LED furniture: hire or buy? When each is worth it

With illuminated event furniture the question is rarely the furniture itself, but whether to buy it or hire it. Fortunately this is one of those decisions that does not have to be made on instinct: our hire pricing consists of a single rule, and the tipping point can be worked out from it in a couple of seconds. In this article we walk through the arithmetic, then look at three typical cases - a one-off wedding, a company holding four events a year, and a permanent terrace installation - all three with the real gross list prices from our own range. The figures come from the September 2026 price list, and at every step we note what was multiplied by what, so you can transfer it to your own items.

The rule in one sentence: the daily rate is 20% of the gross price

One day's hire costs 20 per cent of the product's gross sale price, rounded to the nearest HUF 100, VAT included. There is no separate rate card, no multiplier that differs by category, and no item to which a different rule applies. A few concrete examples from the range: the daily rate for the 40 cm cube stool at HUF 45,000 incl. VAT is HUF 9,000 incl. VAT; for the narrow Ø58 cm cocktail table at HUF 109,000 incl. VAT it is HUF 21,800; for the Ø100 cm round dining table at HUF 215,000 incl. VAT it is HUF 43,000; and for the 150 cm bar counter at HUF 290,000 incl. VAT it is HUF 58,000. This simplicity has one convenient side effect: because the daily rate is always the same proportion, you do not have to examine individual products separately to compare hire with purchase. What holds for a cube stool holds for a ten-piece lounge set. Add one thing: we deliberately apply no multiplier to multi-day hire, because blindly multiplying the daily rate would give an unrealistic figure. So for three days you do not pay three times the daily rate but the individual quotation we give for your list - and that is better value than the simple sum of the daily rates.

The five-day tipping point - and why it is not exactly five days

If the daily rate is 20% of the purchase price, then five hire days come to exactly the purchase price: 5 × 20% = 100%. That is where the balance sits. On the fifth hire day you have paid out nominally the same as if you had bought the piece - with the difference that hiring leaves you with nothing, whereas buying leaves it standing in your store. In practice the tipping point comes somewhat later, for two reasons. First, the individual quotation given for multi-day and larger configurations is better value than the sum of the daily rates, so in reality you do not reach the full purchase price in exactly five days. Second, on the purchase side there are items that do not exist with hire: the store, the time spent charging, the cleaning, arranging transport, and the fact that the battery is a wear part. The honest rule of thumb is therefore not "buy above five days" but: around five event days it is definitely time to do the sums - and if you are above ten, purchase is almost certainly the better route.

First case: a one-off wedding with a garden reception

Take a garden wedding for 40 people, where illuminated standing tables and seating are needed for the reception after the ceremony. Three or four guests stand comfortably around a cocktail table of around Ø80 cm, so for 40 people 10-13 tables is the realistic order of magnitude. The simplest way to lay that out is with the LED cocktail reception package, which consists of three narrow Ø58 cm cocktail tables and six high stools: four such packages give 12 tables and 24 stools. The package has a gross list price of HUF 766,650 incl. VAT, so buying four packages would be HUF 3,066,600 incl. VAT (4 × 766,650). Its daily hire rate is HUF 153,300 incl. VAT (766,650 × 0.2, rounded to the nearest hundred), so for four packages that is HUF 613,200 incl. VAT for one day. The same furniture, for one wedding: HUF 613,200 incl. VAT to hire against HUF 3,066,600 incl. VAT to buy. The difference is HUF 2,453,400 incl. VAT, and on top of that, if you buy, the next morning 36 pieces of illuminated furniture are standing in your garage waiting to be dealt with. For a one-off occasion hire is not a close decision but an obvious one.

Second case: four corporate events a year

This is where it gets interesting. Suppose a company holds four evenings a year - a year-end party, two client meetings and a product launch - and wants three LED cocktail sets as a networking zone for each. The cocktail set contains a Ø80 cm cocktail table and four compact bar stools, with a gross list price of HUF 494,000 incl. VAT and a daily rate of HUF 98,800 (494,000 × 0.2). Three sets therefore cost HUF 296,400 incl. VAT a day, which over four occasions a year is HUF 1,185,600 (4 × 296,400). Buying the three sets costs HUF 1,482,000 incl. VAT (3 × 494,000). At the end of the first year hire is still cheaper: HUF 1,185,600 against HUF 1,482,000, both incl. VAT. At the second event of the second year, however, the balance tips, because by then you are at 5 event days, and 5 × 296,400 = HUF 1,482,000 incl. VAT, which is the purchase price to the forint. By the end of the third year hire stands at HUF 3,556,800 incl. VAT in total, while purchase is still at HUF 1,482,000 incl. VAT - plus the storage and charging that come with running it yourself. At four occasions a year, then, the second year is the point where purchase starts to make sense, provided the company has somewhere to store the stock and somebody to look after it between two events.

