7 American Made Furniture Brands: KeepIng It Local & Sustainable
We’re here to talk about your home. Specifically, the furniture that turns your house into said home.
But in usual Sustainable Jungle fashion, we’d like to put an ethical and earth-friendly twist on it.
By 2022, the furniture demand in the United States will reach $68.8 billion.
Think about what the impact would be if most of that came from domestic furniture brands who use reclaimed, recycled, and durable materials:
- It would massively reduce waste—which is crucial considering Americans discard 12 million tons of furniture every.single.year.
- It would curb deforestation.
- It would reduce plastic consumption.
- It would significantly minimize carbon emissions from global shipping.
If more people opted for not just eco friendly furniture, but American made furniture, it would support both the local economy (by creating meaningful jobs) and also the planet.
Not to mention the fact that quality handcrafted American furniture is hard to beat.
Just look at Alabama Sawyer and their uniquely crafted reclaimed Alabama-wood pieces. Urban Wood Goods also sells 100% American made wooden furniture.
And Brandon Built’s furniture means so much more—like support for school children or single parents.
But don’t think choosing local means sacrificing selection or variety. You can furnish your home ten times over using this list.
We did our best to make this as prefabricated as possible for you, but if you don’t mind a little “assembly required” pop to the foot(rest) to see how we handpicked these American made furniture brands.
*This post contains affiliate links
QUICK LINKS FOR AMERICAN MADE FURNITURE STORES
1. BRANDON BUILT
About Brandon Built
Based in Kearney, Nebraska, Brandon Built started as a joke.
Three friends were discussing their passion for building home furniture and laughing at the thought of someone actually being interested in their own creations.
The next day, one of them surprised the others by announcing an Etsy shop had been established.
No one is laughing now, but there are plenty of smiles, from the 7000+ customers who have given the shop 5-stars and the vast number of beneficiaries from Brandon Built’s not-for-profit business model.
Jokes aside, they’re truly one of the best American made furniture brands with four items earning a place on Etsy’s prestigious best sellers list.
Shop bookshelves, bar carts, bar stools, blanket ladders, clothing racks, coffee tables, end/side tables, shelving, TV stands, and more.
Brandon Built’s Ethical and Sustainability Practices
Materials:
The American made solid wood furniture is made with reclaimed wood or solid pine, sourced from an FSC certified supplier.
Supply chain & labor practices:
Two of the friends are still involved with the business and the USA based woodworking that comes with it.
Community & charitable giving:
“Brandon Built combines our two passions: building beautiful furniture and building up people.”
From day one, Brandon Built has focused on supporting their local community. Any profits made go towards supporting locals who “are hungry, sick, homeless, or just needing a little good in their lives.”
From single parents to school children, the shop has donated diapers, hygiene products, clothing, shoes, school lunches, car batteries, holiday meals, YMCA memberships, and more.
They currently have a project called “Building a Better Tomorrow Fund,” which supports special needs elementary schools.
Available: Etsy
2. URBAN WOOD GOODS
About Urban Wood Goods
Chicago’s Urban Wood Goods creates custom furniture for any home and business, making them one of the best one-of-a-kind American made furniture stores.
They have a healthy selection of pieces, including dining tables, kitchen tables, commercial tables, wooden desks, wooden benches, console tables, coffee tables, bar stools, shelving, and more.
Best of all, most of it is made from reclaimed lumber that would have otherwise been sent to an incinerator or landfill.
Urban Wood Goods’ Ethical and Sustainability Practices
Materials:
What exactly is “Old Growth” lumber?
It’s typically 100-200 year old Douglas Fir, that may have natural curves or nail holes, making each piece of American made dining room furniture (or whatever room you’re shopping for) truly one of a kind.
Reclaimed old-growth lumber has unique characteristics—every single board embodies the blood, sweat, and tears of the individuals who made the original buildings or materials.
The memories you make will be embedded into the beautiful and rich collective history of the furniture.
Everything comes in its salvaged, unsealed natural state, but they include a beeswax-based all-natural wood rub with some purchases.
Supply chain & labor practices:
What started out as a one-woman wood reclamation and furniture making business, now employs 20 hard-working individuals.
The American dream in practise.
They partner with a few manufacturing partners in Texas, Chicago, and elsewhere in Illinois, but everything is 100% “Grown in America, Built in America.”
Available: Etsy
3. RECLAIMED WOOD USA
About Reclaimed Wood USA
Reclaimed Wood USA ticks all the boxes.
And at 28,000 sales (and growing) with an average five-star review on Etsy, we’re clearly not the only ones who think so.
Because they proudly use reclaimed wood to create beautiful solid wood American made furniture, you won’t get any Ikea-esque pieces.
Instead, they’ll adorn your home with rich, unique, and rustic made pieces.
