There’s no official UK figure for the rent premium a furnished flat commands — it isn’t tracked nationally, and anyone who quotes you a precise national percentage is guessing. What we can do is work through the real costs and a reasonable market premium, and let you do the arithmetic for your own property.
This is one of those questions landlords ask expecting a simple yes or no, and the honest answer is that it depends on your tenant market, your property, and whether you’re letting long-term or short-term. Here’s what actually goes into that decision.
What furnishing actually costs
Furnishing a rental to a decent, durable standard — not luxury, but good enough to survive multiple tenancies without falling apart — typically runs to around £3,750 for a one-bed flat and £5,500 for a two-bed, according to current UK furnishing cost estimates. Roughly £2,000 of that goes on the living room and kitchen, with about £1,750 per bedroom on top.
- £3,750Typical cost to furnish a one-bed flat, decent standard
- £5,500Typical cost to furnish a two-bed flat, decent standard
You can go lower — a stripped-back flat-pack setup can come in at £1,500–£2,000 — but cheap furniture that fails partway through a tenancy usually costs more in the end, once you factor in replacement, delivery, disposal, and the disruption of sorting it while a tenant’s still living there.
What premium can you actually charge
Market commentary from letting agents generally puts the furnished premium at around 15–20% above an equivalent unfurnished rent, sometimes more in a strong short-let or corporate market. That’s not an official statistic — furnishing status isn’t something national rent surveys track — but it’s a reasonable working figure for most UK cities, Brighton included.
The point: treat any furnished premium figure as a starting estimate, not a guarantee. What you can actually charge depends on your specific property, your local market, and who you’re renting to — check comparable furnished and unfurnished listings for similar flats nearby before setting your own figure.
Doing the arithmetic on a Brighton one-bed
Take a one-bed flat renting unfurnished at £1,200 a month, roughly the current average for Brighton & Hove. At a 15% premium, furnished rent would sit around £1,380 a month — an extra £180 a month, or £2,160 a year.
On those figures, furnishing pays for itself in under two years, and everything after that is genuine extra income, assuming the furniture lasts and the flat stays let. The catch is the assumption doing the work in that sentence — furniture doesn’t last forever, and a void month costs you the premium you were counting on.
The replacement cycle nobody budgets for
There’s no official UK figure for how often rental furniture needs replacing either, but the practical pattern is straightforward: a sofa, mattress, or dining set built for rental durability generally holds up across several tenancies if it’s decent quality to start with, while a budget flat-pack set can start failing within a single tenancy. Mattresses in particular tend to need replacing more often than landlords expect, both for wear and for hygiene reasons between tenants.
Factor ongoing replacement into the sum, not just the initial cost. A realistic furnished rental budgets for periodic top-ups — a replaced sofa here, a new mattress there — not a one-off spend that’s meant to last a decade untouched.
Who each option actually attracts
| Furnished | Unfurnished | |
|---|---|---|
| Typical tenant | Young professionals, relocators, students, corporate stays | Families, longer-term renters, people with their own furniture |
| Turnover | Often higher — more transient tenant base | Often lower — tenants settle in for longer |
| Upfront cost to landlord | £3,750–£5,500+ | Minimal, beyond basic appliances |
| Ongoing cost | Periodic furniture replacement | Standard maintenance only |
Higher turnover isn’t automatically a downside — it depends what you’re optimising for. A furnished flat that changes tenants more often but commands a steady premium can outperform an unfurnished one over several years, provided the void periods between tenants stay short. If turnover and voids run high, the premium can get eaten up fast.
How the answer changes for short lets
For a short let, this calculation isn’t really a choice at all. Guests booking a few nights to a few months expect a fully furnished, ready-to-move-into property — an unfurnished short let isn’t a realistic product. The premium a short let can command over an unfurnished long-term rent is substantially higher than the 15–20% furnished uplift above, but it comes with proportionally more work: cleaning between stays, higher wear on furniture from more frequent turnover, and active management rather than a single tenancy set-and-forget.
If you’re weighing up furnishing a property specifically to move it into short-let use rather than a standard tenancy, that’s a bigger decision than the furnishing cost alone — worth reading alongside our comparison of short let and long let returns before committing either way.
The honest answer
Furnishing a Brighton rental to a decent standard generally pays for itself within two to three years on the arithmetic above, and makes clear sense if your target tenant is a professional, relocator, or short-let guest who wants to move straight in. It matters less, and may not be worth the upfront cost, if you’re targeting families or long-term tenants who’d rather bring their own furniture and settle in for years.
Weighing up furnished vs unfurnished for your property?
Tell us about the flat and who you’re likely to let it to, and we’ll give you a straight recommendation based on what similar properties are actually achieving.
Get a rental recommendationFurnishing cost estimates and the 15–20% furnished rent premium are drawn from current UK letting agent and furnishing market commentary, 2026; neither figure is an official government statistic, as furnishing status isn’t tracked in national rent data. Brighton & Hove average unfurnished rent figure from ONS Price Index of Private Rents, July 2026. This is general information and not financial advice — run the numbers for your specific property before deciding.