An honest answer with the real numbers, what drives them, and when we're not the right choice – from the only NZ furniture manufacturer that backs every piece with a 25-year guarantee.
How much does solid timber furniture cost in New Zealand?
If you're thinking about buying solid timber furniture, this is almost certainly the first thing on your mind. You're not alone – it's the question we get asked more than any other.
And here's the honest truth: there isn't a one-size-fits-all answer. The piece, the timber, the size, the finish, the level of customisation, where it's made – all of it moves the price. Anyone who gives you a single number without asking what you're after is either guessing or selling something.
But "it depends" isn't a useful answer either. So here's the real one – based on what we actually charge from our Greymouth factory, and what the rest of the New Zealand market typically charges too.
Here's what we'll cover: the real price ranges for common pieces, what pushes the cost up, what pulls it down, why some companies are expensive and some are cheap, where Coastwood sits in that spectrum, whether it's worth it, and who solid timber furniture isn't right for.
The short answer: what you should expect to pay
For NZ-made solid timber furniture in 2026, you're typically looking at around $800 for small pieces up to $8,000+ for large dining suites or bedroom suites – with most common pieces falling between $1,500 and $5,000.
Some rough guideposts for what common pieces cost from a New Zealand solid timber manufacturer:
• Bedside table: $649–$1,489
• Dining Suites: $969–$9,039
• Queen bed frame: $1,089–$6,149
• Tallboy or chest of drawers: $1,289–$4,249
• Full bedroom suite (bed + two bedsides + tallboy): $5,000–$10,000 +
Those prices come straight from our website — no hidden costs, no surprises. They're the actual span you'll see once you choose your timber, size, and finish. We publish our standard prices on our website rather than make you ask – and where customisation moves the price, we tell you up front before you commit.
What drives the cost up
Five things move the price meaningfully. The timber, the size, the build method, the finish, and the level of customisation.
The timber itself:
The single biggest cost lever. Three timbers dominate solid timber furniture in New Zealand.
NZ Radiata Pine is grown in sustainably managed FSC-certified forests across the country. It's lighter, softer, takes stain and paint beautifully, and produces a strong long-lasting piece at a more accessible price. Most entry-to-mid range solid timber furniture in NZ is made from Pine – including roughly half of what we make.
American Ash is a hardwood imported from the US. It's denser, harder-wearing, and has a striking open grain that gives every piece its own character. Ash typically adds 40–60% to the price of an equivalent Pine piece. It's the timber we recommend for dining tables in busy households and anything that's going to take daily punishment.
American White Oak is used by other NZ manufacturers and sits in a similar price band to Ash. We don't offer Oak – we made a deliberate choice to do Pine and Ash well rather than spread across more timbers. If Oak is what you want, you'll find good options at Woodwrights, Sørenmøbler, or Woodpeckers.
A warning worth giving you: not everything that looks like solid timber is solid timber. Veneer furniture uses a thin layer of real wood – sometimes less than a millimetre – bonded to a chipboard or MDF core. It can look identical to the real thing in a photo or even in a showroom. If a piece is dramatically cheaper than everything else, you're comparing, check what it's actually made from. A reputable manufacturer will tell you clearly. If they won't, that's your answer.
The size of the piece:
Obvious but worth saying. A 1.8m dining table uses less timber than a 2.4m extension table. A king bed uses more than a single. We price by what's actually in the piece – so bigger costs more, and the jump isn't linear because larger pieces also need stronger joinery and more setup time.
How it's built – made-to-order versus in-stock:
In-stock and flat-pack furniture is manufactured in bulk, usually offshore, and warehoused until sold. You get it in days. The trade-off is fixed: what's on the shelf is what you get. No size changes, no timber choice, no finish options. The piece has to leave the factory ready to flat-pack into a box for shipping, which limits the joinery you can use.
Made-to-order furniture is built specifically for you after you order it. You pick the timber, the dimensions, the finish, and often the configuration. The lead time is longer – typically 4–8 weeks in NZ. The price is higher because there's skilled labour, real timber, and proper joinery in every piece. You also get exactly what you want, not the closest thing on the shelf.
Most NZ solid timber furniture is made to order, including everything we build at Coastwood.
The finish:
The finish is the part most buyer’s underestimate. It's the thing that decides whether a dining table still looks good after 20 years of hot mugs, red wine, and Sunday roasts – or whether it's tired and water-marked after two.
We use a commercial-grade Mirotone single-pack lacquer on every piece we build. It costs more in materials and labour than a basic oil or off-the-shelf lacquer, and it's what makes the difference between a finish that lasts and a finish that looks fine on day one and tired by year two.
If you want even more protection – particularly for a dining table, or anywhere moisture and heat are a daily reality – we can upgrade to a two-pack lacquer for an extra 8% on the price of the piece. It's noticeably tougher against spills, heat, and humidity. Worth asking about if your piece is going to live somewhere demanding.
Two-tone finishes, painted bases with stained tops, and custom colour matches add cost too – not because the materials are more expensive, but because they double or triple the number of spray cycles. Every colour change means more masking, more time in the booth, and more drying between coats.