Even better, all of their pieces (which include floating shelves, a fireplace mantel, and benches) are heirloom-designed for generation after generation.
Reclaimed Wood USA’s Ethical and Sustainability Practices
Materials:
This shop uses reclaimed wood and metal, most of which comes from the construction sites and wreckage caused by Gulf Coast hurricanes.
All are finished with 100% eco-friendly water based stains and lacquers.
Supply chain & labor practices:
Reclaimed Wood USA works strictly with US-based designers. All handmade in their woodworking and metal fabrication studio.
Community & charitable giving:
The family-owned furniture shop is committed to giving back by supporting Mississippians following the devastating impacts of hurricanes.
Available: Etsy
4. FLOYD
About Floyd
If any city understands and values the importance of American labor and engineering, it’s Detroit.
Floyd is one such “Detroit company that wants to get away from disposable furniture.”
And non-disposable American made furniture makes our planet feel (and look) good.
While not all Floyd furniture is made in the USA, most pieces are.
They keep their offerings simple: a bed frame, mattress, sofa, chaise, dining table, side table, coffee table, standing desk, and a few storage and shelving systems.
Floyd’s Ethical and Sustainability Practices
Materials:
When you furnish with Floyd, you’ll be bringing these materials into your home:
Steel (for its durability and recyclability), natural linoleum sourced from the Netherlands (made from wood, rosins, cork, limestone, jute, and linseed oil—not vinyl), Baltic birch, and FSC-certified American-grown walnut.
They avoid flame retardants and only work with wood and foam components that aren’t associated with dangerous levels of off-gassing and VOC emissions.
Many of the pieces meet CARB II and TSCA Title VI Certifications, some of the highest anti-formaldehyde standards around.
Supply chain & labor practices:
All of the products in Michigan are then manufactured in either the United States, Mexico, or China. They don’t specify where each piece is made, so we’ll contact them to learn more.
Regardless, they only partner with factories that share the same environmentally and socially responsible values.
Green business practices:
Their Full Cycle program extends the life span of their products by offering to service furniture and recycle it responsibly when repairs are no longer an option. It’s currently only available in California, however.
In fact, everything is designed with easy-to-service components, making it simple to make small repairs/replacements, rather than discarding the entire piece.
You can also shop for imperfect Floyd products, keeping them out of the landfill and saving up to 50% for doing so.
By 2025, 70% of their materials will come from recycled or renewable sources (including 100% FSC certified wood). By then, they will have also eliminated single-use plastics and will disclose a greenhouse gas emissions report.
Available: Floyd
5. ALABAMA SAWYER
About Alabama Sawyer
Alabama Sawyer is, well…an Alabama-based maker of field-to-studio furniture.
Wife and husband founder / operator duo, Leigh and Cliff Spencer design modern and environmentally sustainable products.
In their years of operation, they’ve diverted hundreds of logs away from the landfill—and won several awards in the process.
If you’re on the hunt for American made furniture online, Alabama Sawyer offers tables, shelving, seating, desks, and credenzas.
Alabama Sawyer’s Ethical and Sustainability Practices
Materials:
Out of their mouths: “Trees fall y’all.”
This company gathers tree waste from homeowners, businesses, and municipalities, giving it second life in your home.
They choose urban timber not just for its sustainability, but because it bears insect holes, burls, and knots.
In other words, it’s not perfect, but that’s the beauty of it.
Supply chain & labor practices:
Over 90% of Alabama Sawyer’s wood comes from Alabama.
After the trees are collected, they’re transported to a facility in Birmingham, where they’re processed by skilled technicians, dried for at least six months, then kiln fired.
Everything is then sent to a woodshop in North Birmingham where the furniture-making process begins.
Green business practices:
Felled urban trees don’t usually have a good end-of-life outcome. Every year, Americans send four billion board feet of usable hardwood trees to rot in landfills.
Treecycling keeps them from releasing greenhouse gas emissions and makes some of the best American made furniture in the process.
Available: Alabama Sawyer
6. WHAT WE MAKE
About What WE Make
What WE Make (AKA wwmake) is another American made furniture brand hailing from Chicago.
They’re family-owned and operated with more than 15 years of experience.
And in the past five years, they’ve shifted focus entirely on reclaimed materials.
Using the old to create a whole new look, they offer American made living room furniture, dining room furniture, bedroom furniture, and more.
Specific pieces include dining tables, benches, coffee tables, end/accent tables, console tables, bathroom vanities, chairs and stools, buffets, bookcases, storage pieces, media consoles, and desks.
What WE Make’s Ethical and Sustainability Practices
Materials:
What WE Make is making the earth happy by choosing reclaimed old-growth wood, sustainably sourced Midwest walnut and white oak, hand-welded metal, and durable, special-blend concrete.
All old-growth wood is harvested from midwestern barns and is at least a century old. It features one-of-a-kind variations with naturally-occurring splits, weathering, knots, cracks, and nail holes.
