Réponse rapide
Furnishing a serviced apartment means specifying for a guest who stays weeks rather than nights. Plan the kitchen and dining area first, give every piece a second job, buy contract grade rather than residential, design around housekeeping, and order the whole apartment as one package so finishes match and the container arrives complete.
A serviced apartment sits between two worlds. Guests expect the space and the kitchen of a flat, and the finish and reliability of a hotel. Operators who furnish one like a rental flat regret it within a year, because residential furniture never survives forty turnovers. Operators who furnish one like a hotel room regret it too, because a guest who stays three weeks needs somewhere to cook, work and put a month of clothes. This guide sets out six decisions that separate an apartment guests extend in from one they check out of early.
The advice below applies to aparthotels, extended-stay brands, branded residences and long-let corporate apartments alike. Each of those buys furniture as a project rather than a shopping trip, and each of them measures success over years. Our Meubles d'hôtel et apart hotel kitchens lines exist for exactly this brief.
Why a Serviced Apartment Is Neither a Hotel Room nor a Home
Three things separate a serviced apartment from the hotel room next door: the length of stay, the kitchen, and the fact that a guest unpacks completely. Each one changes the furniture list.
A hotel guest lives out of a suitcase for two nights. A serviced apartment guest empties that suitcase into a wardrobe, fills a fridge, cooks dinner, works at a table and does laundry. Every one of those actions puts load on furniture that a hotel room never sees. The wardrobe opens ninety times instead of six. The dining table takes a hot pan. The sofa carries a person for four hours an evening rather than four minutes.
What Changes When a Guest Stays Three Weeks
Storage stops being a courtesy and becomes the core of the room. A week-long guest needs hanging space for a working wardrobe, drawers for folded clothes, and somewhere to keep an empty suitcase out of sight. A month-long guest needs all of that plus a second rail and a shelf for the things that arrive after arrival: shopping, sports kit, a second pair of shoes.
Surfaces multiply too. One guest eats at the table, works at the table and video-calls from the table, so the table has to suit all three. A 700 mm round cafe table fails that test the moment a laptop and a plate compete for the same square.
Field insight
The complaint that predicts a bad specification
Operators who get this wrong hear the same review line: “lovely apartment, nowhere to put anything.” It never appears in the first month. It appears once stays lengthen from four nights to fourteen, and by then the wardrobes are bolted to the wall. Specify for your longest expected stay, not your average one.
What Stays the Same as a Hotel
Fire performance, turnover speed and finish consistency carry over from hotel specification without change. A serviced apartment still needs upholstery that meets the contract fire standard for its market, still needs housekeeping to reset a unit in under an hour, and still needs unit 214 to look like unit 112 after four years. Residential furniture fails all three tests.
Tip 1: Start With Length of Stay, Not Floor Area
Before anyone draws a layout, agree the stay profile. A property running seven-night averages furnishes differently from one running ninety-night corporate lets, even at identical square metres. Length of stay drives storage volume, kitchen depth, seating comfort and the durability grade you pay for.
Match the Furniture List to the Stay
| Typical stay | What the guest needs | Where to spend |
|---|---|---|
| 2–6 nights | Hotel-style comfort, a kettle and a fridge, one work surface | Bed and bedding; a compact kitchenette |
| 1–4 weeks | Full wardrobe, real cooking, a proper dining and work table, a sofa worth sitting on | Storage volume, dining table, sofa frame and foam |
| 1–6 months | Second rail, laundry, generous kitchen storage, separate work and eating surfaces | Casegoods throughout; a desk that is not the dining table |
| 6 months and beyond | Everything above, plus space that feels owned rather than borrowed | Softer finishes, better seating, repairable pieces |
Let the Longest Stay Set the Storage
Storage costs little at specification stage and costs a refurbishment to add later. A 1,200 mm wardrobe instead of a 900 mm one adds a few per cent to the unit cost and removes the single most common long-stay complaint. Our Armoires d'hôtel come in widths that let you size the run to the room rather than squeeze the room around a standard carcass.
Plan for the suitcase as well. A month-long guest wants the case gone, not standing in a corner for four weeks. Either give the wardrobe a full-width top shelf deep enough to swallow a large case, or lift the bed on a base with clear space beneath it.
Tip 2: Plan the Kitchen and Dining Area First
The kitchen is the one room that turns a hotel room into an apartment, and it is the one guests judge hardest. Plan it first, because its footprint dictates everything else. Once the kitchen run and the dining table have their positions, the living and sleeping zones arrange themselves around what is left.
Size the Kitchen to the Stay, Not to the Photograph
A two-ring hob and a bar fridge suit a four-night stay. They frustrate a four-week one. Long-stay guests cook properly, which means an oven, four rings, a full fridge, a sink large enough for a roasting tray and worktop to prepare on. Cut the worktop and guests chop on the dining table.
Storage inside the kitchen matters as much as appliances. Count the cupboards a guest needs for a fortnight of shopping, then add one. Our apart hotel kitchen units and kitchen cabinets are built with contract carcasses, soft-close hardware and moisture-resistant edging, because an apartment kitchen takes domestic use at hotel frequency.
