How do I charge shipping on large furniture items on Etsy while offering free shipping?

Hi! On Etsy, the free shipping guarantee over $35 applies automatically to US buyers on any listing priced $35+ (and qualifying carts), so there isn’t a clean “exclude these furniture listings from the guarantee” toggle. If you need buyers to pay real, location-based shipping on large furniture, the best setup is usually to turn off the $35 free shipping guarantee and then offer free shipping only on the listings you want via shipping profiles.

Here’s the practical way most furniture sellers handle it:

Option A (best control): Turn off the $35 guarantee, use shipping profiles instead

1. Disable the free shipping guarantee (Shop Manager → Settings → Shipping settings → Free shipping guarantee).
2. Create two separate shipping profiles:
   • Small items profile: set to Free shipping (or your current “built into price” approach).
   • Furniture profile: set to Fixed price shipping, and use Etsy’s “Add another location” to create different rates by destination (for example: Continental US, Alaska/Hawaii, Canada, etc.).
3. Apply the furniture shipping profile only to your furniture listings.

This keeps your small products “free shipping” while furniture correctly charges shipping.

Option B: Keep the $35 guarantee (but you’ll be forced into one of these compromises)

If you leave the $35 guarantee on, Etsy will still show free shipping to US buyers on those furniture listings. Your realistic workarounds are:

• Build shipping into the furniture price (usually based on your “worst case” zone), and accept that nearby buyers will overpay a bit compared to far buyers, or you’ll eat some cost on far shipments.
• Use shipping upgrades (buyers can still be charged for upgrades), but this is risky because many buyers will just choose the free/base option and you’ll still be on the hook for the real freight cost.

How to handle “varies a lot by location” freight (without guessing wrong)

Etsy doesn’t do true freight-style quoting by ZIP the way a dedicated LTL checkout does. The safest Etsy-native ways are:

• Tiered fixed rates by region (most common): separate prices for “US lower 48” vs “AK/HI,” and optionally specific countries.
• Custom listing after a quote: put in the description something like “Shipping will be quoted based on your location; purchase after we confirm delivery pricing,” then create a custom listing with the correct shipping once you have the destination.

One more important tip: if one furniture listing has size options (e.g., 48” / 72”) that change freight cost a lot, don’t rely on variations—Etsy variations don’t have separate shipping costs. It’s usually cleaner to make separate Etsy listings per size or per shipping class.

If you tell me (1) what country you ship from, (2) where you ship to (US only vs US/Canada), and (3) whether it’s parcel carriers or freight/LTL, I can suggest the cleanest profile layout (and how many regions to split into) for your shop.