According to CSIL’s World Furniture Outlook, the global upholstered furniture market reached $77 billion USD in 2025, with manufacturers and suppliers facing a market shaped by changing demand, rising costs, and evolving market conditions.
The report noted that over a decade, the market has grown by roughly 16 per cent in value, but much of that gain reflects the sharp furniture price rises of 2021-2023 rather than additional units.
The industry is undergoing major changes, with production increasingly concentrated in Asia and companies facing pressure from rising raw material costs, shifting trade policies, and growing consolidation among larger players. The market is also highly concentrated, with the top 10 markets accounting for about 80 per cent of global consumption, and the U.S. and China making up more than half of the total.
The Asia Pacific region is the main area of growth, driven by China and increasingly by India, where urbanisation and a growing middle class are supporting demand. North America remains a high-value market but has slowed due to higher mortgage rates and weaker housing activity.
Europe, which represents about 27 per cent of global consumption, is a mature market focused on price, but it has remained stable and gained global market share, with countries such as Spain showing strong growth.
Asia Pacific also leads global production, accounting for more than half of the world total. China remains dominant, while Vietnam has grown to become the third-largest producer worldwide, largely as a result of Chinese investment.
Europe is the second hub, anchored by Poland and Italy, while North America produces nearly 20 per cent of global output, mostly in the U.S.
Conflict in the Middle East and disruption to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz have pushed up the cost of polyurethane foam and petrochemical precursors at the core of most upholstery, creating an increasingly structural constraint that is compressing margins across the sector.
New manufacturing investment is being held back as much by trade-policy uncertainty as by demand. Upholstered furniture is a globalised industry with about 42 per cent of world production exported, which makes it directly exposed to trade policy.
China, still the world’s leading exporter at 40 per cent of global exports, saw shipments fall 13 per cent in 2025 as U.S. demand contracted under a combined 50 per cent duty on certain Chinese products.
The report noted that Vietnam has been the principal beneficiary, lifting its share of world exports from 4 per cent in 2016 to 15 per cent and now supplying 47 per cent of U.S. imports, though it too faces a 25 per cent U.S. tariff.
Import penetration continues its slow structural rise, with the world imports/consumption ratio moving from 36 per cent in 2020 to 38 per cent in 2025.
CSIL projects global consumption to decline slightly in real terms in 2026, with almost every large market contracting; Germany, France and the Netherlands are expected to contract sharply, and India standing out as the main exception, with continued growth, followed by a modest rebound in 2027.
This is in line with global economic growth projections from the IMF, which puts growth at about 3 per cent in 2026 and 3.4 per cent in 2027, with downside risks dominated by the Middle East conflict and trade-policy uncertainty.
International trade has already turned. After rising in current U.S. dollars every year to 2021, it fell to $33 billion USD in 2024 and $32.3 billion in 2025.
According to the report, the sector enters this period in an unusual posture: current trading is weak and margins are squeezed, yet the stronger companies, those managing cost, mix and distribution rather than waiting on the cycle, are the ones holding their position.
