I hear this a lot, but my fairly inexpensive IKEA sofa is about eight years old with no problems at all so far.
EDIT: Actually, in general I've found that my IKEA furniture has done pretty well (basically everything in the house is IKEA) with the sole exception of a "Lack" coffee table, whose surface is kinda disintegrating after 8 years (I think it's basically made of cardboard with a veneer...). The name should perhaps have been a warning.
Twenty some years ago I used to work at a business that made and delivered sofas. They've got showrooms in key large cities in North America, fancy schmancy top end stuff.
The factory was a real place; the frames were made of solid wood and plywood, there was a sewing floor and even one (incredibly kooky) person whose sole job was to stuff the pillows. This guy was in a little room full of feathers all day, and they'd follow him around to the cantina and bathroom like a cartoon character.. but I digress.
My job there for a while was to make the sofa legs -- that was a sixteen step process, and they didn't even trust me to glue the boards together, just to do the cuts and shape the pieces. Sand and stain and wax and polish, yes sir!
They had a dedicated delivery crew, and what the article mentions about packaging is true -- things would be blanketed and wrapped up just the right way, then tetris-ed onto the truck. Sitting shotgun on that truck and hauling sofas up stairs and through various spaces was what I did after making the legs got too boring.
These sofas sold for $3000 ~ $4000 and up, and that was at the break of the millennium. I think the cheapest chair they had was around $2000. I should really swing by the showroom and see how much these are now -- and whether they're still made like they used to be.
You can still get made in the USA sofas with real hardwood, not rubber wood, which is fine, or worse, soft pine or particleboard or OSB) North Carolina was and is the center of solid wood furniture), and they still cost several to many thousands of dollars, and they will still last 100+ years with a couple reupholsterings or so, but most furniture comes from Asia now and is sold for 10x less, and is not worth reupholstering, and you will be lucky if it lasts 10 years.
The was a great company an old colleague of mine started called Interior Define that sourced custom furniture from China for a BluDot price but much higher quality, but they did not survive the pandemic and have since been sold in bankruptcy to a company that has reduced the quality to par
or worse, soft pine or particleboard or OSB
Having done a lot of DIY projects over the last decade, I've really shifted my view of OSB. Originally I would lump it in with particleboard, but I've since drastically changed my view of it. Particleboard is, truly, junk. OSB and plywood are both pretty good products, and for some uses superior to hardwoods (dimensional stability, for example). High quality plywoods are amazing products. OSB for structure or underlayments are really quite good.
Particleboard is absolutely useless, MDF is mostly useless except using as a guaranteed flat surface on top of something to support it, hardboard is pretty useful in certain applications though. OSB is great and extremely affordable as sheathing, and there's a massive variety of plywood that's great for their respective purposes - from cheap rough sheathing, mid-grade for shop projects and filling large gaps in furniture, all the way up to beautiful and supremely strong Baltic birch.
Avoid particleboard like a plague if you can afford it, appparently most of IKEA products now made of these since they are widely being used in dirt cheap furniture construction. They melt like ice once in contact with water. Recently, just had to chopped off all four legs of a bookshelf then replaced them with metal legs. The bookshelf legs somehow got damaged in contact with accumulated air-cond water droplets.
Ikea has two or three price points for each product. The cheapest will be made from chipboard or even cardboard. The most expensive varies, it might be pine or even something better.
I bought their highest end leather couch with a fold out bed a couple years ago, due to time constraints. I was very unhappy to see it was made from chipboard. Of course their shelves and such you can see what you are buying, but I would not trust anything upholstered myself.
Indeed:
Frame: Plywood, Polyurethane foam 30 kg/cu.m., Particleboard, Solid wood, Fibreboard
An example of something that looks well-built is the Skogsta dining table [1].
Table top: Solid acacia, Clear acrylic lacquer, Clear lacquer
Leg/ Rail: Solid acacia, Acrylic paint
(Though the oak version, which costs more, is oak-veneered particleboard.)
Many Ikea things aren't designed to last. That table has cross-beams, so it has a better chance surviving a party where someone leans heavily against one end of it. Something like Mörbylånga [2] looks like it would collapse.
I would give the furniture on display a good shove to see how sturdy it is.
[1] https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/skogsta-dining-table-acacia-704...
[2] https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/moerbylanga-table-oak-veneer-br...
I actually have the Mörbylånga table at home and I find it very sturdy. One thing which the pictures doesn't show is that there are two supporting beams under the table, which provides the necessary strength to not collapse on first touch. Obviously, I have not done the actual test, but I will try to remember and report back if the table ever breaks.
Tangential, but if your table doesn't break in the next few days then you won't be able to report back, since editing and replying to comments get disabled after some days. I don't know what the exact time frame is like though.
There are a few things that are ok to robust. * EKORRE, the Rocking-moose is indestructable.
* Furniturewise the bathroom furniture, especially GODMORGON are ok. I think because they have to survice contact with humidity.
* The HILVER bamboo legs are that good, that we kept them even after getting rid of the cardboard table tops.
I feel like the thing to do is to give whatever you are looking at in the showroom a pretty good shake, and to sit down on it hard. If it's creaky or loose at all there, it'll fall apart in no time at home
IKEA's cheapened their offerings quite a bit over the years. Pre-pandemic, used to be you could buy a solid wood butcher block and solid wood cabinet doors and fronts. Now? The butcher block is particleboard with end grain themed veneer and the closest to solid wood cabinet hardware you'll get is a set of bamboo drawer fronts.
Particleboard is absolutely useless, MDF is mostly useless except using as a guaranteed flat surface on top of something to support it
Unless there is a drop of moisture, then you throw it all away.
It’s so depressingly wasteful.
I ended up doing MDF tops for my workbench (1" MDF over 3/4 plywood), and finished them with shelac for a protected, low-friction surface. It is still vulnerable to water damage, but not as bad as unfinished, and as a spoil layer it's not bad. It has plusses and minuses.
If you ever need to replace that MDF, try this: https://epoxytops.com/phenolic-resin-countertops/
I'm using it for my next workbench top.
Oh neat!! Thanks for showing me this
I could be wrong, but isn't MDF basically made from the waste of wood products? I mean, it's graded and standarised. But MDF _is_ the waste. So to waste it again is no great loss.
But as with all things, I'm certain some producers are using raw/virgin materials. Probably from wood that is dirt cheap.
Unless there is a drop of moisture, then you throw it all away.
I went with IKEA's Sektion cabinets to replace some forty year old particleboard cabinets that warped after years of water damage from a burst pipe. They came with a twenty-five year warranty so there's clearly some expectation of longevity.
MDF is also great if you need homogeneous materials (for stuff like speaker cabinets). And for those more than sturdy enough, they are also always protected by some layer.
The sheer amount of glue used in OSB and other manufactured sheet wood is pretty gross unfortunately. They are functionally useful for certain use cases, I just can't get myself to reach for it over real lumber and joinery.
Why does the glue concern you?
Off gassing. Plywood is a big VOC emitter.
Agreed. The range on plywood is pretty drastic and most of us only use the bad stuff. I wonder how many of us with homes made in the last 20-30 years realize that most of our joists are engineered joists made of plywood (basically wooden I-beams).
The alternative is usually a truss which tend to bounce like a trampoline over long spans. The engineered I-joists are really good, and the rim joist from the same company is ridiculously tough.
OSB is durable but you still need to be wary of formaldehyde in your home
There's a good choice in formaldehyde free boards these days. In the UK a popular one is Sterling Zero.
and you will be lucky if it lasts 10 years.
I have at least 20 various pieces of furniture from IKEA that have lasted more than 10 years, some even closing on 20, even after multiple moves to various college dorms. Dresser drawers, dining table, sofa, bed platform, sit stand desk, etc.
I do not think I have ever thrown something out for breaking. Maybe gets scuffed or scratched up or chipped, but you can mostly use one of those latex paint touch up markers and make the damage nearly invisible.
IKEA products seem to vary wildly between "partical board disposable" to "made from actual wood and somewhat decent."
IKEA sells many products in a couple tiers. E.g. if you get the cheapest billy bookcase it'll just about barely hold up if it's full of books and you don't nudge it. If you get one of the more expensive models it'll be surprisingly sturdy instead.
Same sort of thing applies to nearly all their products. Yes they sell cheap crap -- that still serves its purpose mind you -- but they also sell slightly more upscale furniture that'll actually survive a couple decades.
And it's not like going for a "normal" furniture store is any guarantee either. My previous couch was from a regular furniture store and it broke right in half at around the 5 year mark. Upon inspection one of the cross members was significantly tapered, still had bark on it and everything. On one end it was a solid 2x4, on the other it was barely a 0.2x0.4.
And even the cheapest crap you can get from IKEA doesn't seem that bad to me. I've had one of those 5-euro LACK coffee tables for around six years and it really only has some minor surface damage on the top. Far away from throwing out.
Although at the same time, I think I'm on my third MARKUS chair because of the gas spring leaking. Thankfully they do have long warranties, so you can exchange them if it doesn't last for 10 years.
FYI you don't necessarily have to throw away an otherwise good office chair if the gas spring is leaking. You can replace just the gas spring.
Repair skills in the west have all but disappeared
I was able to fix quite a few items of furniture and electronics recently, but if you add cost of parts and labour of a professional, it’s just cheaper to replace
Oh man… need to check my chair :(
How did you discover this?
There was a black puddle under my chair.
It depends how well you treat it. Someone fidgety putting their feet on a €5 Lack table is enough to ruin it, as the connection between the legs and the tabletop is just double-ended screws.
You could even hang some servers underneath your LACK, aka the LackRack [0]
IKEA sells many products in a couple tiers. E.g. if you get the cheapest billy bookcase it'll just about barely hold up if it's full of books and you don't nudge it.
Agree, but still I just replaced a Billy bookcase that was over 15 years old and moved in 5 different places with me. It was really ugly looking in the end, and due a replacement. But even Ikea in more recent Billy they replaced metal parts for plastic ones and the "wood" seems even worse.
I agree with the comments below but would like to add that the IKEA of 10-20 years ago is not the IKEA of today. Many of their product lines have been made “more eco friendly” per their argument but in reality are cost saving measures. E.g wood countertops are veneer now and other things that you could buy as solid wood are veneer.
You got in when the going was good. I think you can still buy decent enough stuff but having moved a few times myself and then friends and family a lot of the newer stuff is one time use, don’t pick it up, don’t look at it cross eyed, kinda stuff and it shows.
More agreement! Ikea 20 years was twice the material you get today. Products could be taken apart and put back together multiple times. Not so today. Put together once, modify it if you want it to stay like that and if you really have to move it cross your fingers!
I have some 25 year old ikea that’s lasted well. Some was even solid wood and surprising nice( good quality hinges and laminates) But I haven’t gotten anything recent.
But I will say isn’t the last step in the assembly process the 10% probability that you’ll have to do some disassembly to reverse a piece that’s not quite put together correctly?
Room and Board sells great sofas that are made in the US. We've been very happy with ours.
It's made from solid wood and stuffed with real feather down. It's several years old now and has shown no signs of aging.
I just wish their designs weren’t so staid.
Wow you weren't kidding, those are absolutely hideous. And I thought IKEA furniture design was as minimal as it got.
I recently cut open a heavily used R&B sofa and found 1” thick plywood used through the frame. It was solid.
The down feather pillows didn’t do well—lots of feathers made their way out of the pillow.
I've never really enjoyed down cushions on a functional everyday couch. Feathers inevitably make they're way out of the pillow, through the cushion's exterior fabric and into your back/arm/leg/etc... or just around the room. They lose loft and aren't as easy to replace as say cutting a piece or two of foam and inserting those. My current couch has a down cushion on the top of the seated part and backrest and when they go I'll replace them with memory foam.
Yeah I have furniture from there mainly because it was the only showroom I could find that hide a wide selection + was mostly solid wood or veneered cabinet grade plywood.
The TV stand I bought from there shows no signs of warping a few years later and has had a 70 pound TV sitting on it the entire time.
The pricing was also pretty reasonable for solid walnut that was made in the USA.
Agreed. We researched a ton of sofas and landed on Room and Board. Super happy so far.
Glad you mentioned this. When I did previous research before the quote that convinced me was that Room and Board couches have the highest resell value among furniture brands. I cannot find the source now but anecdotally it has appeared to be true.