Customisation:
Most NZ manufacturers, us included, treat colour and handle options as standard – picked from a range at no extra cost. Where customisation adds real cost is in changes to dimensions, configurations, or a fully bespoke piece designed from scratch.
For us, about half of what we build is customised in some way. That's not a special order – it's the default. But "customised" covers a wide range, from "make this dining table 200mm longer" (small uplift) to "design an entertainment unit at these dimensions to fit this wall" (significant uplift, full quote before you commit).
The honest rule: if a manufacturer can't give you a firm price for a custom request before you order, walk away.
What drives the cost down
The same factors, reversed.
• Pine instead of Ash or Oak. Same build quality, lower material cost.
• Standard sizes instead of custom dimensions. A 1.8m dining table from a standard range is cheaper than a 2.1m custom one in the same timber.
• Standard configurations. A six-drawer tallboy as designed will cost less than the same tallboy reconfigured with a cupboard at the top.
• Standard finish colours. Two-tone or custom-match finishes add cost.
• Buying ex-display or end-of-line pieces. Most NZ manufacturers occasionally have one-offs or showroom pieces at a discount. Worth asking.
One thing that doesn't meaningfully change the price for you: whether you buy direct from us or through one of our retail partners. We sell both ways. Some buyers prefer the showroom experience at Harvey Norman or one of our independent stock lists. Others prefer dealing with the maker directly. Both are legitimate – pick what suits you.
Why some furniture companies are expensive
It's a fair question and worth a straight answer.
A high price tag on furniture usually reflects one or more of these:
• NZ-made labour costs. New Zealand wages are several times higher than the wages in the factories most imported furniture comes from. That shows up in the price.
• Higher-grade timber. Furniture-grade hardwood costs more than the lower grades used in cheaper construction work.
• Real joinery instead of staples and dowels. Mortise-and-tenon joints, dovetailed drawers, glued-and-pinned panels – these take longer and use more skilled labour than glue-and-staple assembly.
• Commercial-grade finishes. A Mirotone-grade lacquer costs more than a basic finish from the hardware store.
• Long guarantees backed by an in-house repair capability. A 25-year guarantee only means something if the company is still around and equipped to honour it.
• Low volume per piece. A manufacturer making 50 of something a year carries different overheads per piece than a factory making 50,000.
None of this automatically makes the piece worth the money to you. But it's where the cost comes from. It's not arbitrary.
Why some furniture companies are cheap
Also worth being honest about.
• Offshore manufacturing in lower-wage countries. This is the biggest single factor.
• Flat-pack design. Cheaper to ship, cheaper to store, cheaper to handle – but limits the joinery to what you can assemble yourself.
• Veneer or engineered wood instead of solid timber. Often labelled in ways that don't make this obvious unless you look.
• Standardised everything. No customisation, no choice, fewer SKUs, longer production runs.
• Shorter guarantees. Two years instead of twenty-five.
• Less expensive finishes that look good in the showroom and on the day of delivery.
Cheap furniture isn't bad furniture by definition. If you need to furnish a flat for three years before you move overseas, a $300 flat-pack table is a sensible buy. The trap is when buyers expect a $300 table to behave like a $3,000 one. They never do.
Where Coastwood sits, and why
We sit in the middle-to-upper end of the NZ market – not the cheapest, not the most expensive.
We're more expensive than imported flat-pack and more expensive than the cheapest local manufacturers. We're typically similar to or slightly under the highest-end bespoke makers in NZ.
Here's why we're priced where we are, in plain terms:
• We make everything in our own factory in Greymouth. No offshore, no contract manufacturing.
• We use real solid timber – Pine and Ash – not veneer and not MDF with a wood look.
• We use a commercial-grade Mirotone single-pack lacquer finish on every piece, with the option to upgrade to two-pack where you need it.
• About half of what we build is customised. We don't charge a "custom" surcharge on top of a sticker price – customisation is built into how we work.
• We back our furniture with a 25-year guarantee – the only one of its kind from a timber furniture manufacturer in New Zealand.
• We publish our prices on the website. You can see what something costs before you talk to us.
We're not the cheapest. We're not trying to be. We've made a deliberate choice about what we build and how we build it, and the price reflects that.
Lifetime cost: the part most buyers miss
Furniture pricing looks very different when you stretch it over 20 years instead of 20 minutes.
Consider a dining table. A $700 imported veneer table that lasts 4–6 years before it's at the tip could cost you anywhere between $3,000 to $5,000+ over 25 years, not counting the disposal cost and the time spent replacing it. A $3,500 solid timber dining table can last 25 years then you can sand it back, refinish it – and it's good for another 25
This is the real argument for solid timber. It's not "you should always buy expensive." It's "expensive furniture stops being expensive when it lasts."
The reverse argument is also true. If you don't expect to keep a piece for 20 years – you're flatting, you're moving overseas, your tastes change rapidly, you're furnishing a rental – solid timber may genuinely be the wrong call for you. We'll come back to that.
