You own nothing to bring to the home? It can cost anywhere from half the cost of the home on up, depending on your taste.

Make a list of what you need for each room, then start checking prices online or at a nearby store. It doesn't need to cost you half the price of the house as Sophie indicated -- that seems a bit steep.

A rule of thumb, not less than twenty to thirty percent of the purchase price, assuming you own the basics of all kitchen necessities/ mattresses/bedding/televisions etc. . ......and at mass market online low or very moderate prices for all selections. A 300 k house , with all window treatments, rugs, lamps, and all above owned as mentioned equals 60 to 100k. for anything resembling quality results in important rooms.

Much depends on quality/style and comfort you are looking for. Luxury can go as high as you like. A sofa can be had for a thousand and last 12 to 15 months, or you can buy one for five/ seven / ten/ fifteen times that thousand and own it for years in comfort and good looks. A junk dining chair can be had at Home Goods for 99.00 or from a high moderate source for a thousand or more. It depends.............greatly.

You can't really get an estimate for that. It depends on what you need and the quality you are going after. Measure your rooms, see what you would like to have and then get piece by piece. Invest in the larger pieces (sofas, chairs) and don't spend much on accessories. The cost of sofas can be a bit of a shock, but think that you want to have that for a while.

we bought a second home and wanted to snap our fingers and furnish it. we went to a local mid price furniture store with one price delivery, no matter how much we bought, and bought everything.

do i remember how much it cost, no. this was 16 years ago. but...it wasnt all that much when we consider what we got. we've personalized over time.

you could do the same in about 2 hours. don't bother with sales people, just walk around and note the prices of a dining room set, a mid size living room couch and chairs, etc, you'll get the rough estimate pretty fast. and then when you actually go to buy, keep an eye on where you are going over average.

BUT THIS IS IMPORTANT don't buy it all from the same place, just price shop one place. because our house really did look like we walked into Jordan's furniture and bought everything. and i recently saw an apartment that looked just as bad, as everything came from RH

I don't think a percentage "rule of thumb " formula works.. where I live even 20 or 30 percent puts it into the YIKES category, & 50 % ??? Depends upon the quality you want, some people I know buy things to keep for just several years, others buy lifetime furniture.

nnigrt, sometimes you can't help it and buy almost everything from the same store..Most of our furniture is from Ligne Roset...it wasn't planned, it wasn't bought at the same time, but over a long period of time..it just happened. I looked everywhere trying to find something that I liked and fit the space and I couldn't..Bedrooms are a different story. I got stuff from different places and I am still not done, but I could have found something there as well:)

Sorry we are not much help it is just not possible to really give you a number. My advice is buy the nessessities like bed, sofa TV table and chairs and see where that takes you budget wise and then carry on from there depending on budget maybe one room at a time

ah, but printesa, your situation is different in that you bought it over time, not all out of the same year from the same place. what Jordan's sells now looks different than what Jordan's sold then.

@Jackatnewportbeach

I do believe I said just that. " It DEPENDS the quality you desire"............it depends the number of windows, whether you cover or do not, if you buy furniture to last decades or a single year. A "moderate to high moderate" result would indeed be as I stated in "rule of thumb." A four, five or six hundred dining chair is moderate. A 99.00 dollar discount store/big box/Wayfair/Overstock ,,,,,,is not. A metal mini blind from Home Depot is not a Hunter Douglas Silhouette. Now multiply by all the decorative decisions. All things being equal, furnishings are not in the least equal . You get what you pay for, and you pay for what you want to get.

i will say hardgoods especially you should be haunting weekly your charity thrift, restore store, and craigs list. So, the first thing you need is a shopping list of what you need. do you need bookshelves, desks, a china cabinet - currently free for nice ones.

So you start with, i need so many beds. now those have to be good. but I have 8" of memory foam, 8 years old, walmart $150. they no longer have that, but research what you want, and look up what is important and sometimes you can catch some amazing steals. walmart and other such big box stores are not just for cheap stuff but for things that are on trial.

if it were me shopping, i could probably get away with $1000 per room. new bed, all else used. or lowe;s sell legs and round table tops. look at diy online, numerous things you can do. i have used walmart cheap sheets with fabric edging to increase size and cover large windows for under $20. don't even have to sew nowadays.

if you have to buy everything new, we are talking at least $3000 per room.

quality up to a point. we bought an oak exptension table and chairs at Workbench 37 years ago and last year i decided i was so sick of them i passed them on to my son for his new house and bought fancy schmancy made in vermont table and chairs, for an absurd price. i'll die before it wears out, but that was the case for either set.