I got a Room and Board 65" Jasper in Cognac Leather right before the pandemic. I thought I was overpaying and it ended up sitting in shipping for 4 months because of lockdowns. I was predisposed to hate the thing but it's become one of my most reliable large purchases. Very solidly built. The leather has held up perfectly in front of bright windows.
Room and Board makes very good furniture. When my wife and I moved into our new home a few years ago, we decided to invest in high quality furniture that would last decades. Originally we ordered a sofa from Interior Define that never arrived. Something wonky was going on with that company, many people never received their orders and they wouldn’t issue a refund. Thankfully we were still within the window to do a chargeback.
We have a sofa, coffee table, bed, nightstands, and some wall sconces from Room and Board. I am very impressed with the materials and build quality; I can tell everything will wear well and age nicely. Worth the investment, highly recommended.
A lot of meh furniture that uses steel will last, too.
I like steel in furniture, especially for larger items like bookshelves - you get the level of rigidity that you can only get from very expensive and massive chunks of hardwood.
Also it’s light, and makes moving much easier
larger items like bookshelves
I’m a huge fan of Lundia shelving. It seems to be strong enough to hold anything, it’s adjustable, comes in millions of sizes and looks good imho.
Bought our sectional from a Bassett showroom almost 10 years ago. Extremely comfortable and the thing still looks brand new. Checked a few items on their website and found that they're still made in North Carolina.
We have a Bassett sectional going on almost 10 years too. Family friend'd mom worked for/with Bassett and got us a B2B price somehow - only caveat was I had to pick it up myself at the distribution warehouse in LA.
It's a fun memory renting a box truck, driving to the industrial heart of LA while listening to Will Wheaton narrate "Masters of Doom" to pick it up.
We bought 2 Stickley sofas made in North Carolina. They cost close to $10k a piece.
You can still get quality, you just have to pay for it.
I used to live in North Carolina, and some of the outlet stores for furniture are insane. Still expensive but compared to what I would get anywhere else for the same price quite good. Hickory in particular with all of those chair statues everywhere.
I have long been thinking about the idea of saving up for a while and doing a big re-furnish trip down to North Carolina with a moving truck.
The was a great company an old colleague of mine started called Interior Define
My wife and I have one of their sofas—it's quite nice, although our lives might've been easier with one of the Burrow-style sofas that are easily disassembled for moves.
You can still get made in the USA sofas with real hardwood, not rubber wood, which is fine, or worse, soft pine or particleboard or OSB)
Where? I went around furniture stores and found it hard to discern any relationship between price and quality.
I think the problem I've noticed is - the furniture that is built to last very frequently fails the partner test - "that looks like old fart stuff".
Same sort of issue with cool remote controls. For example, la-z-boy has pretty good controls - remotes have better designs, have lots of adjustments, and motors seem to move faster. And they too fail the partner test - "that looks like old fart stuff"
I kind of like some stressless recliners.
oh, there is one class of furniture that has a lot of control - the massage chairs. Except they seem to be furniture you want to hide from everyone, they fail the "normal human being" test.
maybe I need to know pointers to other furniture/designs?
Partner sounds like a fashion victim. If social media consumption is making one's taste fond of low quality flashy crap I'd say grow some critical thinking skills.
I mean… not really. Quality and style generally are pretty correlated, with higher quality pieces traditionally being more “old school”. And that was basically GP comment’s point.
One can value form over function, especially if there’s a specific style that the rest of your house uses. If your entire house is decorated in a contemporary style, then a traditional sofa is just going to stand out like a sore thumb.
This whole thread is about overpriced crap that sells because people don't know better. And if one's partner prefer flashy crap to quality stuff by calling quality stuff "antiquated" because it doesn't conform to styles peddled in social media and are devoid of fundamental quality well... that's not a conflict of taste, that is a story about choosing flashy crap for the sake of flashiness. Which doesn't seem defensible to me.
Uh… what?
I already said “One can value form over function”. Each person has different needs and wants out of their furniture. Just because you don’t value form doesn’t mean it’s some unbelievable or “indefensible” concept.
I don’t want my house to look like it came out of the 1920s. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
If you think otherwise, then more power to you, but don’t hoist your beliefs and preconceptions on others.
Many furniture stores have a section with old timey stuff, I guess targeted at the 60+ market: ruffles and pleats and doily type shit. You can't expect anyone younger than a mummy to be enthused about buying that stuff new, whether or not it is better quality, and it's probably all the same cheap crap under the ruffles.
And in slightly younger but still old the iconic Laz-y-boy look is associated with boomer dads with more money than taste so I'd be shocked to see anyone not of retirement age excited to buy one new either.
I hate to tell you, I don't think you can buy a recliner that doesn't look like "old fart stuff". Recliners are kind of "old fart guy chairs".
The Eames lounge chair is a reasonable solution to this problem.
(It probably invokes other stereotypes. I don't really know, but either way, you'll be too comfortable to care.)
It looks like you should be smoking a pipe while lounging in it.
Feels 60's to me.
ETA: Basically unchanged since 1956 is why!
Disagree; you have to know where to look. Yeah, you go to the Lay-Z-Boy big box, you're gonna get that. We got a recliner from Ethan Allen that doesn't even look like a recliner. But you lean back, and voila... super comfy.
After looking at what had to be every nursing chair in the world we found that the most old-farty looking la-z-boy was better in every regard and easier to clean. Sometimes I just go in the nursery and doze off in it
My cynical ass assumes it's because they know goddamn well no one under 60 years old has $4,000 to spend on a properly made sofa, irrespective of desire or taste. I make six figures and I certainly don't.
My furniture is all cheap particle board shit because I can't afford anything nicer because I'm spending all my money on a mortgage, food, gas, and student loans. I don't think it's a matter so much of nobody wanting to make good quality products so much as all the companies that did do that and priced their products accordingly are running out of customers, because we're all getting strip-mined by the rest of life's expenses going up all the goddamn time. I would love nothing more than a gorgeous, well made sofa that will last me a solid chunk of my remaining life, but where the fuck am I getting the money for it?
It's the boots theory of economics applied to everything. I'll spend $7,000 on sofas before I die and still have a sore ass.
Gary Stevenson agrees with your assumption. If you haven't already, you should check out some of his work and recent book on this. TL;dr: your cynical take is correct.
Ugh this - my partner hates the sofa that I inherited from my mother, one that she told me she used to play on in the 1940s. It's a beast, with claw and ball feet that have stubbed many a toe, but I am fighting for its survival.
they fail the "normal human being" test
Hahah
Even Ikea has a "granny shit" sofa selection.
When I was in grad school I accidentally wandered into the workshop for Montauk (https://montauksofa.com/collections/sofa/montauk/) with my girlfriend. They were very polite and I took their card. A few years later when I had some money, and my girlfriend was my wife, I still had the card and we bought one. More than twenty years since we still have it and it's just starting to get to where some of the cushions need the down stuffing refreshed. Quality.
How did you accidentally wander into their workshop? That place was in a random industrial zone off the 20 somewhere near Point St Claire.. Also super spooky, how did you know I was talking about them?
I remember we were staying in a hotel Ibis in a cheap part of the city (I was still in grad school), not sure where now we went a few times. The hotels are now Travelodge, I think. We are avid walkers so we went down Rue Sherbrooke and angled toward the water and just stumbled onto it. It was sunny and the craftsmen had the doors open. So we went in just to see.
How did I know? I didn't. But it related to my own story about buying the one really high-quality piece of furniture I own.
He didn’t, you just accidentally doxed yourself.
Gorgeous design.
Please give us an update on how stuffed pillow guy is doing these days.
It was some how relevant. I had a similar job making sofas in similar price range. We also had a crazy person stuffing everything. I asked why his job was not in the normal task roulation. They said for that job you have to be insanely strong, have insane endurance and you have to be insane. The guy tried it one time. How hard could it be? After 3 hours he literally couldnt lift his arms.
They said for that job you have to be insanely strong, have insane endurance and you have to be insane.
Lmao. There's some jobs like that. Always heard (less surprisingly maybe) the morse code operators on ships tend to be kooky as hell too.
He stopped cheating at poker, so they set him free.
things would be blanketed and wrapped up just the right way, then tetris-ed onto the truck.
*tetris-ed and Sokoban-ed onto the truck
(Sorry, couldn't help myself)
I've posted about our ~$2000 West Elm sofa that disintegrated within 2 years in a similar previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37393399
The whole thing is just stapled together OSB.
I ripped the dust cover off and added 3 new frame stretchers made from 2x8 construction lumber (and tied other loose joints back together) and its done pretty well since then: https://imgur.com/a/bqlLgW3 (wish I'd gotten a few more pictures, but I was tired by this point). Just shocking how terrible the construction is.
As if it wasn't bad enough that most consumer goods have completely bifurcated into "junk" and "luxury", now it's hard to even tell which products fall into which category, because there is so much junk now being sold as luxury.
junk now being sold as luxury.
That's always been the case though. There has always been junk marketing itself as "luxury" to milk the nouveau riche. It's not like real Coach bags utilize some magic leather that doesn't degrade just the same as the $200 leather purse you buy from a local artisan. It's not like the brick that Supreme sold was made of some sort of magical clay. The luxury purse companies don't burn their leftover product to protect some secret of Dr Who purses that are bigger or magically organized on the inside, but because the entire value of the brand is "I can afford this and you cannot"
Luxury has ALWAYS been about signalling and displaying status and power. It's always about rubbing the prole's faces in their supposed supremacy. Remember, they have money because they are better than you, definitely not because there are systems and structures in place that make it easier to get rich for the already wealthy and connected.
Unfortunately it seems so many people really struggle to understand that while quality often costs a lot, costing a lot does not imply quality in any way. If you can afford to spend oodles on marketing for your product, you probably aren't spending as much on quality as people assume you would.
It's not like real Coach bags utilize some magic leather that doesn't degrade just the same as the $200 leather purse you buy from a local artisan.
Not sure why Coach was chosen for this example - I don't believe they are expensive; last I checked they were in the range of $200-500, which doesn't seem egregious as the actual luxury brands (ex. Hermes, where the entry level bags are $4,000).
That said, I feel there is a real difference in quality at various price points, and focusing on the material ("magic leather") is wrong. When I'm paying a premium I'm usually looking for in the dimensions of construction, and usually that means paying an actual professional who may charge $100/hr, vs 19 year old in Bangladesh. The two might be using the same material but the price difference comes from the person assembling the item.
The problem is you have a ton of companies (even "luxury" ones), that in an attempt to juice their stock price, have also focused on getting costs super low and are now using the same factories as junk brands but just slapping their logo on it. Even products of the same brand can vary wildly in quality depending even on the year it was made.
I have jackets from "luxury" brands that I bought 10 years ago that still look brand new for thousands of dollars (and probably saved money in the long run), but buying a similar item new or even trying to replace it is impossible.
Some brands like Hermes, Rolex, etc. also require you to establish a “relationship” with them to acquire their most popular items (Birkin or Kelly bags, stainless steel watches). This entails a lengthy purchase history, and some schmoozing of your assigned sales associate doesn’t hurt either. Unless you’re some well known figure, just waltzing into a boutique with a suitcase full of cash won’t get you what you want to buy on your first visit.
Other brands are catching on. I hear Porsche (or at least some dealerships) have started gatekeeping 911s this way.
And what’s funny is a budget model 3 you order online totally smokes the Porsche. It’s really just trying to sell a badge not a product.
Typical American thinking.
Your model 3 can't handle a corner. The reason car enthusiasts like Porsches is that they handle particularly well.
But that's not his point. He's right about the badge.
Nope, he’s not. Or at least not entirely.
Even their models that share platforms with “lesser” brands in the corporate stable go through a lot to differentiate them.
But if you don’t care about cars or enjoy driving, then all of it is a moot point and probably meaningless to you, and you might as well enjoy a Toyota Camry and call it a day.
Nothing gives me more joy than watching car geeks furiously posting when they see things like this. Thank you, I had a long day at work.
Daily reminder that your "super cars" are worthless. Merging onto the highway is far more important than "winning in the corners".
Depends on where you drive, dude. I spend more time on mountain roads than highways.
And, also, if you like driving, and sometimes drive for fun, curves are way more fun than freeways. None of this has anything to do with supercars, either. My boring mom-car has more than enough power to merge safely. It's (surprisingly, to most people) faster (acceleration and top-speed) and (impressively - ICE tech advanced so much) more fuel-efficient than my almost thirty year old Miata. But, obviously, I enjoy the latter 1000x more than the former.
