RH, the publicly traded furniture and home-furnishings retailer, recorded $153.9 million in actual product returns against $3.44 billion in net revenue in the fiscal year ended January 31, 2026, a 4.5% return-to-revenue ratio disclosed in its SEC 10-K filing. Wayfair reported a comparable 5.9% for calendar 2025. Both numbers sit far under the 19.3% blended online retail return rate, and neither is a survey estimate: both come straight from audited annual reports filed with US regulators in early 2026.
That gap matters for anyone selling furniture online. Return terms on bulky, high-value items shape restocking fees, delivery-damage windows, and how a refund policy handles freight costs, and furniture sellers have had almost nothing published to benchmark against, unlike apparel or footwear.
What percentage of furniture orders get returned?
The clearest answer comes from the two largest publicly traded furniture sellers’ own financial statements, not a survey. RH’s 10-K, covering the fiscal year ended January 31, 2026 and filed with the SEC on April 1, 2026, discloses “actual sales returns” of $153,891,000 against net revenues of $3,439,536,000, a ratio of 4.5%. Wayfair’s 10-K, covering the calendar year ended December 31, 2025 and filed February 19, 2026, discloses actual sales returns of $740 million against net revenue of $12,457 million, a ratio of 5.9%. The Securities and Exchange Commission classifies RH under SIC code 5712, Retail-Furniture Stores, and Wayfair sells furniture alongside broader home goods.
These are two different business models landing in the same narrow band: RH runs a showroom-led, appointment-driven sales process, while Wayfair sells purely online with algorithmic merchandising. Neither figure is an estimate or a survey response; both are audited accounting disclosures that retailers must report because sales returns reduce recognized revenue under US GAAP.
Figure 1: Furniture returns run at roughly a fifth to a quarter of the apparel and blended online benchmarks. Sources: RH and Wayfair SEC 10-K filings (fiscal 2025-2026); Coresight Research (2023); National Retail Federation and Happy Returns (2025).
A furniture order coming back at less than a 6% rate, against a general online return rate above 19%, is the single clearest data point available on why furniture behaves differently from clothing and electronics: buyers research bulky, expensive purchases more before ordering, and the shipping and reassembly cost of a return discourages remorse purchases in a way a $30 t-shirt never faces.
Why isn’t there one published furniture return rate?
Because the retail industry’s own most-cited consumer survey declines to publish one. Statista Consumer Insights’ US survey, published April 2025, found clothing was the category consumers most often said they had returned in the past 12 months, at 25% of respondents, followed by shoes at 17% and accessories at 12%. The same release states that furniture, books, and consumer electronics see lower return rates than those three categories, without publishing an exact percentage for any of them.
That data gap is the same one we found researching electronics: no independent survey with a disclosed sample size and methodology currently publishes a category-specific furniture return rate. Several ecommerce blogs cite ranges anywhere from 5% to 23% for furniture, but the ones checked for this post trace back to unsourced blog posts, gated market-research summaries, or aggregator pages that cite each other rather than a named primary study, so none of those ranges appear here. The RH and Wayfair figures above are the most precise, dated, and independently verifiable numbers available, even though they describe two specific companies rather than the category as a whole.
How does furniture compare to other return-prone categories?
Furniture’s 9% share of Loop Returns’ 2024 category breakdown, filed under a broader “house and garden” grouping that furniture typically falls under, places it behind fashion (62%) and electronics (14%) but ahead of the remaining catch-all categories in that report. Our electronics return rate research found the same disclosure gap: electronics also lacks a published national return-rate percentage, and the two categories share a Statista mention as “lower-return” without a public number.
Figure 2: Furniture sits within the smallest disclosed slice of total return volume. Source: Loop Returns, “State of Returns” report (2024), as reported by RetailBiz, published August 2024.
| Metric | Value | Source | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| RH furniture returns, percent of net revenue | 4.5% | RH SEC 10-K | 2026 |
| Wayfair furniture/home goods returns, percent of net revenue | 5.9% | Wayfair SEC 10-K | 2025 |
| Blended online return rate, all categories | 19.3% | NRF / Happy Returns | 2025 |
| Apparel and footwear average online return rate | 24.4% | Coresight Research | 2023 |
| Furniture and house/garden share of total return volume | 9% | Loop Returns | 2024 |
Every disclosed figure in that table places furniture well below the general apparel and blended-online benchmarks. Our ecommerce return rate data covers the all-category blended benchmark in more depth, and there is not yet a published footwear-specific return rate benchmark on this site, so treat any footwear comparison as directional only until that data is available.
Are furniture returns rising or falling?
RH’s returns-to-revenue ratio has held in a narrow band across its last three fiscal years: 4.9% in fiscal 2023 (year ended February 3, 2024), 4.4% in fiscal 2024 (year ended February 1, 2025), and 4.5% in fiscal 2025 (year ended January 31, 2026). Williams-Sonoma, which owns Pottery Barn and West Elm, discloses a balance-sheet reserve for expected sales returns rather than a full-year total, but that reserve fell from $42.7 million to $40.1 million between the same two fiscal year-ends even as its net revenue grew to $7.81 billion, a directional signal pointing the same way as RH’s flat-to-slightly-improving ratio.