you can indeed overpay for style.

like perfumes...you mostly for the bottle

Sorry. There are VAST and wide differences in quality, and while you can INDEED turn a junk sofa into a pricey one with an expensive custom fabric, you can also tell yourself the wood blinds are the same at Home Depot, than the original of virtually any brand....they are not. Do your homework and budget like a grown up, learn to delay instant gratification in the now common lust to furnish to the last "doo dad" on a table, and do your due diligence as to what constitutes quality. Use judgement on were, what, how a thing will be used. An occasional chair in a far corner of your master bedroom, is a far different scenario than one in your family room, the latter suffering constant daily use. In other words, use that round "object" located roughly thirty six inches above your fanny.

Almost everything comes from China now, and it's almost all crap, it's just marked up in price. The days of actually getting what you pay for are over. Cheap crap is cheap crap, especially from Target, Value City, etc., I agree about that. It's not worth buying unless you want something disposable. However, paying a lot of money doesn't mean you get something good, or even that it was a good idea to buy something expensive for your situation.

I just redecorated and got rid of a $600 (clearance) leather sofa (used daily - still looked almost new) and a $2200 Ethan Allen loveseat (used sparingly in parlor - was starting to show some deterioration in the fabric, definitely looked worse than the cheap sofa that was used all the time). Both were bought at the same time. I had to keep that stupid leather sofa all those years because it would not die. Finally I insisted on redecorating even though apparently the cheap sofa is immortal.

I have a 5 year old Klaussner sectional in my basement that my kids have absolutely punished, it was about $1800 for the huge sectional plus an ottoman, in an upgraded fabric. It still looks almost brand new and looks better than the sparingly used Ethan Allen! A lot of Klaussner is crap, apparently I was able to pick the one sofa that isn't. I had to hunt pretty hard for it. The Ethan Allen loveseat wasn't worth it. Imagine if I'd wasted money on regular priced crappy Pottery Barn! (Actually I have two Pottery Barn barstools that I love, they have been a really good purchase and look new so many years later).

I replaced with Ikea because I have kids and it would have cost more to recover the EA than the new Ikea cost. There are many blogs out there with people showing photos of their ten year old Ikea Ektorp sofa, still looking like new. I got one and it's very comfortable, I love it much more than everything else I looked at and I don't have to worry about it getting messed up. Who cares if it "only" lasts 10 years, I'll want something new by then anyway.

I can't forget to mention the $3000 Thomasville leather couch I bought that my old cat clawed to death one day, then a fostered rescue cat peed all over. Cat pee soaks right into high quality leather...there's no coating on it to keep it out. Uncleanable. The couch was a year old.

Oh, so glad I bought a $2000 dining set so that one of my overweight friends could break the arm right off the end chair. Money well spent!

I have also heard the 20-30 percent rule various times over the years. There are many nearly empty homes.

Can you list out specifically what you want to purchase?

Don't be afraid to go on Craigslist. A lot of FREE items including beautiful furniture. It can take awhile to find what you want but just be patient!

Craigslist! Especially if you are in easy driving distance from a Metro area. People move on and out frequently for jobs and sell off nearly new furniture for peanuts to keep from moving it. Most of my house has been furnished from Craigslist.
Consignment furniture stores are a good place as well. Especially if you can catch a 1/2 price weekend:).

There's no way to correctly answer that question.

Here are some very cool looking rooms--guess where they're from...

"Made in China" does not mean bad, and " Made in the USA" need not equal great. Plenty of sensational furnishings made in China are incredibly stylish and of very nice quality, particularly accent pieces in a recent trend of metals with glass or stone tops. Lighting can be fantastic, or unsafe to plug into an electrical outlet! A discerning eye, a wide and educated knowledge base, and the what, why, where of any item is advisable for any consumer of any product. Craigs List can mean a "bargain" that brings dreaded bed bugs into your home........... or it can mean just what you were looking for, at a wonderfully palatable price. The rule is there are no rules, and no magic one size fits all answers.

Price of the house seems like a particularly bad rule of thumb for furnishing a house. I live in an area where a 1600 square foot house goes for over a million. Other places, that same house would cost $200,000.

I would take a look at an IKEA catalog and price out room by room. That'll give you a low end estimate. You could the do the same with crate and barrel or the like and that would give you a middle of the road budget.