I guess this makes me a car geek. <shrug> That's fine. I do enjoy driving my super-basic, entry-level sportscar. I have less than zero interest in supercars.
This is, and I cannot overstate this, one of the most ridiculous, tech bro statements I've read on here in a while.
With all respect, 0-60 times is not the only reason why you buy a Porsche.
A Toyota Corolla probably ticks more boxes for the average person than any Porsche if cars are not your thing.
…on the straight away of lap one. The top trim model 3 performance best time around the green hell is like 9 minutes. There are factory Porsches that will do it in under 7.
This is a very ironic comment to have made in a thread about how cheap things aren’t as good as they seem once you look a bit deeper.
Mercedes and other manufacturers do this as well. While it's arguably an extreme example, you can't purchase the Mercedes Benz Project One hypercar unless you have a history of purchasing their low-volume, extremely expensive cars (AMG Black Series, etc).
degrade just the same as the $200 leather purse you buy from a local artisan.
Where are there local artisans selling leather purses they made for $200? Are you sure you don't mean $4,000? Surely if you are buying a $200 hand made purse, it was made by hand in a low labor cost country and relabeled.
https://saddlebackleather.com/everyday-purse/ is a bit over $200, and doesn't hide that it's made in Mexico (though they do use machines and tooling to process the leather so perhaps it's not "hand made").
I’ve got one of their backpacks. It’s very nice. Heavy, though, at around five pounds. Sadly it almost never gets any use, because I rarely have need for a backpack. I should have bought some luggage instead.
Like the other poster, I also have a couple of their wallets. They’re simple but obviously high quality. They don’t feel as slick as the Coach wallet I was given as a gift, but I have no doubt they will hold up longer.
Leather is actually not a great material for a backpack or an outdoor (non-dressy) shoulder bag from a practical perspective in the 21st century. Nylon and related synthetics is a lot more practical. If you gave me a leather outdoor bag I'd probably thank you nicely and stick it in a closet or sell it.
I do like leather wallets though I almost exclusively use small front pocket ones these days because of sciatica and minimal needs for carrying either cash or a lot of cards.
Going from a trifold to a bifold is pretty game changing if you haven’t. Drastically reduced thickness for a very minimal change in capacity.
I moved to a bifold front-carry and will never go back, sitting on a wallet is such a recipe for disaster.
Yeah, I've never, ever understood why anyone would want to do that.
I don't have a purse. (Well, I have something from Mountainsmith I've had for decades that a friend calls a man purse. I'm sure it's been in dozens of countries.) But I have a front-pocket wallet/business card holder from Saddlebackleather that wasn't particularly expensive and will probably last as long as I need it to unless I lose it.
Some years ago I found a leatherworker, who sells simple handbags/clutches starting at about 300 EUR. He also sells wallets and belts. He has a limited selection of styles, but they are made-to-order thus you can select the colors when you place your order.
He isn't local to me, but I've met him and watched him stitch his bags together and chatted about his style (minimalist, sleek). I couldn't afford anything from him at the time (his smaller items were sold out), but kept his card handy. I'll provide a link, in case anyone is interested.
I've just looked at his web site. Beautiful understated pieces and very good prices for the materials and the amount of work. Some of the handbags are under 150 EUR.
That's true! I am just a bigger fan of the pieces made with stiffer leather, which are more expensive.
Coach is probably a bad example here because they are known for using high quality leather, and they are also among the less expensive "designer" brands (there are Coach leather purses in the $200-500 range, wheras you are looking at $2000-5000 for a brand like Louis Vuitton - also high quality leather, but not worlds apart from Coach). There is a huge amount of variability in quality of leather, from top grain to full grain to split grain, to "genuine" and "bonded."
In general though I agree with your point that it's possible to get the same quality as a luxury brand for cheaper, and luxury brands are about signalling, but it's a continuum. There are also plenty of "luxury" bag brands in the $200-500 range that use crummy leather and you'd be way better off with Coach (or a local artisan like you mentioned.)
The most important thing to remember that the strongest thing they can say about genuine leather is that it isn’t fake. Even that’s debatable.
This is why I differentiate between "quality" and "luxury". Luxury goods are very often just expensive junk that people buy in order to signal that they have money.
Quality goods are well-designed, well-made, etc. And you can't be sure about quality based on price.
I’ve had multiple fancy chairs, purchased from a famous high end brand with a very high end showroom in a very high end design center, fail very quickly. The failure was due to their vendor (fancy, in France) using nice solid finger jointed hardwood, well finished, in a place where that construction was completely inappropriate.
High quality Scandinavian-style plywood probably would have lasted decades.
Nice materials + pretty design does not necessarily result in a good product.
Finger jointed hardwood is not a nice material. It’s short bits of knotty new-growth wood chopped up and glued back together.
The glue will probably be the strongest part of it, but finger-jointed hardwood isn't that terrible. Any decent wood glue is crazy strong.
The problem with knots is that they resist drilling and screwing. The problem with new growth is that the pith is the weakest part of the wood, and new growth has the most pith.
Still, it's not a weak and terrible pos wood-like material like 1990's MDF, it will probably be ok for most uses as long as the grain direction is respected in regards to shear direction (typically you want the grain direction to run perpendicular to the shear forces) and everything is properly braced.
The piece in question involved one of the starting wood sections being finger jointed with the grain running along the joint line. It failed where the bases of the fingers were tangent to the grain, which seemed pretty predictable to me just looking at the wood.
Sounds like someone who owns some fancy equipment but doesn't actually know carpentry. Strange combination in qa commercial product.
That sounds like hardboard? Hardwood is natural.
This wasn’t (as far as I can tell) cheap finger jointed knotty wood. It was some furniture maker who thought “well, this part needs the grain one way and this other part needs the grain the other way, and I have a finger jointing machine, so I’ll finger joint it!” Even if they somehow found a shop that stocked sheets of finger jointed wood with a 90 degree grain rotation across the joint, it would have been an incredibly inefficient way to produce the part in question.
But they didn’t think very hard — see my other comment. I don’t think a single solid piece of hardwood would have performed a whole lot better. Either metal reinforcement or plywood or much more carefully considered joinery was needed.
Where is hardwood inappropriate? Genuinely curious to know
I don't think that amluto is saying that the hardwood itself is inappropriate, or is necessarily ever inappropriate. I think they are saying that the specific joinery in their example was form over function, to the point where the joint was a critical point of failure.
Having done a bit of woodworking as a hobby, I would say that hardwood could be inappropriate if it is used for an element that is purely structural, internal (and thus will be hidden by external features) and there are cheaper alternatives that are just as good, or stronger materials available and we are talking about a critical structural element.
That's a pretty abstract answer but it's always going to depend on the specific project. Sometimes a piece of furniture has no hidden internal structure, or the appeal of the furniture is that it is all bare wood and you want it made entirely out of a beautiful "furniture grade" hardwood. For certain upholstered furniture, such as many sofas, using expensive materials for inner framing could not only be superfluous and add unnecessary cost to the piece, but in certain circumstances there may be better materials available even if you could make a perfectly adequate structural support that will last a lifetime using expensive hardwood and the right joinery for critical stress points.
I read amulto's point as being "expensive material and fancy joinery doesn't matter if you have a weak design."
Plywood is amazingly structurally sound, because it's got grain going all which ways.
Especially when thin, wood is surprisingly easy to break, and it doesn't handle being pulled on very well at all.
The chairs had four legs, each of which radiated out horizontally from a central point (they were swivel chairs) then turned downward to the floor. The legs were about 1/2” wide, maybe a bit more. They were maybe 1” tall (vertically in the horizontal section and horizontally in the vertical section).
So the grain needed to run horizontally in the horizontal part to support the bending load. It was probably best for the grain to be vertical in the vertical part, although that was maybe less critical: that section was mostly in compression. It probably also looked better that way.
In any case, the actual construction put a finger joint in the horizontal section just past the turn, so a tiny bit of vertical grain wood extended horizontally over the turn. And several of the legs cracked just along the side of the finger joint, and one failed completely after about a month of gentle use.
The design plausibly could have worked if the joint went diagonally through the turn or was below it. But plywood is strong along both in-plane axes, and the legs could likely have been cut in single pieces from sheets of plywood with strength to spare.
Attractive plywood, even from hardwood species, is readily available. The plies are visible along the cut edge, but this is actually a style people like, especially in Scandinavian furniture. Even IKEA sells some nice chairs with plywood elements, at entirely reasonably price points.
I think he meant "place" as in literally "the location on the furniture" rather than the (very reasonable from context) interpretation I suspect we both had that it mean "place" in the geographic, or at least climatic sense. Which is itself important as certain woods deal with extremes of humidity better than others. In a temperate climate, just about any old wood will do, but somewhere that is very dry OR very wet, woods like mahogany and teak are best.
Teak especially is so good at dealing with water that it was harvested to near extinction in the 19th century just to build ship's decks and cabins out of it.
Reminds me previous sets of dinner chairs my parents had. Glued together. Slowly dried and then they were less than ideal... Even if the materials are good it means nothing if techniques are wrong.
Yeah. Even at the time we knew West Elm wasn't high end, but we were at least expecting decent.
We know more now (and could afford better) whenever we have to finally replace this, but $2000 is a not-insignificant investment that shouldn't be a complete piece of crap.
My problem is that I don’t even know where to buy _good_ stuff. I don’t want to pay $5k for a couch, but maybe I will _once_ in N years, for some large N, if I know it’s very well made and I like the design.
But I have no idea where to go for this. The overlap between junk and luxury is too large nowadays.
As sibling comment says: survivorship bias as a heuristic is useful.
It's often not, because today's company is not the same as it was 10-20 years ago. The longer you want something to last, the less reliable past experience becomes.
Aggregated reddit searches are amazing. Leads you to the gold mine that is american leather etc, which are often rebranded to more well known brands on a model by model basis. Lots of insiders on reddit with that info too.
Maybey cynicism broke me but I find it impossible to trust recommendations from Reddit. It's too easy for these companies to pay for astroturfing these days.
I've noticed a very prevalent "hail corporate" subculture on reddit that put me off believing anything anyone said.
I’ve had a consistently good experience with room and board so far and I am very anal about construction quality (as perceived by myself, anyway, I’m not a furniture expert).
I've had decent success with reddit r/BuyItForLife. Seems like mostly good recommendations and not too much shilling/advertising.
As with so many goods these days, I find that buying stuff made at least a couple of decades ago works best. It's much easier to tell the garbage from the treasure if you aren't buying stuff made recently.
West Elm's quality has definitely dropped the last 10 years. It's still not a bad place to get things like side tables, but I definitely wouldn't buy any furniture there any more, which is too bad. We had gotten a couple of nice pieces there in the past, although they're now gone.
For quality modern furniture, the only game in town around me is Room & Board. The last couch we bought there was ~$6k[0]. It's a lot, but we'd honestly been eyeing it for almost 20 years and it'll likely be something we have for another 20 years or more.
https://www.roomandboard.com/catalog/living/sofas-and-lovese...
I recently visited Hong Kong. In a mall I spotted a shop called Sinéquanone (sic). It was flogging "French fashion", quite pricy "French fashion". Who knows, it might be French inspired. You can tell its authentic French thanks to the e acute and the trailing e!
Sine qua non is Latin.
To be fair, the quality did look pretty decent but marketing needs to try harder. Mind you that's not the daftest brand name or trademark ever! Who could forget the Rolls Royce Silver Mist? Mist in German means dung, manure or shit. Someone thankfully noticed before it was released (Frankfurt motor show) and it became the Silver Shadow. Then there was "Consignia" ...
Mind you that's not the daftest brand name or trademark ever!
Here in France, the daftest I've seen is the Audi e-tron, with etron meaning turd... Though it's been out of common use, so Audi just left the name as is.
I remember an app that was a calculator where you could pen-in your calculations, so it was called Ink-ulator.
They later changed the name profusely apologizing to Italian users.
To be fair, the quality did look pretty decent but marketing needs to try harder.
When I lived in Hong Kong, I once saw a boutique grocery store that had a wooden hanging-sign/plaque, and IIRC it was 1997 and the sign said "Since 1996."
Far more amusing were the businesses non-ironically translated as things like "1000 Golden Fortune"-something-or-other.
"1000 Golden Fortune" or Jolly good luck ... something. I think that's fair enough - translation of idioms is very hard when the languages are so far apart.
