Published: 26 August 2026. Updated: 26 August 2026.
A Digital Product Passport for furniture will describe the product. It will not, by itself, tell a dealer which configured chair was installed on the third floor in Utrecht, in what condition, or who last replaced the armrest. Those are two files. Product identity is one. The installed base after handover is the other.
On 20 July 2026 the European Commission opened the Digital Product Passport Registry and a testing environment. Economic operators can register each passport through a user interface or an API. Product data stays with the operator. The Registry holds unique identifiers and associated metadata. That is a real step. It is also easy to misread as a furniture inventory.
What is a Digital Product Passport for furniture?
A Digital Product Passport is a digital container of product information. Under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, it is meant to hold data that supports sustainability, circularity and compliance. The Commission’s DPP overview says a data carrier, such as a QR code, can link the physical product to that container. Access depends on the user’s role.
For furniture, that still means the product: identity, materials, and whatever a future delegated act requires. It does not mean the project file. It does not mean the chair on a named floor, in a named client building, with a service history attached.
What the DPP Registry actually holds
The Commission is explicit about the split. Data is stored in a decentralised manner. Operators register each DPP in the Registry. The Registry itself stores unique identifiers and associated metadata, not the full product file. Registration can be proven with a secure electronic document, which the Commission presents as useful in business-to-business transactions.
Eight CEN-CENELEC standards underpin interoperability. Six are already published: unique identifiers, interoperability, data carriers, APIs, data exchange protocols and data storage. The remaining two sit on the Commission’s indicative timeline for September 2026.
That is plumbing for product identity across the Single Market. It is not a register of what a project furnisher installed in a building.
Where furniture stands under ESPR
The Registry is built to support ESPR product groups including textiles, steel and aluminium, tyres, furniture, ICT and energy-related products. It will also support groups under other legislation, including certain large batteries.
The first implementation deadline named with the launch is 18 February 2027, for certain types of large batteries. Furniture is on the list of groups the infrastructure will support. It is not a duty that applies to an office chair today.
The same Commission overview lists a furniture delegated act for 2028. That timeline is marked indicative. After a delegated act, economic operators get a transition of at least 18 months.
Interpretation: treat 2028 as a planning horizon, not a start date in the diary. The furniture data fields, the identification level, and who must issue what have not been written. Anyone claiming a furniture passport is obligatory now is ahead of the law.
What is an installed base in the furniture industry?
An installed base is the furniture a dealer has actually delivered and left in use: which products, in which configuration, for which customer, at which site, floor and room, and what has happened to those pieces since handover. It is the live record after the project, not the catalogue page and not the closed order.
That is what furniture asset management is for, and why furniture lifecycle management starts after installation rather than at the quotation.
Product data is not the installed base
During a project, a dealer usually knows exactly what was sold: manufacturer, product, configuration, quantity, finish, destination floor, price. That knowledge lives in a pCon integration, in Configura CET, an ERP, a quotation pack, a mailbox. After delivery the project is closed. The customer then lives with those pieces for ten or twenty years of moves, repairs, storage, reuse and replacement.
A passport, when it exists, describes the product. A project installs hundreds of configured variants across buildings. The same task-chair family can leave the factory in six fabrics, two mechanisms and three arm options, then be split across three floors and a storage cage. Catalog identity and the piece on the floor are not the same record. Both will be needed. Only the first is being standardised in the DPP system.
Manufacturers hold the product. Dealers hold the project. Facility teams inherit the furniture. If those three views never meet in one file, every later question becomes archaeology.
The questions start after handover
The call that arrives is rarely “please look up the product group.” It is a broken armrest in Utrecht, a floor that is being emptied, a warranty question on a chair nobody can name, a take-back request for a floorplate that has been reshuffled twice. Facility and workplace teams already want a file they can use. Service already arrives as a photo and a location. Circular promises already fail when nobody can identify, locate or value what is on site.
Opening a five-year-old quotation to guess the model is the current workaround. It does not scale, and it does not survive staff changes. A future furniture passport does not close that gap on its own. An identifier with no client, no configuration, no room and no service history is a label without a job.
This is why the Registry news matters operationally, not only legally. Customers will keep asking for the file whether or not a furniture DPP exists. The dealer who can answer from the installed base will still be in the account. The dealer who has to reconstruct the project from PDFs will lose the conversation to whoever can.
What a dealer should keep after the project
The useful work is already the same, with or without a furniture act. Do not let the project dissolve into PDFs and closed orders. Keep what was configured, where it went, and what happened next, in a file the dealer still owns.
That file is the operational layer after handover: customer, site, floor, room; the configured article that was actually delivered; the documents that belong to the piece; the later request that belongs in furniture service management. Project data import is how most of that file is born. It comes from the systems that already held the project, not from a recount with a clipboard two years later. The customer then works in a dealer portal the dealer still owns.
If a furniture passport arrives later, it still has to land somewhere operational. The dealer who kept the installed-base file can put product identity next to the piece that was delivered. The dealer who did not will start again with a walk-through.
Questions dealers are already asking
Does furniture require a Digital Product Passport?
Not today. The first hard deadline the Commission named with the Registry launch is 18 February 2027, for certain large batteries. A furniture delegated act is listed for 2028 and marked indicative. After that act, operators get at least 18 months. Furniture DPP is a planning topic, not a current legal duty.
Who is responsible for furniture DPP data?
The furniture act has not been written, so no one should pretend the roles are settled. Under ESPR, product-specific rules assign duties to economic operators who place products on the EU market. That is typically the manufacturer or importer, not the dealer who configured and installed the project. Dealers will still be asked for the file of what was delivered.
Can a DPP be connected to an individual furniture asset?
A data carrier can link a physical product to its passport. That is still product identity. Connecting that identity to a client, a floor, a configuration and a service history is a different job. Interpretation: those two layers will have to meet. The meeting place, for a dealer, is the file after the project.
Where the two layers can meet
The Commission is building the product side. For furniture dealers the opportunity is not a code on a chair. The harder job is connecting manufacturer product data with projects, customers, locations and the operational history of the pieces that were actually delivered. That is the layer Furnify is built for: the furniture file after handover.
See how furniture management keeps that file after the project is closed.