Your building is already telling families something. Here’s how to make sure it’s saying the right thing—and what a refresh actually costs to get there.
By Chris Griffiths, Vice President and JST Studio Director
Most funeral home owners I talk to already know their building needs work. The carpet is worn from the front door to the chapel, and the art in the lobby went up sometime in the 1970s. They put off dealing with it because they assume the fix is a major renovation they can’t afford.
If you own a funeral home, the families who have come to you for generations may not mind the wear, but their grown children usually do—and if a newer funeral home has opened nearby, some of them will simply go there instead.
Mark Musgrove, a past funeral association president, told The Washington Post that as services became more personal and less standardized, “the only way we can survive is to provide the services that families find meaningful.” I agree with him. Those services happen inside your building, and families remember the rooms along with everything else.
After more than thirty years of designing funeral facilities, I can tell you that updating an outdated funeral home rarely requires starting over. New finishes and furniture go a long way. This post covers what that kind of refresh costs and where I’d spend the money first.
Why an Outdated Interior Costs You Families
Owners sometimes tell me younger families don’t care about buildings anymore. But a generational study conducted by the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA) suggests otherwise: younger adults actually see funeral directors as trusted experts and still value services and viewing. They are still coming through your front door.
And they compare. They’ve seen the hotel lobby that was redone last year. When they walk into a lobby with sagging sofas and wallpaper from 1986, they wonder whether anyone is paying attention, and then what else nobody is paying attention to.
I’ve watched it go the other way, too. Clients who put money into their interiors, a new prep and dress facility, or an addition tell me the same thing afterward: the place is more beautiful, it works better, and the phone rings more. The finishes alone can change the trajectory of a facility.
What Does a Funeral Home Interior Refresh Cost?
When owners ask me about funeral home renovation cost, most are picturing a gut job. In my experience, a solid funeral home interior refresh runs $80,000 to $200,000, depending mostly on the size of the facility. That covers what families see and touch: paint, carpet, wall covering, drapery, and furniture.
If you’ve priced a commercial interior refresh online, you’ve mostly found numbers built for offices and restaurants. This year’s benchmarks for commercial fit-outs put the average across the Americas at $149 per square foot, but that figure reflects full office build-outs, which is a much bigger job than paint and carpet.
Square footage moves your number most, followed by how much furniture you replace versus reupholster and how many rooms you take on at once. Reusing solid wood frames with new fabric and cushions saves a good deal.
Where Should the First Dollars Go?
Spend them on what a family sees and touches first: the entry, the lobby, the arrangement room, the visitation room where they’ll sit for hours, and the restrooms. Get that path right before touching the offices, the back hallways, or a chapel that’s still in decent shape.
I tell owners to walk in their own front door as if it were the first time. Families make up their minds in that first minute, well before they meet a director. They notice the smell, the light, the carpet under their feet, and whether the chairs look inviting. By the time you shake their hand, they’ve already decided a good deal about you.
Restrooms get less attention than they should. Families at a long visitation will use them, and a cramped, dated restroom tells them a lot. Some of our best client relationships started small. One even began with just two restrooms we updated for accessibility.
Finish one complete path well rather than spreading the same money thin across the building. Half-finished rooms everywhere just look like you ran out of money.
| A solid funeral home interior refresh—paint, carpet, wall covering, drapery, and furniture—typically runs $80,000 to $200,000 depending on facility size. |
Not every owner can spend $150,000, and plenty don’t need to. When the budget is tight, I walk the building with the owner, room by room. These eight pieces of furniture have too much wear and need to go. These cushions are sagging, so we re-cushion them and keep the frames. The carpet in the front area gets replaced. The art from the 70s comes down.
In the lobby, we might lay tile with a carpet inset and carpet flanking it, which holds up at the door and keeps the room quiet. None of that adds up to a total refresh, but it revives the space and makes it attractive to the community again.
Furniture selection in a funeral home needs extra thought now, because families gather differently. Services have grown more personal and less formal, and some funeral homes have turned traditional parlors into lounge areas. In NFDA’s 2025 consumer research, 58.3% of respondents had attended a funeral at a non-traditional location.