There's quite a lot of history involved too so that I suspect there are routine translations between the various Chinese languages eg Cantonese and Mandarin to English which might be a bit behind the times but they still work despite sounding a bit twee nowadays to the relevant ears.
I say: "viva la difference".
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin%C3%A9quanone
The brand actually existed.
Luxury does not have to be premium or vice versa. Premium conveys quality, luxury conveys status.
Luxury implies comfort or quality.
Quality is not necessary for a good to be a luxury good. Only for demand to go up disproportionately with increases in income. Practically this means luxury goods are purchased to convey status. Consider Range Rover or Jaguar, which are known for being low quality but luxury brands.
Premium is the word that means paying extra for an increase in quality. Consider a Toyota vs a Kia.
These things are often correlated but don’t have to be.
Only for demand to go up disproportionately with increases in income
Okay, if we want to limit ourselves to economics jargon rather than vernacular.
Practically this means luxury goods are purchased to convey status
No, practically it means poor people aren't buying them much. Only some luxury good purchasing is related to status signaling.
Premium is the word that means paying extra for an increase in quality
I'm not aware of a context where that would be the standard definition, though in some contexts it may be the excess portion of the price.
I don’t know what to tell you for you to believe me but premium relating to quality and luxury relating to status are literally the way they’re defined in the retail goods and brand world.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/difference-between-premium-lu...
https://medium.com/swlh/dont-confuse-luxury-with-premium-8-k...
https://imgmodelsblog.com/luxury-and-premium-comparison
Or, if you want to listen to techies talk about it, listen to this episode of Acquired: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/lvmh
the one that gets me (not furniture, but consumer good) is Yeti.
they seem to be slightly better made, but for SO MUCH more money. They have huge stores devoted to their products. Are people really spending money, and that much, on coolers?
We have a couple of Yeti coolers. They work really well, but they're heavy and have significantly less space inside than you'd expect by looking at them. Most importantly though, they look cool and have nice shiny and colorful exteriors.
if you're a wealthy kid going to a beach bbq with your wealthy friends, yes. you signal to others your class through products like yeti.
replace your entire question with Apple and you'll see the answer as a pattern.
It’s even worse with carpet and carpet install. Thieves.
beds are the worse
About 8 or so years ago my wife and I were really excited to buy our first “adult” piece of furniture (read, not-ikea). And we found a leather sofa we loved the look of at West Elm. But it really sucked. Thankfully we had another room that needed to be furnished and we threw it in there. But the thing was just not comfortable and the pillows started sagging after minimal use.
Since then almost every other couch we got was from ikea, since if it ended up sucking at least we didn’t pay 2-3x the cost for it. Which is sad really, I want a nice couch. I just don’t that paying 10-20x the cost wind just be a piece of junk.
IKEA has some interesting options (cheap copies of designer sofas/other stuff).
Here's a quick overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0nPPc2-jpE
It's almost like a "How to shop for nice stuff at IKEA 101" and covers:
00:22 Sofas
01:28 Morning Brew
02:29 Lounge Chairs
03:41 Dining Chairs
05:34 Tables
07:34 Lighting
09:02 Othersread, not-ikea
At least with most IKEA products you assemble them yourself, so the level of quality is immediately apparent, and the pricing reflects it. I appreciate that straightforward approach.
Most everything I've bought there has outlasted my desire to keep using it. There are the occasional problems, like a blue table where the veneer shows a bright white mark wherever it gets nicked, but I feel like many criticisms are unfounded and often come across as elitist.
I'm considering doing exactly this kind of surgery on my couch, how hard was it to put the fabric cover back together?
The only part I had to rip off was the bottom dust cover.
Installing new is pretty cheap and easy - $10 roll and a staple gun. Or just leave it off
Hmm I don't know if coming in from the bottom will get me the access I need, I'm afraid. I've got some bowing across the middle of the backrest. But, maybe I'll give it a go anyway! Thanks.
West Elm has a bit of a reputation in that regard
I don't live in the Bay Area anymore, but once great thing about living there was the amount of secondhand West Elm / Williams Sonoma furniture for reasonable prices that you could buy from rich people. Most of their quality is a crapshoot but at the right price you can find good deals for some of their items.
Eesh... I have a West Elm couch I got at an outlet for half off, so only $1200. It's fairly comfy and looks good, but I feel the back cushions will need to be restuffed sooner rather than later. I've had it less than a year.
I would expect the seller to fix that. Furniture at that price should last much longer. Don't you have any concept of 'merchantable quality' in the US?
The quality of the frame makes a big difference.
About 3 years ago after moving into a new house, I needed a new couch and wanted something that would wear reasonably well without getting into the higher end ($3k+). I found one on Apt2B which they were touting was built around an robotically-welded steel frame, lending to consistent durability. After reading many sofa reviews mentioning buckling particleboard, that sounded pretty good. There weren’t a ton of options due to pandemic shortages so I went for it, which cost me $1500.
It’s held up well so far. Cushions are showing some wear but nothing out of the ordinary, and the steel frame is indeed solid. It might even be worth reulphostering at some point down the road.
West elm has been pretty bad for most stuff for us too. Surprisingly we have an okay Urban couch from them that's held up well the last 5 years. The cushions haven't maintained their shape all that much and the feathers occasionally poke through which are my only complaints. Our little kids used to jump on it before we moved it downstairs so the frame was at least built well and it's still pretty comfortable.
Id never buy one again from them though after having everything else fail on us.
When I moved to an area for work I wasn’t planning to live long-term I ended up buying the cheapest sofa in the store. I think it was around $270. After a prolonged illness I grew more and more displeased with it, to the point that I went and bought a better one after I was better. I bought from a place that advertised the inside of the sofa more than the outside. It was all about the build quality and how long it would last. Ended up coming out to around $3k if I remember correctly, but it has a lifetime warranty on everything but the cushions, and even the cushions after 6-7 years of daily use are just now only starting to get to the point of feeling like they are beginning to break in.
Quality can still be found, it just can’t be assumed. I think that’s the case for far too many things these days.
Quality ain't cheap, and cheap ain't quality.
In furniture, you definitely get what you pay for...or not. I've found anything <$300 is going to be nothing but fake materials like manufactured woods (if not even just veneer covered cardboard) and horrible cushion/fabric.
Anything decent doesn't really start until ~$1k, and anything in the $3k range you mentioned starts to become heirloom quality. As with anything, these are YMMV, but serves as a fast basis for my experience
Quality ain't cheap, and cheap ain't quality.
The problem here is, that expensive doesn't mean quality.
Buying a cheap ikea piece and replacing it in a few years might still be a better choice than overpaying for an expensive piece, that's the same quality as ikea, but with a different tag on it (both 'brand tag' and 'price tag').
The ikea stuff also seems to be perfectly fine. Almost my entire apartment I ikea stuff and I’m yet to have anything fail. With some of the oldest bits being the Malm draws which are about 15 years old now and still perfectly fine.
Sure, if you move them around a lot or leave them in the sun they will degrade, but just using them as normal they seem to last way longer than you’d think.
The problem with Ikea is once you have to move them around. Or if you have kids/dogs jumping up and down the sofa, etc.
The particleboard connections aren't very sturdy.
Well sure, but in many cases, you can go to a "proper" furniture store, buy a piece that is a couple of times more expensive than the one from ikea, and get the same particle board and same shitty connections... especially with stuff where the wood is hidden (eg. sofas).
Also the assembly for ikea stuff is usually perfect.. everything aligns to the last millimeter... which again, I can't say for much more expensive furniture pieces.
IKEA stuff is also relatively easy to "harden" with some extra strategically placed metal brackets from Home Depot. For instance you can make a particle board bookshelf very sturdy by screwing some L-brackets on the back corners. Corner braces screwed under the shelves will likewise keep them from bowing under the weight of books.
It's a few extra dollars and will make the pieces survive a move and just generally feel sturdier. It's not a replacement for "good" furniture but will make the cheap stuff much better.
yeah, add lots of glue and metal L profiles or some nice decorative wood. Good glue alone makes a better attachment than the screws and nails but you do have to glue it before it gets wobbly
Agreed, there's a big gap between Ikea and the next step up.
And most people can't differentiate between quality (nor should we expect them to!).
"Proper" furniture stores you find in malls and outlets are generally high margin crap. There's lots of soft scams out there.
There's a reason many people go back towards antiques and similar.
I feel like beds are in the same category. There is a sea of choice, but very hard to distinguish which is actually higher quality... or if the price difference has tangible benefits (better sleep, etc.).
the assembly for ikea stuff is usually perfect.. everything aligns to the last millimeter...
What? How?
I’ve moved a lot in the last 15 years and always defaulting to ikea for convenience. “Fits together well” isn’t what I’d use to describe their furniture.
Also the assembly for ikea stuff is usually perfect.. everything aligns to the last millimeter... which again, I can't say for much more expensive furniture pieces.
Probably because the ikea stuff you bought tend to be particleboard and the "expensive furniture pieces" are solid wood. Solid wood tend to wrap/deform more due to moisture than particleboard, which means even if they're drilled with millimeter precision at the factory they end up not aligning when it reaches your house. From personal experience the solid wood furniture I got ikea were definitely not aligned "to the last millimeter".
When I was shopping for a TV console, I went to a "proper" furniture shop and checked out console in the 150 to 200 euro range. Zero consideration for cable management and doors slammed hard when you closed them. Then I went to IKEA and bought a BESTÅ system that totalled like 130€ or something. Soft-closing doors, cable management holes and the lot. Was very happy with my BESTÅ after seeing what other stores had in a similar price range.
All my Ikea stuff has been perfectly fine as well.
A photo fell off the wall and put a rather large hole in a Lack coffee table one time. We were pretty amazed that the photo frame won. It was a $25 table. I could buy many for the price of something nice.
Having small kids around, and seeing how they play, learn to use a fork, etc, I feel like we made the right choice buying cheaper. Plus what kid doesn't want to play at the table mom and dad let them sticker bomb?
I still have the Lack end table I bought for $7 20 years ago.
I have seen people using these on YouTube as a server rack substitute. They are still frighteningly cheap after 20 years.
At some point between then and now they changed how they made them. They have more empty space inside now.
IKEA is highly variable. I’m writing this while sitting on a leather loveseat that’s more than a decade old and holding up great. I also have a chest of drawers that, despite my best efforts during construction, immediately began to sag.
Their expensive furniture is good mid-range stuff, the cheap stuff is cheap.
Yeah the cheap stuff is on par with up to 10x cheaper stuff on Amazon (you just have to deal with drop shipped branding and dodgy/no instructions), the more expensive stuff has better quality competitors IMO.
Such as Dwell.co.uk, coincidentally, completely unrelated afaict to OP. They make veneer-grade non-flat-pack furniture (and upholstered stuff) at a mid-high Ikea price. Made similar I think, or any number (including local showrooms) of suppliers of either drop shipped or wholesale manufactured oak+paint-grade, it seems quite common/popular. I have a couple of items from cotswoldco.com for example that have absolutely matching (but differently named) pieces available from an unrelated local independent shop, that I might otherwise assume had a small manufacturing operation too.
Dwell.co.uk is sadly now part of DFS, so whether the quality and range continues...
This is part of the enshittification of everything.
Not long ago you could be a good brand an rely on it being good. Now most of them are just charging for the brand and not providing higher quality.
I am in the UK, I have also inherited Sri Lankan furniture from my parents and grandparents and I have lived there as well. The decline in quality is the same in both those countries. I guess it is global.
Yeah, that's the real problem. My wife bought a bunch of furniture a couple of years ago that was billed online as "solid wood." It definitely isn't. We ended up getting one piece for free because the one they originally sent and then the replacement were damaged. I pushed her to get a refund on it all but I think she had spent so much time looking for good stuff that she was just tired of it.
It wasn't cheap. I believe the coffee table was close to $1,000.
Unfortunately the premise of the article is that you can now easily drop $1k+ on a sofa that looks good on Instagram, but is constructed of particleboard and falls apart when you look at it sideways.
You can drop way more than $1k and be stuck with something that's really kind of crappy.
You have to know enough to know who is actually building the good stuff, and who is building good-looking marketing.
I have bought things online and been burned by the not know the who part. I'm now to the point that if it is anything I will be spending a lot of time on, I'm not buying it unless I can see it in person. One vendor's medium firmness might be another's firm. Other furniture is less critical to me, so I haven't put the in-person only rule for that stuff
In-person seems like it should be a hard requirement for anything a person will sit on. There is no way to tell anything just by looking at a picture.
