Furnishing a Phuket apartment: what to buy and what to skip
Furnishing is the last line of the purchase budget and the first thing a guest photographs. It is also where I see the widest gap between what people expect a developer package to contain and what arrives in the room. I price this per unit, always, because a studio handed over bare and a two-bed handed over dressed are not the same exercise.
What fully furnished from a developer actually includes
A furniture package sold by a Phuket developer is normally a fixed specification designed to make the unit photograph well and be habitable. It is drawn up for the whole building, not for your unit, and it is bought in volume. That is genuinely useful: it is cheaper than sourcing the same items yourself, it is installed before handover, and it matches the building's look.
- Built-in joinery. Kitchen units, wardrobes, worktops, sometimes a vanity. These are usually part of the unit rather than the package.
- Core furniture. Bed and mattress, sofa, dining table and chairs, coffee table, bedside units, a TV unit.
- Major appliances. Air conditioning, hob and hood, fridge, washing machine, water heater, sometimes a microwave and a TV.
- Basic soft items. Curtains or blinds, and in some packages a first set of lighting.
That list is a home you could sleep in. It is not a home you could let on the first day of high season, and the developer has never claimed otherwise. The package is sized to the building's budget, and everything that wears out fastest or varies most by guest is deliberately outside it.
What it does not include
The second list is the one that surprises people, and it is where the remaining money goes. None of it is exotic. All of it is necessary before a manager will take the unit on.
- Linen and towels. Multiple full sets per bed and bathroom, because they rotate through laundry between every guest.
- Kitchen kit. Pots, pans, knives, crockery, glassware, cutlery, kettle, toaster, coffee equipment, storage.
- Bathroom and utility. Bins, drying rack, iron and board, hairdryer, cleaning equipment, a basic first aid box.
- Comfort items. Extra pillows, a sofa throw, bedside lamps, mirrors, a full-length mirror, blackout at the bedroom window.
- Balcony and outdoor. A table and two chairs at minimum. On Phuket the balcony is a room, and an empty one reads as unfinished.
- The technical layer. Router and reliable internet, a safe, a smart lock or key box, smoke detector, enough power points in the right places.
Furnishing for yourself versus furnishing to let
These are two different briefs and they conflict more often than people expect. Furnishing for yourself optimises for taste, for the things you personally use and for a single occupant who is careful. Furnishing to let optimises for photographs, durability, cleaning speed and the ability to replace any item within a week from a shop on the island.
The practical consequences are specific. Pale upholstery looks beautiful and is a liability. A glass dining table is a fingerprint machine. Delicate crockery arrives as a set of six and is a set of three by March. Custom pieces with long lead times mean a dead unit while you wait for a replacement. And a wardrobe designed for two suitcases is more valuable to a guest than a decorative console table they will never touch.
The durability test
Before I approve any item for a rental unit I ask three things: can it survive a guest who does not own it, can a housekeeper clean it in the time allowed between check-outs, and can it be replaced locally within a week at a known price. An item that fails one of those is either removed or accepted knowingly as a cost. Humidity is the fourth quiet filter: untreated timber, cheap laminate and anything with an iron fitting will tell you what it thinks of a Phuket green season by the second year.
What actually moves the nightly rate
Very little of it is furniture in the decorative sense. In my practice the items that change what a unit can charge are the ones that change what the listing can show and what a guest complains about.
- The bed. The one thing every review mentions. A good mattress and proper linen carry more weight than the rest of the bedroom combined.
- Air conditioning and blackout. Sleep quality is the product. Both of these are non-negotiable and both are cheap relative to their effect.
- Internet. Long stays in green season are largely people who work. A slow connection removes you from that market entirely.
- The kitchen, fully equipped. Not for cooking so much as for the confidence to book a month rather than a week.
- The balcony, dressed. It is the photograph that sells the unit, and an empty one costs you the shot.
- Lighting. Warm, layered, enough of it. Ceiling downlights alone make good rooms photograph badly.
What does not move the rate: expensive art, a designer chair, an oversized television, anything the guest cannot use. I have never seen a booking won by a decorative object. I have seen plenty lost by a soft mattress and a dead router. The manager who will run the unit has an opinion worth having here, and I bring them in before the buying starts rather than after. How that relationship works is in property management and rentals in Phuket.
Timelines, and how the budget gets set
Sequence matters more than speed. Measurements can only be taken properly after the unit is handed over and the snagging list is closed, because a fitted item ordered off a floor plan usually arrives half an inch wrong. From there, stock items delivered and assembled on the island are a matter of weeks; anything made to order, imported or requiring joinery runs considerably longer. If you are aiming to let from the start of high season, the honest working-back point is the preceding low season, not November.
The budget itself is calculated per unit and it depends on four things: floor area, how much the developer package already covers, whether you are letting nightly or long-term, and the bracket the building sits in. A unit competing at the top of its district needs to look like it. A long-stay unit needs to be durable and complete rather than photogenic. I put the number next to the rest of the entry cost, because furnishing belongs in the same total as the transfer fees and the sinking fund rather than as an afterthought. The full list of what lands on top of the price is in Phuket purchase costs and taxes, and the way it feeds the return is in calculating the net rental yield.
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I am an investment strategist: I select the property, calculate the net return, check the developer and run the transaction. Anything that needs a legal, immigration or tax qualification goes to specialists I have worked with for years.
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Frequently asked
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Lyubov Fortunova
Investment strategist and founder of Fortunova Capital Group. I have lived on Phuket for more than five years and run every deal myself: I select the property, calculate the net return, check the developer and hold the process together until the keys are handed over. Lawyers, visa and tax specialists come from my own circle.
“I count net, not dreams”
Tell me the unit, the package the developer is offering and whether you are letting nightly or long-term, and I will send you the gap list and the budget calculated for that specific apartment.
I answer personally, within the working day, in any time zone. No calls unless you want them. A question about the article is free and commits you to nothing.