Figure 3: Three fiscal years of disclosed furniture-retailer returns data, all from SEC filings. Sources: RH, Wayfair, and Williams-Sonoma Form 10-K filings, 2024-2026.
Neither company describes a returns spike. A ratio moving less than half a percentage point across three fiscal years, alongside a shrinking reserve at a second retailer, is consistent with a category where the physical and financial friction of shipping a couch or a dresser back keeps remorse returns rare regardless of the broader retail returns climate.
What should a furniture return policy account for?
Because furniture returns run low but expensive per incident, freight, disassembly, and damage-in-transit matter more than the blanket 30-day remorse window that works for a t-shirt. Radial and Two Boxes’ July 2025 survey of 200 US retailers included home furnishings as one of six industries covered, alongside apparel/footwear/accessories, home improvement and garden, sports and fitness, health and beauty, and consumer electronics, though the report did not break out a home-furnishings-specific fraud or policy-abuse figure the way it did for apparel and electronics. Across all six categories surveyed, 44% of brands named managing returns fraud and abuse their biggest current pain point.
Figure 4: A policy-setting path for furniture sellers built around freight and damage risk rather than a generic remorse window. Source: synthesized from the findings above.
A furniture-specific policy that states a defect-versus-remorse distinction, a restocking fee tied to item size, and who covers return freight addresses the actual cost driver in this category: low return volume but high per-unit shipping and handling cost when a return does happen. Our Refund Policy Generator builds those terms, delivery-damage window, restocking fee, and freight responsibility, from your actual product catalog rather than a generic clause built for small parcel goods.
The Bottom Line
Furniture is a genuinely low-return category, and for once that claim rests on hard numbers rather than an industry rule of thumb. RH’s actual returns equaled 4.5% of net revenue in the fiscal year ended January 31, 2026, and Wayfair’s equaled 5.9% for calendar 2025, both audited figures from SEC filings rather than survey estimates. Both sit at roughly a fifth to a quarter of the 19.3% blended online return rate and the 24.4% apparel and footwear average. No independent national survey currently publishes a furniture-specific return-rate percentage the way it does for clothing and shoes, so these two company-level figures, corroborated directionally by Williams-Sonoma’s shrinking returns reserve, are the most precise numbers available. A furniture return policy should be built around freight cost and damage-in-transit risk, not a remorse window borrowed from a category that returns four times as often.
Frequently Asked Questions
What percentage of furniture orders get returned? RH’s actual furniture returns equaled 4.5% of net revenue in the fiscal year ended January 31, 2026, and Wayfair’s equaled 5.9% of net revenue for calendar 2025, according to each company’s SEC 10-K filing. No independent national survey publishes a single furniture-specific return rate as a share of orders.
Why isn’t there one published furniture return rate? Statista Consumer Insights’ April 2025 survey names furniture as a lower-return category than clothing (25%), shoes (17%), and accessories (12%), but the release does not disclose an exact percentage for furniture. The two figures in this post come from public company filings, not a category-wide survey.
How does furniture compare to clothing and electronics for returns? Furniture sits well below both. Apparel and footwear average a 24.4% online return rate (Coresight Research, 2023), and the blended online return rate across all retail categories was 19.3% in 2025 (NRF and Happy Returns). RH and Wayfair’s furniture-return figures, 4.5% and 5.9%, run at roughly a fifth to a quarter of those rates.
Are furniture returns rising or falling? RH’s returns-to-revenue ratio has stayed in a narrow 4.4% to 4.9% band across its last three fiscal years (2023 through 2026), per its SEC filings. Williams-Sonoma’s balance-sheet reserve for expected sales returns fell from $42.7 million to $40.1 million between fiscal 2024 and fiscal 2025 even as net revenue grew, a second data point pointing the same direction.
Sources and References
- RH, Inc.. Form 10-K, fiscal year ended January 31, 2026, filed with the SEC April 1, 2026. Reports actual sales returns of $153.9 million against net revenues of $3,439.5 million.
- Wayfair Inc.. Form 10-K, fiscal year ended December 31, 2025, filed with the SEC February 19, 2026. Reports actual sales returns of $740 million against net revenue of $12,457 million.
- Williams-Sonoma, Inc.. Form 10-K, fiscal year ended February 1, 2026, filed with the SEC March 26, 2026. Discloses a sales return allowance of $40.1 million, down from $42.7 million a year earlier.
- National Retail Federation and Happy Returns. (2025). “2025 Retail Returns Landscape.” Survey of 2,006 consumers and 358 ecommerce professionals at US retailers with over $500 million in revenue, conducted summer 2025.
- Statista Consumer Insights. (2025). “Clothing and Shoes Are the Most Returned Online Purchases.” US consumer survey, published April 2025.
- Loop Returns. (2024). “State of Returns: The Road to Retention and Reconversion.” Cited via RetailBiz trade coverage, published August 2024; primary report distributed as a gated download.
- Coresight Research. (2023). “The True Cost of Apparel Returns.” Survey of 100 US apparel and footwear brand and retailer decision-makers, conducted March 2023.
Note: All figures verified as of September 2026. RH, Wayfair, and Williams-Sonoma figures are drawn directly from each company’s audited SEC filings; no independent survey with a disclosed sample size currently publishes a category-wide furniture return-rate percentage, and this post will be updated if one is published.