Many of those are graveside or at-home services, but families are clearly comfortable gathering outside a funeral home. To keep those services under your roof, you need a visitation room that can go from a small gathering to a photo display to a larger service. Put money into flexible seating and adjustable lighting before another matching set of formal furniture.
What to Check Before Anything Comes Down
Most owners assume the first step is picking carpet samples and paint colors. I understand why. Samples are the part you can hold in your hand. But before anyone orders anything, I want to walk the building and see what the refresh is actually going to run into.
Accessibility usually comes up first. Once you start altering rooms, the law can require you to make the route to them accessible, and in older funeral homes the restrooms are often where that shows up. Better to plan for it on day one than hear about it from an inspector.
Then I look at what’s under the finishes. Old carpet can hide water damage or a subfloor that won’t take new tile, and old wallpaper can come off with pieces of the drywall attached. I’d rather find those things on a walk-through than after the new materials arrive.
| Before you pick finishes, walk the building. Accessibility requirements and what’s under the old materials can both change your budget and your timeline. |
When the Decision Is Made for You
Sometimes the question isn’t whether to refresh. A client called us recently after a fire damaged part of his building and smoke got into the rest. Everything soft in the place smells like smoke, so it all has to go. He’s rebuilding and wants to redo the whole interior while he’s at it.
His insurance will cover part of it. Policies often pay the depreciated value of damaged items rather than the cost of new ones, and that difference adds up. He may need to add roughly $50,000 of his own to finish the job the way he wants.
If you face something similar, plan the whole interior before the insurance money arrives, then fit the claim and your own funds into that plan. Otherwise you may end up buying near copies of what you had.
Architect, Interior Designer, or Funeral Home Specialist?
The answer depends on scope. For paint, fabric, and furniture alone, a good commercial interior designer can do fine work. Once the project touches walls, exits, restrooms, lighting circuits, or anything a building official will review, you’ll usually need a licensed architect.
What neither title guarantees is an understanding of how a funeral home runs: how a casket moves from the prep room to the chapel without crossing the lobby, or how two visitations can happen at once without one family hearing the other. Those details decide whether a room serves families with dignity on a busy night.
JST Design Studio has worked on those details for five decades, and we take on small projects as gladly as large ones. The most expensive room in a funeral home is the one that may look beautiful but doesn’t serve the family sitting in it.
Think about the photographs families bring in for a service: a wedding portrait, a grainy snapshot from a fishing trip. They choose them carefully. Now picture one of those photographs in a scuffed, cracked frame from thirty years ago. The picture hasn’t changed, but somehow it looks like it’s worth less.
Your building is the frame around the service you give. Everything your staff does for a family sits inside it, and a dated frame makes that care look smaller than it is.
Start at your own front door this week, and look at it the way a stranger would. Then give us a call, whether you need new lobby carpet or a new chapel. Small projects are often how our best relationships begin.
Start a ConversationFrequently Asked Questions
Can we stay open during an interior refresh?
Usually, yes. Most refreshes can be phased room by room, with the loudest work scheduled around services, so families never walk into a construction zone. Plan on having at least one visitation room out of use at a time, and make sure your staff knows the schedule.
Does a cosmetic refresh need a permit?
Paint, fabric, and furniture usually don’t. New flooring sometimes does, and anything involving electrical work, plumbing, walls, or exits almost always does. Requirements vary by city, so check with your local building department or your architect before you book contractors.
Will insurance pay for a full interior replacement after smoke damage?
Often only part of it. Many policies pay the depreciated value of damaged items, which can leave a gap between the check and the cost of replacing everything new. Review your coverage with your agent before you need it. If you do have a loss, plan the whole interior before you start ordering replacements.
How often should a funeral home update its interiors?
There’s no fixed schedule, but forty years is too long. I’d rather see an owner make smaller updates every several years, a room or a finish at a time, than wait until the whole building needs everything at once. Families notice a building that has been continually cared for.
Is a refresh worth it if we might build new in a few years?
Often, yes, if you keep it modest. Put the money into furniture you can take with you and into the rooms families use most. A new building is years away from its first service, and the families you serve this year are walking in now.