Key definition
Contract kitchen — a kitchen built to commercial specification: thicker carcass board, moisture-sealed edges, tested hinges and drawer runners, and a worktop that resists heat and staining. It looks domestic and behaves industrially.
Give Dining Its Own Surface
A breakfast bar looks efficient in a drawing and disappoints in use. Two people cannot face each other, and nobody works comfortably on a 350 mm deep ledge. Where the floor plan allows, specify a proper table: 700 mm square for a studio, 800 × 800 mm for a one-bedroom, 900 × 1,600 mm for a two-bedroom. An extendable leaf turns a two-seater into a four-seater without the footprint of one.
Choose a worktop and table finish that forgives heat and moisture. Guests put hot pans down. They spill wine. They leave a damp glass overnight. A laminate or stone surface handles all three; an oiled timber top records every one of them.
Tip 3: Choose Furniture That Works Twice
Serviced apartments earn their revenue per square metre, so every piece should carry more than one job. Dual-function furniture is not a compromise in this segment — it is the specification.
The Pieces That Pay for Themselves
- Sofa bed — turns a one-bedroom into a unit a family of four can book. A contract mechanism matters here: a residential fold-out fails inside two years of nightly use. Our lits-canapé d'hôtel use commercial mechanisms and replaceable mattresses.
- Wall bed — frees the whole floor by day in a studio. Wall beds work where a sofa bed would leave the room permanently half-made.
- Bed base with drawers — recovers storage from a footprint the room already pays for.
- Ottoman with a lid — extra seating, a coffee-table surface with a tray, and a place for spare bedding.
- Extendable dining table — two covers most days, six when a guest entertains.
- Console that becomes a desk — a 450 mm deep unit against the wall reads as decoration and works as a laptop station.
Where Dual Function Goes Wrong
Two rules keep multifunction furniture from becoming a liability. First, a piece that converts must convert in seconds without instructions; a guest who has to read a label will simply not use the feature. Second, never let the second job ruin the first. A sofa bed that sleeps well but sits badly fails 340 nights a year to succeed on 25.
Field insight
Test the conversion the way a guest will
Ask the factory to open and close the mechanism in front of you at the sample stage, then do it yourself without being shown. If the action needs two hands, a lift and a knack, it belongs in a showroom and not in an apartment.
Tip 4: Specify Contract Grade, Not Residential
This single decision separates a fit-out that lasts eight years from one that looks tired in eighteen months. Residential furniture is built for one household and light use. Contract furniture is built for constant turnover, and the difference lives in places a photograph never shows.
Where the Difference Actually Sits
| Component | Residential | Contrat |
|---|---|---|
| Case board | 16–18 mm chipboard, thin edging | 18–25 mm MDF or ply, 2 mm ABS edging, sealed cut edges |
| Drawer runners | Light rollers, 15–25 kg | Full-extension soft-close, 30–45 kg, cycle tested |
| Upholstery fabric | 10–20,000 Martindale rubs | 40,000+ rubs, cleanable, fire tested for the market |
| Coussins de siège | 20–25 kg/m³ | 30–35 kg/m³ CMHR |
| Frame joints | Cam and dowel | Glued, screwed and corner blocked |
| Spare parts | Discontinued within a season | Held for the life of the contract |
Fire Performance Is Not Optional
A serviced apartment counts as commercial accommodation almost everywhere, so its upholstery has to meet the local contract fire standard. In the United Kingdom that usually means Crib 5; elsewhere the equivalent national test applies. Our guide to what Crib 5 means explains the test and the certificates to ask for. Insist on the certificate at sample stage, not at delivery, because a failed test at the port costs a season.
The commercial case is simple. A contract wardrobe costs perhaps thirty per cent more than a residential one and lasts three times as long, so the cost per year falls by half before you count the rooms you never had to take out of service. Our note on commercial versus residential furniture works through the numbers.
Tip 5: Design for Housekeeping and Turnover
Housekeeping resets a serviced apartment far less often than a hotel room, but each reset takes much longer. A deep clean after a month-long stay touches the oven, the fridge, the wardrobe interior and every surface a guest has used as their own. Furniture either helps that or fights it.
Five Details That Save Housekeeping Hours
- Lift furniture off the floor or seal it to it. A 150 mm clear gap lets a mop pass; a 40 mm gap collects dust nobody can reach.
- Choose wipeable surfaces at hand height. Melamine, laminate and sealed stone clean in one pass. Open-grain timber holds every mark.
- Keep upholstery removable. Zipped seat covers turn a stain into a laundry job rather than a replacement.
- Avoid ledges and rebates that trap crumbs. A moulded edge looks rich and doubles cleaning time.
- Fix what moves. Wall-mounted nightstands, fixed headboards and anchored wardrobes stop furniture drifting out of position across a long stay.
Field insight
Count the minutes before you sign the drawing
Walk a mock-up unit with the housekeeping manager and time a full reset. Five minutes saved per turnover across eighty units and twenty turnovers a year is more than a thousand hours. That number usually justifies every wipeable finish on the list.