The sofa I got had one in-store that was cut in half at all levels, so the construction and materials could all be seen. Any company doing that is probably going to be pretty solid, and if not, it should be obvious.
In-person seems like it should be a hard requirement
should but yet online sales of furniture is not a small market
A lot of people these days are into the mode of order online. Certainly there are a ton of podcasts that offer deals on some of the online furniture companies. I don't think I'd personally do it but then my parents probably wouldn't have ordered a lot of stuff online that I do. (But furniture and big electronics appliances are arguably much more of a hassle to return than other things.)
I’m actually much happier ordering appliances online vs furniture- because appliances I can evaluate in multiple ways that don’t need me to sit on it.
Unfortunately some very comfortable furniture turns out to not be long lasting, as I discovered, even when moderately pricey. Steel frame sofas can bend and break under repeated use because the steel is so thin - if you can bend it by hand, it will fail eventually.
Well, yeah, appliances. Even if I order one at my local Lowe's, as I just did, it's not like I'm going to run a bunch of controlled dishwashing tests with it.
Durability of furniture is harder to measure even if you try it out.
YMMV also includes adjusting for today's $. My $300 is today's $1k. So it still stands
Did you last buy a couch in 1982?
Me? I haven't bought a couch. I'm on the same couch I grew up on at my parent's house that was bought circa 1978, so essentially, yes. Solid wood frame. Re-stuffed cushions. My couch can be found in those "If you recognize this, you're old" memes. AKA, I'm old
Edit: re-reading almost reads if I'm still at my parent's house couch surfing. I'm not a zillenial. I'm in my place with that furniture from back then.
I ask because $300 -> $1000 is roughly 1982 to today.
I bought a leather sofa in 2012 that was priced at £389. Today (2024) it’s priced at £899. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And it's not only sofas. People still conflate price with quality, and this is massively exploited.
You can see that from the number of "small brand" insta-entrepreneurs. People will readily shell $80 for the latest trendy item they saw in a sponsored insta-ad, believing they're buying a branded product. In reality, it's the same $20-$30 item sold on TEMU, with a brand name slapped on it.
In the U.S. you can drop ~$5k on a Williams Sonoma et al sectional and get a cheaply made piece of junk. I've been happy with Maiden Home for around the same price. Wirecutter (now NY Times) has a couple good couch-buying articles.
The entire problem is that “decently expensive, good quality, but luxury/fashion” largely doesn’t exist any more.
I've been wanting to buy nice furniture for a very long time... unfortunately the housing crisis has prevented my from ever having a sense of permanence. If I had known I'd live in my last place for nearly a decade I would have purchased nice things, but as it stands, until I have a mortgage of my own, I refuse to spend good money on something I may need to replace next year.
I'm glad I'm not the only one.
The buying up of precious housing as investments by non-residents should mostly be banned, starting with institutional and overseas investors.
AirBnb should also be banned. And the people who profited off that startup, who must've known they were creating illegal hotels and destroying rental markets, should be hit with devastating fines, maybe also imprisoned.
The buying up of precious housing as investments by non-residents should mostly be banned, starting with institutional and overseas investors.
What's the issue with them buying houses as investments, as long as they're being rented out? If that's the case, their net effect on the housing supply is zero.
maybe also imprisoned.
I find it extremely disturbing that people are effectively demanding for bill of attainders for jail sentences for what are basically zoning violations.
What's the issue with them buying houses as investments, as long as they're being rented out?
Because it prevents people from owning and now have to be permanent renters because of somebody's greedy rent seeking behavior.
Sounds like the actual problem is that landlords can engage in "greedy rent seeking behavior" at all. Allowing people to opt out, but only if they can afford a 6 figure downpayment and keep 7 figure amounts of their wealth parked in a single non-productive asset that's highly correlated with their job prospects is an imperfect solution to say the least. Everyone deserve protections from "greedy rent seeking behavior", not just the people who are in a position to buy.
Good lord man what first time homebuyer is putting down $100k down payments? I just bought a nice house in a well established in demand neighborhood and my total cost down was less than $30k. No assistance program, no special deal, definitely not a cheap house oof this market.
Are you trying to buy 2M+ houses?
Was your <$30K down a <20% down payment and are you paying PMI as a result? I totally understand that %20 down is a big pile of money to conjure up, but PMI wouldn't have been cheap for us had we been unable to conjure it.
Our cost to close was under $100k with a 20% down payment, but still substantial. And yes, we were first time homebuyers. Obviously we did not buy anything approaching 2M.
With closing costs of $10k-15k, 100k doesn't even break a half million at 20% down. That's (sadly) not even table stakes in e.g. most parts of Boston.
We were ready to drop 20% on the house because like you I was also scared of PMI but when we ran the numbers with the bank the cost was small enough that it didn't make one iota of difference in the long run so we paid 5% down and have a very flush emergency fund.
Someone with good credit and currently renting would be nuts to "wait and save" for even 1 year because the total cost of PMI was like 6mo of our rent and accounting for paying it off over time with inflation it's probably even less than that in real dollars.
Maybe we got lucky with PMI but googling a bit it doesn't seem that out of line with the calculators.
How does that happen when all the houses are being purchased as investments to rent out (or not, as often happens)?
This is quite common trope here among young generation, feeling left out of property ownership like its some basic human right guaranteed by UN charter. Like previous generations were not left out of same/other stuff as well. That the post you respond to is not flagged tells you quite something... Too often these folks have outright communist mindset to set the world as it suits their current needs, which to somebody like me being raised in pretty hard oppression and practically slavery from russians is a proper insult.
There are whole highly developed countries (higher than US for example in terms of personal freedom, ie Switzerland) who simply don't have home ownership as something usual and folks focus on actual quality aspects of living. Populations are consistently among the happiest (and healthiest) in the world.
Correlation != causation but maybe not joining property rat race (which was always the case, just tools were few and apart for most) has some significant benefits. And if its just about safe investing then we moved topic completely elsewhere, back to good ol' universal greed.
Countries where middle class people rent have pretty "communist" tenant protection regimes. Being perpetually 30 days from a potential eviction is not a position most people can or should be okay with.
Al Capone got a jail sentence for not paying his taxes.
There's no bill of attainder involved when you break a law that existed before you were even born.
We should just build lots of housing.
Lets do both :)
I really don't expect that appointing a committee to decide if your use of a space is acceptable is going to improve the problems caused in large part by having a committee decide how space should be used.
starting with institutional and overseas investors.
This would do next to nothing. The landlords buying up real estate are mom-and-pops with fewer than 10 properties. Which makes sense, because residential property is a pretty decent passive income that's only accessible to people with wealth but are not a good asset for large institutions.
Otherwise banks wouldn't sell foreclosed homes at a discount, they'd hold onto them if it was more profitable.
(1) https://www.housingwire.com/articles/no-wall-street-investor...
The landlords buying up real estate are mom-and-pops with fewer than 10 properties.
That might be true, but there are lots of companies that own more than 1000 homes. 1-3 should be the limit.
Be careful what you say here about businesses that try to "disrupt an industry" aka "operate quasi-legally until someone tries to stop them."
Sofas, perhaps especially, are pretty hard to fit for non built-in furniture. I bought a used sofa off my brother. (Ironically, their replacements ended up being terrible because they lasted about a year with their dogs.)
I was also very lucky though. I thought I could configure the sectional in a couple different ways. Turned out I rolled the dice the right way because I couldn't. And only discovered this after many months because I was on crutches at the time and couldn't do anything about the sofa sitting in my garage.
I've purchased two sofas, one for $1200 from a trendy company and I returned it the day after it was delivered. And then one for $3500 from Design Within Reach that is absolutely terrific and built to outlast me. I'm not advertising for that store, I'm just agreeing that quality is still available but it was never inexpensive. Mentally I compare furniture to the quality of stuff my parents and grandparents had, and I remember that the couch my parents bought in the 90s cost $2000 then.
We had an ikea klippan for around 10 years, and had to give it up when moving.
During these 10 years I haven't sat on any sofa, be in office lobbies, hotels, showrooms, friends' home that made me feel like it could be a significant upgrade upon my 400 USD sofa.
Sure that might not be usual, and I actually wouldn't recommend any other Ikea sofa in general (many were crappy when we were choosing ours). But price and marketting ("made in XXXX") is still only one factor in the wether the product will be any good.
On the other hand I bought the current sofa some 20 years ago for about 600 Euro and it is still performing like day one. Probably a design failure. ;)
This article echoes something I've learned since we moved into a larger house this past summer: don't buy new furniture.†
We bought very nice leather couches a few years back (we have dogs, leather is the only option) and paid dearly for them. And they're great. (We looked carefully at the construction details before buying.)
This summer, we had some rooms we cared a lot about and others we just needed to fill in some blanks in, and we camped Facebook Marketplace looking for stuff. Pretty soon, even the living room was getting stuff we found on Facebook, at comparable levels of quality to our old "new" furniture, and at pennies on the dollar. People are simply always getting rid of good stuff, and there isn't a meaningful secondary market for it; they're just thrilled you're getting it out of their house and getting a couple bucks in the process.
I submit that you would end up with a better-furnished room faster, more easily, and at a fraction of the cost of high-end furniture retailers simply with Facebook Marketplace and TaskRabbit (for near-instant delivery).
† Leastways, not if you live in a major North American metro.
Are you not worried about bedbugs buying furniture off Facebook?
I think bedbugs are a regional problem.
I can't say I fully agree or disagree:
https://www.mattressclarity.com/blog/bed-bugs-by-state-city-...
It seems to be related to population density, at least in America, and only somewhat ameliorated by climate.
That’s just lazy lying with a map. They’re just literally mapping population. If you controlled for population the signal disappears utterly.
Look familiar?
Do you have a link to an alternative site with information about bedbug density made since 2018 or so?
I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying that in lieu of additional information this is what I have to work with, so I will need a better source of data before I change my mind.
Just read the legend. It’s raw numbers, not per capita. It’s not even worth taking seriously.
It’s not showing rates at all, just raw case numbers.
NY has a lot. Alaska and Wyoming have almost none. Things happen where people live. News at 11.
That site is also obvious affiliate spam SEO bait.
Just put the sofa in the dryer. But seriously, I wonder if there's some heat treatment possible. surely it should be possible and put the sofa in a giant plastic bag and heat the air inside or something.
The critical temperature for killing bugs is 60 degrees centigrade, not many sofas are going to withstand that.
Put it in a Uhaul box for a day in summer heavy sun. It already hits 160f / 71c routinely in summer in a closed vehicle.
Ive done that when getting old wood furniture from facebook. We bake it for a day or 2 in a closed trailer. If there was anything living on or in it, it isn't after the bake.
And the temp doesnt damage what we do that to in any way.
Or ghosts? I mean if the house it comes from is haunted maybe an evil spirit will migrate with it. You never know.
I got pesky moths from getting something used once.
It isn't worth the hassle.
For me it's the other way around: anything I might want that's of reasonable quality will take 1+ months to arrive (usually, it'll have to be constructed to order), where I'm only a couple clicks away from having the new thing the next day buying used.
I want to be clear that I'm not saying everything on Facebook Marketplace is great. Most of it is crap! You still have to be discriminating. But everybody is always unloading high-quality furniture, and, at least for now, Facebook is full of excellent deals.
I would worry about stuff like that if I was buying cloth furniture. I am not worried about it buying high-end leather furniture. It seems about as likely as getting bedbugs from a used car (which also happens! but nobody blinks about buying a used car). You're generally buying from people's houses. Maybe I'd be concerned about grabbing something from an apartment.
Few years ago I moved to another country and had to get rid of everything I had minus ~25kg.
It's bloody hard to get rid of a lot of stuff. I had a great leather sofa, about 15-20 years old (inherited from my grandparents) still in great condition, but I couldn't get rid of it at any price and none of the charity shops took it because it was missing some fire hazard label (sigh...). Same with almost everything: I sold my 2-year old £1,200 mattress for £50 (and I had to practically beg to guy to take it, because it would have been a complete shame to chuck it). Washing machine, fridge, all the "little stuff" (cutlery, books, DVDs, what-have-you). I ended up putting a lot outside "free stuff" and that got rid of a lot.
Actually the only things I managed to sell was an IKEA sleeping sofa and an IKEA dinner table set.
That said, since then I found that actually finding good stuff isn't always easy.