All pieces are finished with no or low-VOC eco-friendly finishings – far fewer toxins than traditional furniture.
Supply chain & labor practices:
Each family member is responsible for a different aspect What WE Make. All woodworking is done by hand by brothers Dan and George Quinn in their Algonquin, IL workshop.
Green business practices:
All items are made-to-order, which both minimizes their carbon footprint and means they don’t need to have a warehouse storing stock.
To reduce waste even further, they donate woods scarps and sawdust locally for farming and fires.
Since furniture is meant to last, they offer wood care tips to keeps yours around for years to come.
Available: Etsy
7. EMECO
About Emeco
Emeco reminds us that “it’s on all of us to reduce our carbon footprint.”
How do we do that?
Make more with less—at least that’s what they’re doing.
For modern American made furniture, Emeco is ironically taking it back to 1944, when the salvaged aluminum Emeco 1006 Navy Chair was first created for warships and sailors.
Almost 80 years later, those same chairs are found in offices, hotels, and restaurants around the world.
Chairs are still the brand’s forte, although they now also have stools, tables, shelves, benches, sustainable outdoor furniture, and upholstered furniture. Not to mention a host of accessories and replacement parts to keep this American made furniture lasting a long time.
Emeco’s Ethical and Sustainability Practices
Materials:
Emeco’s favorite materials are all things recycled.
Recycled aluminum (80%) is what’s found in their modern version of the Navy Chair.
They also use recycled PET (from plastic bottles), local and FSC-certified or reclaimed wood, cork, eco-concrete (made from recycled glass bottles), and reclaimed wood polypropylene (WPP).
WPP, what?!
It’s leftover bits from plastic factories combined with discarded sawdust and wood from lumber yards. It yields a speckled look and natural easy-to-wipe feel that’s effective for high use and harsh environments—a great material for American made outdoor furniture.
Most pieces are finished with a no-or low-VOC sealer to make them stand the test of time.
Supply chain & labor practices:
Emeco prides itself on making furniture in America, often by hand.
They partner with Amish communities in Pennsylvania and also have their own Pennsylvanian factory—which is the same one that produced the iconic chairs back in 1944.
Green business practices:
What do Coca-Cola and Emeco have in common?
A plastic bottle!
Well, 111 plastic bottles, to be exact. A partnership between the two brands has given way to the 111 Navy Chair—which is made from 111 plastic bottles and can be 100% recycled.
When it comes to their aluminum chairs, they’re made in a 77-step process.
Why so complicated?
So that these chairs will truly last forever (or at least 150 years). After all, Emeco’s guiding principle is that if you “make something well, it can survive anything.”
They also have an impressive environmental statement, which elaborates on how they reduce water and electricity consumption.
Available: Emeco
HOW WE FOUND THE BEST AMERICAN MADE FURNITURE
While our focus was obviously on finding American made furniture, we wanted to ensure our coffee tables were consciously curated in a few other ways.
The criteria we applied when sorting through these custom pieces were:
Materials:
In a similar vein to vetting American-made women’s clothing brands, American made bedroom furniture—or pieces for any room, stick with the three R’s: recycled, renewable, or reclaimed.
This meant a lot of recycled (and recyclable) aluminum, steel, glass, and PET (like these recycled outdoor furniture brands); renewable American-grown wood; and reclaimed old-growth wood and wood polypropylene (WPP) found its way into this list.
To top it off (literally) we also looked for the use of 100% eco-friendly water-based stains and lacquers, and avoided flame retardants, VOCs, or anything associated with dangerous off-gassing.
Non-toxic furniture is the safest option.
- Certifications: FSC, CARB II and TSCA Title VI Certifications
Supply chain and labor practices:
American made means some of the strictest labor laws in the world. It also means supporting a local economy and community members with artisanal jobs.
Green business practices:
After saving materials that would otherwise be sent to landfills or incinerators, many brands did even more. Some offered to repair/recycle/resell old furniture while others provided designs that make replacing and repairing easy.
The best thing, however, is that all these pieces are designed to last a very long time—even when the brand has to take 77 production steps to make it happen!
Community & charitable giving:
Supporting American made furniture businesses means supporting American communities. Some brands go even further through donations and financial support programs for children, single parents, and victims of natural disasters.
FINAL THOUGHTS ON AMERICAN MADE FURNITURE
Think about that conventional coffee table.
It’s made with globally sourced materials, manufactured in a far-away factory, only to be shipped to a middleman, then a retailer, then your living room—and eventually to a landfill.
Buying local is better. It’s better for you, your neighbors, the economy, and of course our planet.
So let’s support these brands by cutting that supply chain down by purchasing furniture made in the USA.
All the better if it’s reclaimed and you can cut out the number of trees being cut down too!