Plan for Repair, Not Replacement
Long stays produce wear rather than breakage: a scuffed wardrobe door, a marked sofa arm, a chipped table edge. Specify pieces you can repair in place. Ask the manufacturer for touch-up lacquer in the exact finish, a roll of matching edging, spare hinges and runners, and a metre or two of every upholstery fabric. Store them on site. A maintenance cupboard stocked on day one keeps units earning for years.
Our guides to cushion and upholstery care et leather care set out the routines that keep those pieces presentable between deep cleans.
Tip 6: Buy the Whole Apartment as One Package
Furnishing a serviced apartment from six suppliers produces six lead times, six quality standards and six slightly different whites. Buying the unit as a package from one manufacturer solves all of that at once, and it usually costs less.
What a Package Actually Buys You
- One finish palette. The wardrobe, the bed base, the console and the kitchen carry the same oak because they came off the same line with the same foil.
- One lead time. Everything ships together, so a delayed coffee table cannot hold a floor out of service.
- One inspection. Quality control happens once, at the factory, against one checklist. Our quality control checklist sets out what to inspect and when.
- Better container economics. A packed container of mixed items from one factory beats four part-loads from four.
- One warranty and one contact when something needs fixing in year three.
Questions to Put to a Manufacturer
Ask these before you compare prices, because the answers change what the price means:
- What is the minimum order for a full apartment set, and does it change per unit type?
- Which fire certificates do you hold for the upholstery, and for which markets?
- Will you build a mock-up apartment before production, and what does it cost?
- How long is the lead time from approved sample to loaded container?
- Do you quote FOB or CIF, and who handles inspection at the port?
- How long will you hold spare parts and matching materials?
Field insight
The mock-up unit pays for itself
Build one apartment completely before the rest go into production. Live in it for a night, cook a meal, hang a wardrobe of clothes, and let housekeeping clean it. Every change found there costs a sample; the same change found after eighty units have shipped costs a container.
We manufacture guest room, living, dining and kitchen furniture in one facility in Istanbul, which is what makes a single-package order practical. You can see how we work at our factory and showroom, browse completed work in our projects, ou send us a layout and we will come back with a room-by-room list.
Turning Six Tips Into a Specification
The six decisions above work in order. Fix the stay profile, plan the kitchen and dining, give every piece a second job, buy contract grade, design for housekeeping, and order the apartment as one package. Work through them in that sequence and the furniture list writes itself.
One test sits behind all six. Ask whether a guest who arrives with a month of luggage can unpack, cook, work, host a friend and sleep well without improvising once. An apartment that passes that test earns extensions, repeat corporate bookings and the kind of review that fills the shoulder season. One that fails it competes on price alone.
Foire aux questions
What furniture does a serviced apartment need?
A serviced apartment needs a bed and bed base, a wardrobe with hanging and shelf space, nightstands, a dining table and chairs, a sofa or armchair, a media unit, a work surface, and a kitchen with an oven, hob, full fridge and real worktop. Longer stays add a second hanging rail, extra kitchen storage and a desk separate from the dining table.
How is serviced apartment furniture different from hotel furniture?
Serviced apartment furniture carries more storage, a working kitchen and dining area, and seating built for hours rather than minutes. A hotel guest lives out of a suitcase for two nights; an apartment guest unpacks completely, cooks and works in the space. The durability standard stays the same, but the furniture list is longer and the storage volume is much greater.
Can I furnish a serviced apartment with residential furniture?
Residential furniture rarely lasts in a serviced apartment. It uses thinner case board, lighter drawer runners, lower-density foam and fabrics rated for a fraction of the wear, and most of it fails to meet the contract fire standard that commercial accommodation requires. Contract furniture costs around thirty per cent more and lasts roughly three times as long.
How much storage should a serviced apartment have?
Size the storage to your longest expected stay rather than your average one. A one-month guest needs around 1,200 mm of hanging rail, four to six drawers, a shelf for folded items and somewhere to hide an empty suitcase. Storage costs little to specify and a refurbishment to add later.
What fire standard does serviced apartment upholstery need to meet?
Serviced apartments count as commercial accommodation in almost every market, so upholstery must meet the local contract fire standard rather than the domestic one. In the United Kingdom that usually means Crib 5. Ask for the test certificate at sample stage, not on delivery.
Is a sofa bed or a wall bed better for a studio apartment?
A wall bed suits a studio where the floor has to be clear during the day, because it folds away completely and leaves a proper sofa in the room. A sofa bed suits a one-bedroom unit where the extra sleeping place is occasional rather than nightly. Both need commercial mechanisms, since residential versions fail quickly under constant use.
What is the minimum order for serviced apartment furniture from Turkey?
Minimum orders vary by manufacturer and by piece, and most contract factories quote per project rather than per item. Ordering a full apartment package usually lowers the effective minimum, because the container fills with mixed items from one production run. Ask each supplier how they calculate the minimum for a complete unit set.
How long does it take to furnish a serviced apartment building?
Expect four to eight weeks of production after sample approval for a contract order, plus shipping time to your port. Build a mock-up apartment before production starts. It adds two or three weeks at the front of the programme and removes the changes that would otherwise arrive after the whole order has shipped.