The mattress one is a bit of an interesting one.
It's actually illegal to sell a used mattress in the US - and there are very legitimate public health reasons for the being the case. You can't really clean one - that's especially true of foam, and they can be riddled with lice, bedbugs, and all kinds of creepy crawlies.
Regulations vary by state, but it is not in general illegal to sell a used mattress.
People sleep in hotels, at friends, and whatnot. It's really not that big of an issue with basic due diligence, just like any second-hand goods.
Once upon a time when moving countries people would pay for a shipping container... another unfortunate side effect of everything becoming shit - it's not even worth taking stuff with you.
I found it very freeing when I moved country to leave almost everything behind. It really helps put into perspective what is valuable and what you know you would miss, and to reduce dependence and attachment on possessions. I think it has helped me become generally more minimalist in my life too.
I ended up having to discard a perfectly good desktop computer and a high-end scanner because nobody wanted them, not even for free. It's really frustrating, not because I missed out on making some money, but because of how wasteful it feels.
However, monitors seem to sell immediately every time.
What I find helpful with buying IKEA items second hand, I know the exact measurements and can find more infos online. With other furniture items, it much harder. And their names are distinct so I can just search for it.
I've looked around for some quality used furniture at a decent price, it's very hard to find. Just gave up and bought some stuff on article.com which has been pretty ok bang for the buck for me in the past.
I've moved countries three times and that's been my experience each time.
What's more, actually selling stuff is often such a time consuming hassle (posting, dealing with replies, scheduling pick ups, dealing with flakes) that in a lot of cases you're better off just paying trash hauling service to just come pick it all up in a single go.
People are simply always getting rid of good stuff
I suppose there’s an interesting survivorship thing going on here. A poorly-built couch probably won’t even last 10 years. And if it does, somehow, you’ll know as soon as you sit on it if it’s about to turn into dust based on the squeaking and general instability. If it still feels solid and you don’t sink into it so deep that you can’t stand up again there’s a decent chance it’ll last another 10 years.
I suppose furniture also follows the [Lindy Effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect)
Thanks! I couldn’t remember the name of that!
Buying preowned furniture can save a lot of money. I bought a 4 piece sectional couch, in great condition, for $600. The set originally cost $4500.
Learned this 30 years ago. Durable quality goods are generally best bought used, but furniture requires close inspection to avoid pests.
Custom Macy's extra long couch from ~2000 is the best thing ever. You sink into it and it holds up. Bought used-new for $1k when a friend paid $4k but was delivered 2 by mistake.
(we have dogs, leather is the only option)
Interesting, with cats it's exactly the opposite.
"Most important piece of furniture" is a heavily loaded ideological claim. It points to the rampant American culture surrounding media consumption.
I've been pretty stunned during my travels to find that it's really only Americans who obsessively talk about or reference TV shows and movies in their small talk. No other culture seems nearly as interested, and some actively discourage it in favor of more real, personal topics. It's one of those things where once you start noticing it, it just gets cringier and cringier.
Not everyone lives in sitcoms or spends all their free time watching TV...
The only time I'm on my couch is when I have a few people over. And even then we're usually doing other things than just lazing about.
The only time I'm on my couch is when I have a few people over.
You make it sound like this is not merely a rare thing for you, but that it should be rare... I don't just passively sit and watch much television and yet I have spent an incredible amount of time in my life sitting on either my couch or the couch of a friend -- or even one of many couches at an office -- talking and laughing and having fun with other human beings. If I had to choose only one: a couch or a dining table, I'd go with a couch. Now... bed? That's harder for me, but I can totally see people deciding couch (as you can sleep on the couch but it is awkward as hell to invite people over and only have a bed to use).
No, it's just that most activities in my home are not amenable to sitting.
For instance, people come by all the time to play pool. Does that mean I should advocate that pool tables are important things to have in the home?
And while 2-4 people are playing pool, where's everybody else? On various sitting furniture. I think we need to go one step further, and revive the conversation pit. (aka, the supercouch)
Fully agree! The sectional is a cop-out. Commit!
Does that mean I should advocate that pool tables are important things to have in the home?
Yes. Write your own Dwell magazine and advocate for whatever you wish.
I'm not sure this is really sofa-related, but...
I've been pretty stunned during my travels to find that it's really only Americans who obsessively talk about or reference TV shows and movies in their small talk.
It's a slight exaggeration, but yeah. I've really started noticing it on HN and some news-ish sites too, over the past couple of years: where a book would normally be used as a reference point, now a film is more commonly used instead.
Adult Americans read so few books per year, on average, that it’s barely an exaggeration to assert that we don’t read books at all. And most of what we do read is romance novels or juvenile fiction. Been like that for a while.
I tried to look this up but the numbers on different sites were all over the place.
Weird, I saw similar conversations in SE Asia many years ago, especially around popular soap operas.
Maybe it's hindsight bias on one of our parts.
really only Americans who obsessively talk about or reference TV shows and movies in their small talk
For one, it doesnt seem like americans are significant outliers in tv consumption[1] or smartphone usage[2]. For another, yeah if you're a foreign traveller people probably aren't going to make small talk with you about TV or other pop culture...
[1]https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/which-country-watches-th...
[2] https://explodingtopics.com/blog/smartphone-usage-stats#smar...
I'm not speaking to consumption, I'm speaking to small talk. There's no good reason to believe there's a tight correlation there.
Americans constantly shove TV into the conversation even if they don't know that the other person or people are familiar with it. Though many are aware of American media output by virtue of the cultural colonialism enacted since brute force fell out of fashion. Even if they're not explicitly speaking about TV they're still doing the IRL version of posting reaction GIFs by quoting memes in response to earnest conversation.
"Most important piece of furniture" is a heavily loaded ideological claim. It points to the rampant American culture surrounding media consumption.
That's quite a leap. Did you consider that dwell.com might not have actually done a study on what Americans consider the "most important piece of furniture" but just used that phrase to justify the very existence of their article?
I'm not making any claims about the preferences of Americans but about the default assumptions of the authors. It is as good a reflection of cultural attitudes as any.
Not to interrupt your principled tirade against lazy Americans or whatever, but it's not a "claim", let alone an ideological one. It's just a bog standard literary device for framing a puff piece.
"Most important piece of furniture" is a heavily loaded ideological claim. It points to the rampant American culture surrounding media consumption.
I think you may be engaging in a bit of axe grinding here! I agree that the sofa is one of the post important pieces of furniture in my home [1], but for reasons that have nothing to do with television. There is no TV in the room! But it is still where I spend the most time sitting during downtime, reading books, talking to my family, etc. And when I have friends over, we're either there or at the dining room table.
[1] For the title of the most important, I might have picked my bed. But that's a quibble.
Are you sure it's "Americans" or is it the Internet? Our experience of Americans may not be identical. Even just my co-workers and family seem to rarely if ever be aware of the same things on television I care about, granting I watch far more nature documentaries than anything else and had no access to broadcast networks until they launched streaming services in the last couple years since I cord cut around 2011 or so. The only thing from the past 15 years I can think of that seemed widely at least known about to most people I talked to was Game of Thrones, but even that was far from universal. My HVAC guy commented that I looked different because I had long hair and a ponytail the last time he saw me a few years ago and I said it was because I grew my hair out for Khal Drogo cosplay and he had no clue what I was talking about. He'd never even seen Game of Thrones or probably any other television. I actually remember that about two of my ex-girlfriend's dads from when I was in my early 20s. They were both small business owners and had no knowledge whatsoever about pop culture. They were so focused on their businesses that they never watched any television or saw any films.
In any case, even though there is nothing on television I watch with any regularity currently, I would still rate my sofa as a fairly important piece of furniture. Not as important as my bed, but it is the largest piece of furniture and the centerpiece of my largest room. My kitchen/living room is open floor plan townhouse and I cook quite a bit, and I can't just stand all day, so that's where I rest, even though I'm just listening to music when I do so and not watching television. When I lay down to read a book, that's also usually where I do it. If I take a nap during the day, it's typically on the sofa. We usually eat dinner there, too, even though we're not watching television, just because it's more comfortable than any other place we have to sit. I even work from my sofa pretty frequently.
But I've got no complaints, personally. I paid $300 or so at the PX when I joined the Army almost 20 years ago and bought my first house and still have the same sofa. It certainly didn't fall apart on me. It's moved with me four times. My wife and I debate getting a nice one but always decide not to because our cats are going to tear it up and puke on it all the time anyway.
I'm not American. But I feel seen(!) :)
"Most important piece of furniture" is a heavily loaded ideological claim. It points to the rampant American culture surrounding media consumption.
My family doesn't watch TV. I purchased my sofa when I didn't even have a TV.
The most important aspect of my living room arrangement is how well it facilitates long, deep, conversations with friends who come over for visits.
I have 3 pieces of seating in my living room, a chair for reading placed next to a book case (large enough that a couple small kids can sit in the lap of an adult who is reading with them if so desired), a smaller 2 person sofa, and a larger 6ft long sofa.
I know plenty of other families who have similar arrangements with sofas so placed as to emphasize socialization with friends.
Now if we are talking about the 90s and early 2000s, yeah, it was all about amazing TV watching experiences.
The only time I'm on my couch is when I have a few people over. And even then we're usually doing other things than just lazing about.
The couch is where you retire to after dinner has been finished and everything cleaned away. Board games may occur in other rooms (depending on one's coffee table situation) the of course a room that is laid out for conversation is going to see the most use when there are people over to have a conversation with.
FWIW now that I have a kid, I am hosting social events more often than ever before (watching children has a negative co-efficient for small values of n > 1, 3 kids are easier to watch than 1!), but even in my DINK life (at which point I didn't even own a TV), my couch got plenty of use.
Does media consumption include "conversing with guests?" The sofa is the place everybody goes to chat unless we're having a meal.
Frankly, we'd probably use it a little less if our dining chairs were more comfortable, and I do think there's a very good case to be made that dining room chairs are more important than the sofa, but nonetheless, I really don't think a sofa is especially tied to TV culture in any way.
If we're going to be doing something rather than lazing around or eating, we're not going to be in the house at all.
Telenovelas would seem to be a strong counterpoint to the idea that it's only Americans who talk about TV.
If anything, TV has become dramatically less of a shared cultural experience for Americans since the post-network era began.
In the Midwest, the "better" option is to buy furniture from "The Amish".
Parents bought a living room set, it was double what a similar set would be at the local furniture superstore, but the fabric/cushions were a new level of terrible. Basically fell apart in two years.
It's a great place to find wooden tables, beds, dressers, but it's all heavy (as you'd expect) and hard to move.
If I was buying a sofa today I would get something from Stressless.
Although the furniture quality is excellent, I worry about supporting child labor when doing business with the Amish. They pull their kids out of school after grade 8 to put them to work. I've also heard various things regarding the commonality of abusive practices within their religion. Trade-offs for everything!
"supporting child labor"
From their point of view, the modern society may be needlessly infantilizing people who are halfway to adulthood.
We even treat university students like kids, hence all the obsession with micromanaging their campus experience.
There's a big range between 8 year old and average first year university student...
" after grade 8 " (the OPs concern) is more like 15 y.o., right?
Even at 15 years old you’re still a long way away from having a fully developed pre-frontal cortex.
We used to think kids were like little adults, then we learned a bit about how the brain develops and how wildly wrong that mental model was.
Isn’t that just the average though?
I’ve met plenty of wickedly level-headed 15 year olds and a whole lot of irresponsible 30 year olds.
The variation is such to an extreme level too.
When I was 15, my brain was definitely pubescent and far from fully developed.
But I was able to make some money by fixing computers or translating stuff from English to Czech anyway. There was no exploitation in those labor relations just because I was young.
I am not manually skilled, but I can definitely see someone at 15 making a nice chair or a table instead.
I don't think that 15 y.o.s should be treated as fully adult, some limitations on their work are perfectly OK (no ardous work, no work underground etc.). But barring them from working altogether will probably slow their development down. Not everything can be learnt from books or models, some real-world practice, including the most basic elements of interaction with customers/employers, is necessary.
Yes, but the same is true (a bit less so) of an 18 year old and most places allow 18 year olds to work, drive, vote, join the military, enter into binding contracts as adults etc.
While teenagers are not fully adult in some ways, they are also very different from a 12 year old.
Looking at the level of independence I and my peers handled at this age vs what is the norm now we might have overdone it.
