One Romance armchair for a Paris living room and sixty Romance armchairs for a hotel: same drawing, same lacquer, same velvet. Not the same order. Between the two sit a fire rating, a fabric data sheet, a signed lacquer sample, a construction schedule and a truck that has to show up on the right day, not before, not after. This is what actually changes in a hospitality furniture order compared with buying one beautiful piece, what a restaurant adds on top, and what an apartment lets you skip.
One piece or one project: the first question we ask
When a private client calls, the conversation is about the piece: the velvet color, the seat height, the date they would like to sit in it. When an architect calls about a hotel, the first thing they send is a floor plan and a calendar. The chair comes later. The difference is risk. One late armchair in a private home is an annoyance. Sixty late armchairs on a hotel site is a postponed opening and lost room nights.
We edit in series, which means the Cardinal chair at €990 in velvet exists as a single piece and as forty pieces. What changes with scale is how it gets ordered, approved and delivered. The rest of this article follows that order: codes, fabric, finish, schedule, then the special cases of the restaurant and the apartment.
Hospitality furniture order: what changes first is the fire rating
In France, a hotel is a public-access building of type O, a restaurant of type N, and the same fire safety regulation applies to both. Its article AM 18 requires seating frames to be rated at least M3 on a scale from M0 (non-combustible) to M4 (highly flammable). Loose furniture such as tables and chairs has no specific requirement in the text, but most engineering consultants and insurers ask for M1 (flame-retardant) fabrics on seating and for upholstered seats tested to the European standards EN 1021-1 (cigarette) and EN 1021-2 (match). This French guide from Panachats lays it out; your fire consultant has the final word, and other countries have their own systems (the UK has its own furniture fire regulations, the US relies on California TB 117 and similar tests).
What that changes for us: a residential velvet, however beautiful, will not pass. You need a contract velvet, often flame-retardant from the mill, or a fabric certified by the house that weaves it. We do not claim to be a contract furniture manufacturer. On request we can look at putting a contract fabric from a French house on our frames and passing on the certificate that goes with it. Ask for that certificate before you sign, not after delivery. It is the first thing an inspector will want.
Martindale, or why 20,000 rubs is not enough for a bar
The Martindale test measures a fabric's resistance to abrasion, counted in rub cycles before visible wear. The commonly quoted thresholds: 15,000 to 25,000 cycles for general domestic use, 25,000 to 30,000 for heavy domestic use, over 40,000 for commercial use, hotels and public spaces included (Gessato's guide walks through the tiers). A living room sofa is fine at 20,000. A bar banquette that two hundred people slide onto every week, belt buckles and raw denim included, is not.
We do not offer forty fabrics. On the Romance collection we work with aubergine and écru velvets, a cowhide, and on the black armchair the Velours Faon by Nobilis, a Paris fabric house founded in 1928. For a hotel project we start from the same houses and go looking, with them, for the contract reference that holds the cycles and the fire rating in a shade close to our aubergine or our écru. That adds a week at the start. It saves reupholstering a room every eighteen months.
There is an alternative architects sometimes forget: cowhide. Our Cardinal armchair in cowhide is €2,272 against €1,472 to €1,572 in velvet. More expensive up front, but a hide wipes clean with a damp cloth, does not hold a coffee stain, and ages toward patina rather than wear. In a restaurant it is often the most sensible material, as long as it stays out of direct sun.
Sixty rooms, one lacquer
The real subject of a batch order is not the quantity, it is consistency. A deep black lacquer applied by hand varies slightly from one pass to the next. On a single nightstand nobody notices. On sixty nightstands lined up along a corridor, the architect notices immediately. So we work from a reference sample, approved and signed by the client before production starts, and we aim to lacquer the batch in one campaign rather than in several. Same logic for velvet: we try to reserve the full yardage from one dye lot, because two lots of the same reference are never quite identical.
We also recommend ordering a sample piece (one nightstand, one chair) before the batch is launched. It becomes the site prototype: height against the mattress, cable routing for a lamp, position of the wall light relative to the headboard. At €774 for the Cardinal nightstand or €700 for the Romance one, that is a trivial cost next to a four-inch mistake repeated sixty times.
Schedule: four to six weeks for a piece, a calendar for a project
Our pieces are made to order in four to six weeks, and some are in stock. For a private client, that lead time is the answer. For a hotel, it is one line in a backward schedule that starts much earlier: sample approval, fabric order (the fabric houses have their own lead times, sometimes longer than ours), batch production, storage if the site runs late, delivery in one go or floor by floor. We take a deposit at order and the balance before delivery, as with any quoted order, and for projects we quote shipping rather than calculating it at checkout.
One piece of advice that is worth money: do not have the furniture delivered before the floors are laid and the paint is dry. A €5,900 Romance sofa under a tarp in a construction corridor is a bad idea, and we would rather hold it a few more weeks. Tell us at the quote stage and it gets planned in.
The restaurant, the hardest use there is
A restaurant wears furniture out far faster than a hotel room. Two services a day, chairs pulled out and pushed back, table legs hit by the broom every night. What we look at first for a restaurant: the frame (solid wood, exposed joinery on Cardinal, which can be tightened), the seat material (cowhide or contract velvet), and the lacquer, which can be sanded and touched up locally where a damaged veneer has to be replaced entirely.
For tables, the question is size. Our Cardinal dining table measures 190 x 80 x 75 cm and seats six. For a restaurant we adapt it to the plan, as two-tops or four-tops, with the same slatted top that lets light through. The collection is on the Cardinal page, and the chairs, €990 in velvet and €1,600 in cowhide, on the chairs page.
The apartment, where you can afford the aubergine velvet
Everything above is engineering-grade seriousness. In a private home you are allowed to do less. No M1 certificate for a Romance armchair in a living room, no 40,000 cycles for a guest bedroom chair. You pick the aubergine velvet because it is beautiful, and because a domestic velvet, brushed now and then, lasts for years in an apartment. Standard pieces can be returned within 14 days. Configured or made-to-measure pieces cannot, which is fair since they were made for you.
The good news for the architect reading this: what we set up for hotels also serves apartments. The signed lacquer sample, the prototype piece, delivery timed to the end of the works, we do that for a three-room project as readily as for a lobby. The trade program exists for exactly this: one contact, fabric samples, quotes, dimensions adapted to the plan.
Questions we get asked
Can you furnish an 80-room hotel?
Yes, that is the whole point of Monde Singulier Editions: designs edited in series that also exist as single pieces. Production runs in batches, with a reference sample and a schedule agreed at the quote. Lead time depends on volume and fabric, so count on more than our standard four to six weeks, and talk to us early.
Are your velvets flame-retardant?
Our residential velvets are not, as standard. For a public building, ask us: we can look for a certified contract fabric with a French house in a close shade, and pass on the certificate. Mention the requirement in the first conversation, because it shapes the whole quote.
Can you change the dimensions of a table for a restaurant?
Yes, our dining tables are offered in dimensions adapted to your project. The top, the apron and the finish stay those of the collection, the length and width follow your plan. A made-to-measure piece is not returnable, which is why we suggest approving one sample before the batch.
Do you deliver outside France?
Yes, across France, Europe and worldwide, with white-glove premium delivery. For a project, shipping is quoted rather than calculated at checkout, and we align the date with the site. Details are on our shipping page.
If you have a plan and a date, send them over: the Romance and Cardinal collections exist as one piece and as a batch.