Personally, I would furnish over time and go with secondhand for most of the wood furniture. I have had very good luck getting decent quality wood furniture at flea markets over the years. They can also be a source of decorative items--mirrors, paintings, etc.

@crl_, you are right about the price of the house..in Bay Area a 1600 would be over 1 mill and the cost of the furniture wouldn't match that.

i was with you jan, til i discovered diatamaceous earth, food quality. it is how the packaged food gods keep buggies from chewing threw our cereals etc. kills everyone with exoskeleton. i am still very careful, but the one piece i did buy worked out well. I prefer craigs to charity for these things, because you see where they have been.

Agree crl same where I live. $600,000 to $900,000 + to furnish a 2,000 square foot home would buy some really nice furniture!!! Probably could throw in a few "museum quality " pieces too... lol.

so are you even more confused op? i can tell you why i don't buy last for ever. i am almost 60. my junk, as most of our designers would have called my furnishings, have lasted at least 10 years each, that being couches. my books shelves lasted 30 years, and some are still going strong, through many moves. my mother's high quality last forever furniture, did that. forcing my sister and i to inherit so she could redecorate. finally we just donated, because we really never wanted the furniture. if i do not want after 10 years, why do i want expensive stuff? you have face who you are, and do lots of research, then you make the best decisions you can.

I think we'd agree, that tossing out the far left and right coasts of this country, when speaking on averages or rules of thumb on ANYTHING.....would be advisable? Too bad we can't do the same with electoral votes, and let us not go there: )

The answer to so many questions is simply use your head and heart simultaneously with most big decisions. That means just about everything with the exception of what to eat for lunch.

you went there already, jan.

the coasts cost more because more people want them. so, sure, toss out what most people want, and consider whats left over if you like, but it doesnt really make much sense.

I think a huuuuuge middle exists between both : ) Pretend we're grading on the curve.

Nngirt, I like my Jordan's furniture! ( but my whole house isn't from there.)

I am astounded how the cheap stuff has taken over and is really everywhere. It used to be that the quality items or stores were more available. Several have closed or consolidated. At least where I live.

If you really have no furniture at all, start by making a list of what you absolutely have to have to live in the house at all. Bed, dresser, table and chairs, sofa, that sort of thing. Make a priority list of what you need right away, and what can wait for a bit. Occupied bedrooms would be high on the list, spare bedrooms, not so much.

Then, start pricing - the internet can be a great tool for this sort of research (though I wouldn't buy sofas or beds without sitting/lying on them first). A few hours with Mister Google, and you'll know the kind of price range you are in.

As others have suggested, hit the second hand shops: there are some very nice pieces of furniture out there that are better built than a lot of the new junk. Also, look for sales of floor stock or warehouse sales (I bought a beautiful wood buffet for about half the normal price at a warehouse sale). Wherever possible, buy good quality - it will save you money in the long run. And don't try to furnish and decorate the whole house in one fell swoop: take time, build up you home piece by piece.

I am a decorator and have worked on various projects throughout the last 12 years with many of my clients entering the process with the expectations they could decorate a principal space (dining & living room) for $10, 000. Although that is a substantial amount of money for the average household to spend on furnishings and it is possible to achieve - once most of my clients recognized that their individual preferences did not match the end result they could achieve with a $10 000 budget they ended up doubling their budgets to achieve their desired outcome.

That being said I have just embarked on a journey of furnishing my own principal master-bedroom that includes an adjoining sitting area and spent approx $100 per square foot to furnish my space. I don't have the type of cash flow or income that my clients have so the process took 2.5 years which drove my husband crazy because he likes things to be completed quickly. We needed everything and had to build the room from scratch which included the purchase of a new king size mattress and box spring. Hardwood floors and new windows were already in place from previous renovations that were completed in our home 4 years prior.

Everything from an IKEA glass cabinet to quality maple wood furniture lives in my space and a total of 25 different sources were used to curate my principal master bedroom and I was able to capitalize on my trade discounts - so all I can say is that if you are looking to achieve the look of a professionally appointed space, decorating is an investment that takes time if you don't have access to $20,000-$35,000 at once.

My best advice is to complete one room at a time - start to finish - instead of spreading your money over the entire house. Stay away from financing deals because when we were newly married we took that root and ended up in financial pain once those payments came due. Plan your journey of furnishing your home over a span of time and be patient because unless your a design personality on TV where manufactures will loan you pieces of furniture and trades will complete work Pro-Bono in exchange for national advertising, decorating a 2000 square foot house will be more costly than you think if you desire a personalized space filled with quality that will stand up to the test of time.