Dates last checked: 10 September 2026 against the organiser’s own announcement of the 140th session. Hall allocations and zone names move between editions — confirm on cantonfair.org.cn before you book anything. We don’t run the fair and we’re not affiliated with it.
Homeware looks like the simple phase. A mug is a mug, a chair is a chair, and the sample on the table is exactly what you are buying. That is precisely why it catches people. The regulation on this catalogue is heavier than on almost anything in Phase 1 — every item that touches food carries migration limits — and the failure modes are not defects you can see. They are a glaze that releases lead, a panel with no formaldehyde record, and a wood moisture content that only becomes a problem after the container has crossed the equator.
What is in this phase
Everything that ends up inside a home.
Phase 2 runs 23–27 October 2026 at the Canton Fair Complex in Guangzhou, under the heading Quality Home Life. Broadly, it covers:
- Kitchenware and housewares — cookware, cutlery, tableware, small kitchen tools and general household goods.
- Ceramics, glass and porcelain — tableware, ornamental ceramics and glassware.
- Furniture and building materials — indoor and outdoor furniture, fittings, tile, sanitary ware and finishing materials.
- Home décor, gifts and festival products — decorative goods, seasonal and holiday lines, woven crafts and rattan.
- Garden, clocks and optical — gardening products, timepieces and optical instruments.
- Fashion jewellery — a newer dedicated zone in this phase.
Phase 2 closes on 27 October, followed by the interval of 28–30 October before Phase 3 opens. If you are also walking Phase 1, note the three clear days between them.
What actually goes wrong
Six failures, and only one is visible.
These are the ones we see repeatedly in homeware and furniture. Note how many are laboratory questions rather than visual ones — that is the defining feature of this phase:
- Food contact that was never tested. Anything a meal touches falls under EU 1935/2004 and, for plastics, 10/2011 — LFGB where Germany is the market, FDA where the US is. A supplier who has only ever sold domestically has usually never run a migration test, and will agree to your requirement without understanding what it costs them.
- Lead and cadmium release from glaze. Ceramics and glazed tableware carry release limits, and the limit applies to the production glaze, not the sample glaze. This is a laboratory test on production units. There is no way to look at a plate and know.
- Formaldehyde in composite wood. US-bound furniture and panel goods sit under TSCA Title VI, built on the CARB Phase 2 limits. The certification belongs to the panel mill, not the furniture factory — so the question is which mill supplied this batch, and whether anyone kept the record.
- Moisture content, which is the quiet one. Solid wood assembled at Guangdong humidity and shipped into a dry northern winter splits, warps and opens at the joints. It passes every visual inspection at the factory. A moisture meter reading at production is a two-minute check that prevents a season of returns.
- Glaze, grain and shade between batches. Your approved sample came from one firing or one dye lot. Tile, ceramics and painted goods drift between batches, and the tolerance you will accept is something to agree in writing before production, not to argue about after.
- Flat-pack that cannot be assembled. Missing fittings, an unillustrated instruction sheet, and a hardware bag counted by eye. It is the largest driver of returns in furniture and the cheapest thing in this list to check.
An inspection day catches the visual, dimensional and assembly half of that list on the factory floor, against your approved sample. The chemical half belongs in a laboratory.
- Rate Quoted per request, priced by the man-day — one inspector, at one factory, for one day. That is the same unit as a Bolang Factory Visit, priced by the day so that a job needing two or three days is transparent rather than re-quoted.
- Canton Fair rate 15% off, on inspections booked between 15 October – 30 November 2026 for goods sourced at the 140th session. Tell us that is where the supplier came from and we apply it.
- What a day covers One inspector, one factory, one product line. Production units compared against your approved sample, dimensions and finish measured, moisture read on solid wood, flat-pack units assembled and hardware counted, sampled to a standard agreed with you in writing.
- Travel At cost where the factory is outside Guangdong, shown as separate lines rather than folded into the day rate.
Where the day stops
Laboratory testing is not a man-day. Chemical and physical tests are run by an accredited laboratory and billed at the laboratory’s price. We arrange them and pass the invoice through without a markup, and we do not pretend an in-line check substitutes for one.
Migration, lead release and formaldehyde are not inspection findings. They are laboratory results on production units, and no amount of time on a factory floor substitutes for one. We will tell you plainly which of your products needs a test rather than selling you inspection days that cannot answer the question.
A failed inspection still costs a day. We are paid for going, not for a pass, which is the only arrangement under which a report is worth reading. Re-inspection after rework is a new day at the same rate — with one exception, which is our standard term everywhere on this site: if our own report was incomplete or we got something wrong, we go back at our cost.
The free part
One quote in. A factory price back.
Homeware quotes diverge on things the price does not mention: the gauge of the steel, the thickness of the glaze, whether the wood is solid or veneered over board, and how many pieces fit in a carton. Two quotes that look ten per cent apart are often describing different products.
Send us one Phase 2 quote and we will price the same specification from a factory we have used — free, one product per company, no obligation. Include the material and finish, the dimensions and weight, the packing configuration, the quantity and whether it is food contact, which changes the cost base more than anything else on the list.
We are a trading company, so read our number knowing we would like the order — which is why we send the specification behind it for you to check elsewhere. Sometimes the honest answer is that your fair quote is already competitive. The hub page has the full terms.
Timing
The useful window opens on 27 October.
Nothing you agree in a hall on the last afternoon is a decision you had time to make properly. The window that matters opens when Phase 2 closes on 27 October, while the shortlist is fresh and no deposit has moved.
Homeware also has a seasonal edge that the other phases do not. A great deal of this catalogue is bought for the following autumn and Christmas, so the production slot matters as much as the price. Agreeing your sampling standard and your batch-variation tolerance — shade, grain, glaze — in October is a conversation. Negotiating them in June against a shipping deadline is a concession.
Before you travel is better still: send us the exhibitor list for your categories and we will screen the registry entries in advance, so the hours you spend in the halls go to companies already worth meeting. That is paid work, quoted against the list you send.