I mean, to some extend, but I don’t necessarily think that working is bad for a 13 year old. If they can work in a supermarket to earn some side income they can work anywhere (under limited guidance).
yes my furniture is crafted exclusively by highly skilled 13 year olds.
Furniture AND iPhones ;)
Oops, misread.
So not far off compulsory school age in the UK, which is approximately 16. We do not get accused of child labour.
Until recently you could work once you left school. Now you cannot do a full time job until you are 18, but can become an apprentice (so you get some training as well as working). There is nothing to stop you doing nothing.
The requirement to not work until you are 18 has not been particularly beneficial. Brought to you (IIRC) by the same government that massively expanded the higher education system (a huge increase in the proportion of people going to university) for no real benefit.
Child labor seems a bit more serious a concern.
They pull their kids out of school after grade 8
This is inaccurate. Their schooling is complete after grade 8.
Like hell it is. What they want their kids learning is irrelevant, it's a travesty of "religious freedom" that we don't require this cult to educate their children to the same uniform standard as every other person in our society.
I dropped out of school in 9th grade. I make $200K a year. A friend of mine has a college degree and has been unemployed for a year.
There is no uniform standard of education in the US. Kids in the South are being taught that evolution is on par with intelligent design. Poor black kids in Baltimore have on average a 3rd grade reading level in high school, while rich kids a few counties away are taught when to use a backdoor roth ira. Don't even mention "no child left behind".
Maybe let's calm down a bit with the judgement.
"few counties away are taught when to use a backdoor roth ira" What are you on about? Nobody is talking about a back door roth IRA in high school.
They are not "people in your society". They have their own society and you are not a member.
Are any sofa manufacturers out there that still produce good quality for around $1000, preferably from Europe ?
$1k just ain't what it used to be. My wife and I just spent $5k on a sectional from West Elm a year ago and the fabric is already starting to pill.
Oof! For $5k you could get something from Herman Miller, Hay, or Design Within Reach[1].
[1] https://www.dwr.com/living-sofas-sectionals/quilton-chaise-s...
Ironic, that same item you mention has 2 reviews (out of 3) complaining about worn out fabric within months. And almost $5k.
Not really ironic. It's available in 10 different fabric options. If you're surprised that a wool/alpaca blend fabric isn't heard wearing, or that boucle snags easily then you didn't think through the purchase. I have a similar sofa with the Beck fabric and it's great for the way I use it. The flambier boucle fabric looks great, but as a cat owner, I'd never purchase it.
I think even showy luxury brands like RH do better than West Elm. CB2 as well, which is a slight step up from Crate and Barrel.
West Elm and the whole Pottery Barn set of brands are just worse versions of Crate and Barrel, with terrible customer service to go with it. They had some of the most mean and rude customer service agents I’ve ever talked to. They acted like the store was an entirely different company, then the store acted like I needed to call the national call line. Plus, they outsource deliveries in a very annoying blame-shifting way.
At least at RH you get a single human point of contact who can handle everything like a concierge experience.
Yeah, their price point is totally baffling given the quality, service, and delivery issues.
This is why I trust IKEA’s price to quality ratio. I know I won’t be getting the highest quality, but I will likely be getting the highest quality to price ratio.
Got this one in 2016 for $1,100, and it’s survived 2 kids with minimal pilling. It won’t impress anyone, but I have no problem using it.
https://www.ikeaddict.com/ikeapedia/en/Product/60276883/us-e...
I have no way of discerning furniture/fabric quality, and no one offers long warranties, so I don’t see a reason to spend more than IKEA prices.
Yeah, the correct choices for furniture these days are basically: used (cheap if you’re not buying something trendy like mid century modern), IKEA, or super-expensive really-good stuff. Anything new that’s cheaper than that last category’s usually just gonna be as bad or worse than IKEA, plus 1.2x-5x the price. And likely uglier.
Ikea. Can't beat price/quality.
I do agree with this. When you build them yourself and see the underneath of them they really aren’t that awful compared to a store couch that is possibly using even worse construction techniques.
The only problem I have with them is that they have almost no couch designs that have a more plush style. Almost all of them are firmer foams and just plain not appealing designs.
You have to buy an old one and have it reanimated professionally.
Reanimated? :)
I bought two sofas from Habbio last year and am really happy with the purchase.
They're made from recycled materials and are vegan. So far they've been great, and they have a 15 year guarantee, but time will tell.
Probably not for $1000.
$2700 is what I got mine for. I think price might have been lowered to $2300 now.
It's built in Poland. Solid wood with steel reinforcement in the form of steel tubing in places, springs, and then a pillow system on top of that. The firm making it is the Swedish company SITS.
But I think one has to actually sit in a bunch of couches to see whether they're good.
Buy something used on ebay. I picked up an &Tradition Cloud sofa on ebay a few years back for ~30% list price.
Jumping in with the pro-IKEA crowd. I've had a KIVIK since 2017 that has survived me, my wife, and friends incredibly well. It's moved with us 3 times and still is in great shape. Easily the best value piece of furniture currently in my home.
Last time I bought a couch, a new one, it set me back $6,000. It took me the better part of eight months to find it. Solid wood. Proper joinery. Thick padding. Pig skin leather. We kept it for 20 years before giving it to some friends who had it reupholstered where I expect it will last another 20 years.
I used to have some expensive, but ultimately crap, book cases. Book cases are not designed by people who own a lot of books. 36" to 48" spans of fast growth pine will stretch and bow within a year or two. I designed my own book case. I went to a furniture making store. We went back and forth a few times. The biggest sticking point that took four attempts for the furniture maker to understand was where to put the fixed shelf. It does not go in the middle because that wastes space. We made it out of pine. 7' 8" tall, so that when standing it up, it will clear an 8ft ceiling in modern American homes. 22" wide shelves so they cannot flex. Fixed shelf to counteract gravity. Made specifically to carry paperback novels and similarly sized books. "Sand it three times, prime it, sand it, prime it, sand it, paint it, sand it, paint it, no I don't care that a single book case will cost $200." I bought 24 of them. Many hundreds of lineal feet of book cases. We still have them 24 years later and they are as good as new. And the paint job, because it is two layers of prime and two layers of paint, on a mirror surface, looks like you just took the item from the showroom floor.
I have a plywood bookcase I made to store cooking books. The cheapest plywood you can imagine from the big box store. But because of the structural design, 15 years later it still holds up without any bowing or flexing.
Modern furniture is absolute junk. Even the "good stuff."
> it set me back $6,000.
The issue is that most modern households in the U.S. can not hack that kind of pricetag for a sofa / couch. Hell, I could never spend that kind of jack on a couch, even if I literally saved up for it (which would take years)... it is just far too much of a percentage of my income for one furniture item.
So, how do we solve that issue (e.g. its good, but if it is 10% of your gross annual income, how could you afford it)? Either people need to get paid more, or ???
I read a book about chairs a few months ago, and one bit from it is
Eighteenth-century furniture was expensive. At a time when a journeyman joiner earned three livres a day, a good-quality armchair might cost as much as a hundred livres.
Yeah wow that's like $8k+ for an armchair in today's wages (including the historically inaccurate assumption they only work 8 hours too)
That's only 30 days work, which is in the $3-10k range.
And for that you CAN get good furniture; the trick is figuring out you're paying for the quality and not just overpaying for junk.
percentage of my income for one furniture item
No matter how much money I make, I like to think there's price-tags I'd still balk at just because I don't want to be a sucker. Or get involved in status-signaling.. not sure which is worse.
So I started thinking about comparisons also. I like to go back to cups of coffee, and you could spend 6 bucks on coffee easily.. is a piece of furniture worth a thousand cups? Maybe. On the other hand, you could own like 3 cargo containers for this cash (think of the material involved), or a used car (think of the utility!).
So nah, this feels like way too much money, unless it's a mint condition antique that some king and queen used to sit on. A huge Belffin modular super sofa with 9 seats and 2 ottomans is less than $2k.
We drive a second-hand Toyota that we paid cash for. The previous car we racked up 200,000 miles before deciding to "upgrade." I wear worn out Skechers sneakers that have seen better days. The leather belt that holds up my pants is getting on for 20 years old. The red sweatshirt I am currently wearing is stained with paint and varnish and food, and has at least three holes in it.
I pay, very rarely, for good coffee outside of the home. I prefer the coffee I make at home. It costs me around 8c per cup, 12c if I steam some milk. Some really good beans that cost around $25 a pound. Admittedly the coffee is made on a Jura X8, or a WEGA espresso machine at the RV.
Nobody really comes in our house, so we're not status signalling to anyone other than this casual mention on social media about some stuff. Money is a tool, and deployed properly, can bring a lot of leverage to problems.
You're free to make a judgement, and would probably blow a gasket knowing what I dropped on three office chairs, but at the end of the day, I used the tools I have at my disposal.
We need to raise the living wage, and the living standard of our people. But that's a separate discussion. The couch was not 10% of my gross annual income.
Just buy quality used stuff, it is almost free. Facebook marketplace is your friend. That guy with a truck is your other friend.
Holy moly, 24 bookcases - that's more than my local library. What are your reading habits?
Ye old cinder block bookcase is probably the best, and the internet has a lot of good ideas.
The old clay pipes used to be the best for those, look much better than cinder blocks, but whatever.
I just spent about $700 having new cushions made for a 50+ year old Danish Teak sofa that I inherited from my grandparents. The original cushions were long gone, but the wooden frame was still in great condition.
I sourced high-quality foam and wool upholstery fabric from Maharam and took those to one of the best upholsterers/furniture restorers in Los Angeles. They did a wonderful job and now I have a super-comfortable couch with many good childhood memories, that should last me another 25 years before I need to replace the cushions again.
Point being, get a classic old piece and restore it. It will last a lifetime.
Is it super heavy? I've noticed weight often equals how long something will last in good condition, and old furniture is often way heavier and bulkier.
That's because old furniture is usually made of heartwood and not the cheaper sapwood part of the tree; I like to call it cardboard furniture.
Same goes for old wooden windows etc. that can last a hundred years or more if properly taken care of.
"Heavy is good, heavy is reliable. If it doesn't work you can always hit them with it." — Boris 'The Blade' Yurinov
Same goes for old wooden windows etc. that can last a hundred years or more if properly taken care of.
The key may be the "properly taken care of" part (or they didn't buy crap at the time part).
I live in a greater than 200 year old house and all the older windows dating to whenever are complete crap compared to newer Andersens I've had installed.
Survivorship bias. The cheap stuff doesn't last. "Take from the dresser of deal, Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet..." - Wallace Stevens, 1922. "Deal" being cheap pine or other soft heartwood (in the poem he is trying to evoke a scene of poverty and maybe a bit of gaudiness). Not that buying old can't be an excellent strategy, it having survived either a long life, or perhaps it was just never used in which case all bets are off.
Not the OP, but my family has a bunch of Danish teak furniture, as does my mom. The sofas are not super heavy. Cushions on a frame. You can see under it. Now, there's no bed inside. My mom's was re-upholstered once. Ours isn't old enough for that yet. We've re-upholstered the dining chairs a couple of times.
As for other pieces of furniture, e.g., cabinets and stuff, we bought them used from a place that combed estate sales in Denmark for furniture and sold it in the US. One attraction is that the old furniture is smaller, so it works in a smaller house.
I also have my grandparent's danish teak dressers and dining table and chairs as well as some various side tables, lamps, bed, etc. I've acquired elsewhere. The all look wonderful and I get a nice feeling of connection to my family whenever I grab some socks, or sit down to eat, etc.
I'd be careful equating heavy with quality - MDF is extremely heavy but not great for longevity.
As others mentioned, it's quite light. Here are some pictures I found online of ones similar one to mine:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a2/c9/50/a2c9506ff9f3d65541d5...
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZrMM8Wa1DuU/UkRPE9INzeI/AAAAAAAAC...
I wrote my original post in haste - the cost was for doing the couch and a matching chair (same side-profile, just narrower.)
I owned a bunch of mid-century Danish/Swedish furnitures, and they're generally pretty light. They tend to have slimmer profiles for the "modern" appearance, so less material. Also solid wood tend to be lighter than engineered wood.
Two points actually: Teak is great. How it gets around to being a sofa is not. This is a doubly good thing you're doing keeping it going instead of disposing of it like most people would.
Everything is bad these days, not just the sofas. 1. The new switches I bought broke before the old ones, which are over 20 years old. 2. LED bulbs last less than incandescent bulbs, even with a 20-year warranty. 3. The new cell phone's screen breaks very easily, it's not like the old Nokia's.
