English and Thai, so if a Thai-speaking partner, landlord or building manager is involved, they can join the conversation directly.

8. WHAT CUSTOM FURNITURE COSTS HERE

Our published starting prices are a reasonable guide to the category: custom sofas and sectionals from ฿165,000, dining tables from ฿120,000, wardrobes and built-in storage from ฿140,000, lounge chairs from ฿65,000, and side and console tables from ฿38,000. Every commission is quoted at a fixed price before production starts. Pieces carry a 5-year structural and 2-year upholstery warranty, and we deliver and install across Thailand.

For a whole room or unit, see the overview on our custom furniture in Bangkok page, the custom sofa page for the piece most people start with, or built-in furniture if storage is the problem you are trying to solve.