Third case: a permanent terrace installation

The third case is the simplest, yet many people come to us with it: a restaurant, cafe or guesthouse wants illuminated furniture for its own terrace. Say three compact terrace sets, each with two armchairs and a light coffee table. The set has a gross list price of HUF 304,000 incl. VAT and a daily rate of HUF 60,800, so three sets are HUF 912,000 incl. VAT to buy and HUF 182,400 incl. VAT in hire charges per day. A terrace, though, does not open for one evening but runs through the season: you would reach the full purchase price in five evenings outside (5 × 182,400 = 912,000), and the hire charge for a hundred-evening season would be twenty times the purchase price. For a fixed venue there is therefore nothing to argue about: there you should buy. The good news is that the furniture takes this kind of use - the body is IP54 rated, UV-resistant polyethylene that does not fade in the sun and will stand outside for a whole season, and cleaning is done with a damp cloth, not an upholstery cleaner. With a terrace the question is not hire versus purchase but how large a stock to start with - and there it is worth starting small and expanding in the second season.

Cheaper as a package - and cheaper to hire too

The sale price of ready-made sets is 5 per cent less than the sum of their members' list prices to begin with, and since the daily rate is 20 per cent of that same price, the discount automatically carries over to hire as well. The cocktail reception package is a good example: the three narrow cocktail tables (3 × 109,000 = HUF 327,000 incl. VAT) and the six high stools (6 × 80,000 = HUF 480,000 incl. VAT) come to HUF 807,000 separately, whereas the package costs HUF 766,650 - HUF 40,350 less, all incl. VAT. In hire the same difference appears daily: the pieces separately are HUF 161,400 incl. VAT a day and the package HUF 153,300 a day, so HUF 8,100 less on every single day. The most affordable way in is the chill set with four cube stools and a coffee table: HUF 237,500 incl. VAT to buy, HUF 47,500 a day to hire. At the top end stands the VIP lounge set with a large table, at HUF 1,016,500 incl. VAT and HUF 203,300 a day. That range shows nicely how much room you have: the same 20 per cent rule applies to a forty-thousand item and a million-forint one, so your decision logic does not change with the size of the event.

What to weigh up beyond the arithmetic

Alongside the bare figures, factor in four things. The first is storage: the furniture is not stackable, a 190 cm sofa or a 195 cm relax lounger fills a serious load space on its own, and the square metres of your own store cost money too - only you can put a price on that. The second is the time taken by charging and cleaning: the manufacturer states 6-8 hours of light depending on the colour but no charging time, so the day before the event always has to be planned in and every piece has to go on charge. The third is the battery: it is the one genuine wear part in this furniture, and since the manufacturer states no cycle count, we do not promise a service life for it either - treat it as a risk, not as a line item. The fourth is transport: the method, the timing and the charge are determined by the venue and the quantity, so with hire we agree it in the confirmation, and with purchase you have to reckon with your own logistics. If you want the details of running it yourself, our maintenance guide goes point by point through what has to be done between two events.

Three questions, and the decision is made

If you do not want to build a spreadsheet, three questions are enough. One: how many days a year do you need it for? Below five event days, hire; above ten, buy; in between, work it out by the method above. Two: is there somewhere to put it between two events? If you have no covered, dry, frost-free store, it does not matter that purchase comes out better mathematically - in practice it will not. Three: do you need the same furniture every time? If the nature of your events varies - a cocktail reception one time, a seated dinner the next, a lounge the third - then the flexibility of hire is worth something in itself, because you always take what that particular evening calls for. If you are unsure, tell us how many times a year you would use it and at what kind of events - we will look it over and say which works out better. The same 45 pieces of furniture and 23 sets are available both to buy and to hire, so the decision is not narrowed by the range but purely by your own pattern of use.