Payment options
We work to a 50% deposit on order, with the balance due before delivery. That's a standard model for made-to-order furniture in NZ.
We also offer Afterpay on orders up to $4,000, which lets you split the cost into instalments without paying interest. For orders above $4,000, we don't currently offer in-house finance – but if you're buying through Harvey Norman as one of our retail partners, Harvey Norman offers interest-free finance on Coastwood pieces through their own terms. Worth asking them about what's available at the time you're buying.
Is it worth it?
The honest answer is "it depends on what you want from your furniture."
If you want a dining table that you, your kids, and possibly your grandkids will eat off – yes, solid timber is worth it.
If you want something that holds its value, can be repaired and refinished decades later, and won't end up in landfill – yes.
If you want something that arrives in a box on Wednesday because you have people coming over on Saturday – no, solid timber isn't worth it. Buy something else and don't feel bad about it.
If you're early in your career, moving frequently, and not yet ready to commit to furniture for a specific home – also no. Solid timber is built to settle into one home. The cost only makes sense if you're going to be there.
Who solid timber furniture isn't right for
We'd rather you read this and decide we're not your fit, than buy and regret it. A few buyers we'd genuinely tell to look elsewhere:
• You need it this week. Made-to-order solid timber takes 4–8 weeks. If you can't wait, a stocked piece – even a veneer one – is the right call.
• You're furnishing a rental or a short-term flat. Don't spend solid-timber money on something you won't take with you.
• Your style changes every few years. Solid timber is built to stay. If you'll want something different in five years, you're better off with something you don't have to feel bad about replacing.
• The cheapest option is the only option that fits your budget. Furnish what you can afford now. There's no shame in flat-pack, and a future you with more savings can buy solid timber later.
If you're in any of those four groups, you'll be better served by Briscoes, Freedom, Nood, or any of the larger flat-pack retailers – and we mean that.
Frequently asked questions
Why is NZ-made solid timber furniture so much more expensive than imported flat-pack?
The two biggest factors are labour cost — New Zealand wages versus offshore manufacturing wages – and material cost. Real solid timber, real joinery, and a commercial-grade finish cost more than chipboard, glue, and basic lacquer. You can read the full breakdown above under "Why some furniture companies are expensive."
Is Ash worth the extra cost over Pine?
For a dining table or anything in heavy daily use, yes – Ash is denser and harder-wearing, and the grain ages beautifully. For a bedside table or something in a low-traffic room, Pine is usually the right call. We make both, and we'll tell you honestly which we'd recommend for your situation.
Can I get a custom size without paying a huge premium?
Usually yes, for small to moderate changes. A standard dining table extended by 200mm, a bed in a non-standard width, a tallboy with one less drawer – these are quoted at a small uplift, not a huge one. Fully bespoke pieces designed from scratch are a different conversation. We'll quote anything firmly before you commit.
Is a 25-year guarantee actually meaningful?
No other timber furniture manufacturer in New Zealand offers one – and a guarantee is only meaningful if the manufacturer is still around in 25 years and equipped to honour it. We've been making furniture in the same Greymouth factory since 1997. Our guarantee covers any material or construction fault, with normal exclusions: misuse, negligence, alteration, accident, and normal wear. Fabrics and coverings are covered by their respective fabric houses, not us. The guarantee applies to the original purchaser, household use only (not commercial settings), and proof of purchase is required. If something needs to come back to us for a manufacturing fault, we cover the return freight from you to the factory. If repair isn't possible, we'll replace the piece. The full warranty terms are on our website.
Do you publish prices, or do I have to ask?
We publish standard prices on coastwoodfurniture.co.nz. Customisation gets quoted on top of the standard price, and we'll tell you what each change costs before you order. Quote requests get a response within 2–4 working hours.
Bringing it back together
Solid timber furniture in NZ costs from $800 for small pieces to $8,000+ for full suites, with most common pieces sitting between $1,500 and $5,000. The price is driven by the timber, the size, the build method, the finish, and the level of customisation.
You'll spend more than on imported flat-pack – there's no getting around that. What you get for the difference is a piece built from real solid timber, with real joinery and a commercial Mirotone finish, that you can keep for decades and refinish later if you want it to look new again. For some buyers that's a great deal. For others it isn't.
We're Coastwood Furniture. We've been making solid timber furniture in our own factory in Greymouth since 1997. We make about half our pieces in NZ Radiata Pine and half in American Ash, and we back every piece with a 25-year guarantee – the only one of its kind from a timber furniture manufacturer in New Zealand. We're not the cheapest, and we're not trying to be – but if a piece you'll keep for decades is what you're after, you're our kind of buyer.
If you'd like a firm price for a piece you have in mind – standard or customised – the quickest way is to request a quote on coastwoodfurniture.co.nz or call our showroom. We aim to get back to every quote request within 2–4 working hours. You can also see our furniture in person at Harvey Norman and selected independent retailers across NZ.
If you're not ready for a quote yet and you want to understand the materials side first, our companion guide on solid timber versus veneer breaks that comparison down in detail.