And nowadays something expensive is no longer guaranteed to last.
This is why I value old things so much:
I have an old chair to work with, it's not a good chair, but it's better than anything new. I did a restoration instead of buying a new one because the new one might not last long.
I have a 10 year old car, I'm scared to buy a new one with the bizarre stories about new 3 cylinder engines breaking (throwaway engines?)
I try to use old things as much as possible. I stopped using an old Android when SSL stopped working. It's not a matter of lack of money, it's a lack of confidence in new things.
The last brand that I gave some value to was Sansumg. My last cell phone... THEY FORGOT to add a piece to fix the flat cable for the on/off button. And twice the on/off button stopped working, and twice I sent it to technical assistance. The third time I opened the phone and repaired the button myself. My two Sansumg TVs break a few days after the warranty ends.
My sofa broke in less than two years.
I fully agree that new is very often worse than old. I've had to return 3 new iPhones in a row for manufacturing defects and out of box software errors. A TV lasts me maybe 4 years before it's 'broken' and needs to be replaced.' Home appliance longevity is laughable now.. (especially Samsung, my gosh.) I've purchased 5 new cars over the past 15 years or so, only one of which didn't have serious problems from new that had to be dealt with.. or could not be resolved/etc. We're just hitting bottom here, the next 10 years are going to be pretty rough.
I've had to return 3 new iPhones in a row for manufacturing defects and out of box software errors
That is very surprising. Mind explaining what the issues were?
My experience: Our last two washer lasted for 20 years each. We have only third one now and first one did not break :)
I have bought many (6) smartphones and non has broken during my usage and also after I passed them to others.
We have 4th TV at home and each one was fully working when we replaced it after ~ 10 years. Current one (Sony), our first LCD is from 2012 and works perfectly (with just new set top box).
I have bought/got many laptops and any of them has broken. I have laptop from 1996 or 1998 which still works. There were software issues there, but they are fixable by update. (I have never bought Acer or Asus though)
I think when they try to hedonically adjust for inflation - they do a terrible job.
The quality of everything is trash. And if you want something that has the type of quality you used to get 30 years ago - you're going to pay close to 4-10x as much.
Everyone is selling trash for cheap. We live in a mall of garbage.
They're also selling trash for expensive, as stated in the article.
Everything is bad these days, not just the sofas.
When these conversations happens, I always wonder why people want some of these items to last forever.
Are you going to stick with that 10 year old plasma TV? Great. I want new tech, and this stuff moves fast. Furniture is a bit different, but my parents had all kinds of good, long-lasting stuff that no one wants because it's out of style.
Would you prefer a Sofa As A Service?
Our cheap ikea couch keeps lasting, preventing us from buying a nice, new one. We can't throw it out of it's not broken.
It is long known that companies who sell good quality products go out of business after a couple decades at most, they saturate their market and because no one needs to renew, the company dies.
Ironically ikea HAS to sell quality (for price) because they are such a big brand. Their stuff is great quality for price, so people keep coming back for upgrades, when they can afford it.
I think there are still quality products out there, but they are rare and expensive and you have to spend forever researching to figure out which products are :/
still are as so many see to be purchased and then running the ground for short term profits
On the electronics front I'd beg to differ. Apple has raised the quality bar on electronics by a mile in the last couple of decades. The gadgetry I remember from the eighties and nineties was very cheaply made with plastics that warped or cracked (or both) and cheap switches made of molded plastic and a ballpen spring. Casette player gears were mostly made of that white plastic that always wore down with not much usage. I went through many "high end" walkmans that did not last more than a couple of years each.
It's all too easy to see the past through rose tinted glasses. Also remember that the "built to last" stuff from the past is often an example of survivorship bias.
Despite the article mentioning other things, it seems like at least half the problem can be avoided by never buying furniture online.
Not really. Regular retailers aren’t immune.
Let’s be real too: nobody’s going underneath the sofas at Crate and Barrel to see how they’re constructed. It doesn’t really matter that you can see and touch them.
I don’t even think the luxury brands are much better (e.g., RH). They’ll give you some solid woods and finer materials where you can see them. They are better but not by the amount I would like.
The cheapness isn’t something these manufacturers need to do, it’s just in their interest. Higher margins, more repeat purchases.
It’s not like salaries are high in big furniture production countries like Vietnam. They could do things in a more labor intense way and still make a profit. It’s just that they’ll make more money by making the construction cheap, and making a product that lasts decades is a good way to restrict future business.
Darn I was hoping pottery barn would be reliable..
I’m not a fan of Pottery Barn, I think Crate and Barrel or CB2 are the essentially the same products with better service.
nobody’s going underneath the sofas at Crate and Barrel to see how they’re constructed.
I also don't really know what to look for. Most people don't.
In the past you could more or less rely on the store being somewhat reliable and somewhat trustworthy. I say "somewhat" because of course you wouldn't fully trust a salesman, but by and large: you could more or less trust that something was "quality" if it was advertised as such, and/or more expensive and the cheaper options, usually. You didn't need to have a Ph.D. in sofa construction to buy a decent sofa.
Now it's best to assume everything is a lie. Everyone is lying to your face, or just don't know what the they're talking about. Even expensive items marketed as "quality" cannot be relied on being quality at all.
Once upon a time a sofa was a product sold on the market because some people needed sofas, and some people and/or companies knew how to make them. "A fair product for a fair market-conform price". Classic capitalism and free-market economics where everyone wins.
But now it no longer matters if people need sofas, or whether anyone actually gets anything remote to a "fair deal", or any externalities like climate change, or if kids in Vietnam are being exploited. Burn the world, as long as I can sell my crummy sofa, because "free market allows it" is the only logical and moral argument that exists for some people. A sofa is no longer a product; it's just the means to making a profit. There's a subtle difference between to two.
All of this is part of "the financialisation of everything" and "toxic capitalism" that's been going on since the 80s.
I ordered a dresser once from a local store, they bought some cheap crap from Amazon and passed it off as "shipping from storage". It arrived broken and I couldn't get my money back, which I probably would have if I got something similar through an online retailer.
The article goes on about the quality of manufacturing, which is very fair, but something that bugs me, and it seems to apply to cheap sofas as well as very expensive ones.
Why are so many of them just plain uncomfortable? I'm looking for one I want right now, and I have to go around a furniture shop and try each out and I reckon, maybe 1/4 of them are suitable for a place you might enjoy sitting in.
The high end furniture shops seem to be the worst, i've seen 4 figure sofas that are the most uncomfortable thing I ever tried. Champions of form over function.
My last favourite sofa was around 2500 I guess, lasted 10 years, was excellently comfortable, but was unfortunately the wrong shape for my new place, I have not found anything anywhere near as good as that one.
It may be my height, much furniture seems a little off to me, and it is hard in general for me to find things I'm happy with.
Champions of form over function.
Sofas have many different functions.
The plush sofa you sink deep into for TV at the end of the day has a different function than the firm sofa your dinner guests sit on the front of while sipping cocktails, etc
Many of the sofas you were looking at were probably designed for a different function than you were seeking.
Cocktail sofas. I’m not posh enough to have imagined such luxury.
Check out the Stressless line by Ekornes.
I think this speaks to an important factor which is that most of us have little awareness of our posture and typical sofa designs reflect this. We want sofas to 'collapse' on rather than to sit comfortably. I became aware of this from learning the Alexander Technique to deal with another issue.
One hack you can perform on most sofas is to add some height to the rear legs using castors or wooden blocks or something. This tilts it forward a bit. Sitting back or reclining is fine in a dentist's chair because there's head support but it's no good on a sofa! There our head and spines need to be balanced.
Anyhow -- quality of materials and design are both important but the fact is that average bodily awareness is poor and this is a fundamental reason why our furniture is worse than it needs to be!
Ok, but I have no clue - either before or after reading this article - how to go about finding furniture that isn't junk. Truly, I can't figure it out. I've been to every furniture store in town and tried to figure it out via the internet, to no avail. For somebody who prefers to spend more money less often on actually good things that last a long time, but has neither the time nor inclination to be a hobbyist vintage store frequenter, what is one to do?
You honestly might just have to have one custom made. For ex. Ecobalanza makes very high quality and nontoxic furniture.
I don't really even want new furniture though. I want a way to find high quality used furniture that isn't super time consuming. The best options seem to be "go to all the vintage shops every week" and "check facebook marketplace / craigslist every day", and I just don't have that level of dedication.
Furniture in the normal "furniture store" price ranges are built for price-sensitive markets with economies of scale. If you really want measurably higher quality furniture, you're probably going to want to look at brands with pricing an order of magnitude higher. This quality of furniture typically does not sell at high volume, so it is often only at specialty retailers, or is made-to-order.
A good place to start in my opinion is with the well regarded office-furniture brands, Herman Miller, Steelcase, Hon, etc. They are well experienced in making furniture that can handle abuse, because commercial furniture takes a lot of abuse. And as far as durability goes, they make durable furniture in the highest volumes and have the most reasonable prices you're going to get.
Go to an estate sale; pretty much everything you need for a house will be there. No need to frequent vintage stores.
Next time you stay at a mid-range or better hotel, notice the furniture. They don't but junk because in the long run it never lasts, and whose going to pay for a nice hotel room with tacky furniture?
A couple of months ago, we stayed in a newer Holiday Inn Express. The bed and cabinets were very nice and well built.
I imagine holiday inn is all custom built to spec.
All the hotel brands have design schemes, and contract with certain designers who the hotel owners have to buy from.
For example:
https://www.charterfurniture.com/products/hospitality/desk-t...
Or common areas in offices / apartment buildings. For example, the building I live in has nice couches that look like they can take a lot of traffic. I once looked at the brand tag - Ligne Roset. It’s not cheap, but at least does seem high quality.
They revamp furniture more often than you might realize, because even great quality stuff looks tired and worn after awhile. Investigate and you can usually find the liquidator in your area that handles them.
The cookie popup of this site is some dark design to behold, I have to say. You need to disable every single "goal" one by one - once you have figured out this is the least worst option. You can otherwise disable the 1400 partners one by one.
This is completely illegal in Europe and I think it's illegal to serve this UI to an EU IP, even for non-EU websites.
Anyway, who cares, it's almost funny what lengths they go to to get you to accept cookies.
Didn't notice a thing (using ublock origin with easylist->cookie notices)
I was using Safari iOS with AdGuard
I surf things like this in incognito mode or Firefox focus, can’t I safely accept all cookies and move on as they will be nuked in next session?
I've been very happy with my Lovesac sofa, but its pricing is borderline extortionate.
Their cushion quality can be hit or miss, but I'll say they're pretty receptive to exchanges.
Also, never pay full price. They offer 25-35% off many times per year, usually around holidays.
I am happy with my Lovesac sofa, too. It was expensive, but I can't think of another product I could expect to be as happy with, so Lovesac seems to be in a class of their own and can demand whatever price they want.
In particular, it's comfortable, well built, but not bulky. I can take it apart move it in my regular sized SUV if needed. I move a lot, and eventually grew tired of bulky things that were difficult or impossible to move without professional help.
I also tried a Burrow sofa which has the same modular properties, but it was not comfortable at all and I had to return it
They seem to have specials at Costco periodically. They’re not my thing but I suggest taking their discount if you can.
Made the mistake of buying a couch off Wayfair for a little nook in my office. It lasted a year before I got rid of it. Never again. Couches really are one of those areas where you get what you pay for. With the possible exception of Ikea. Got an Ikea couch for my 10 year old's room and its holding up remarkably well.
Wayfair is absolute trash.
Pictures look good but it always disappoints. It’s the one online furniture store I will never buy from again.
Maybe I got lucky, but I am quite happy with the desk I got from wayfair a couple years ago. It may not be fancy, but it's sturdy, durable, customizable, and probably less than half the cost of a high-end solid hardwood desk.
I have 3 sofas and all of them were free. One is from a neighbor and the other two from the Buy Nothing group on Facebook. I have never been able to convince myself that any piece of furniture is worth the thousands of dollars that an average couch costs. The one exception being the bed (which is the actual most important piece of furniture anyone owns).
What truly baffles me is how, in my middle-class suburban hometown, all of these families were able to furnish their massive 3-5 bedroom homes. Many families, including my own, would have a living room that was mostly for show (because hanging out happened in the den/TV room) yet contained thousands or tens of thousands of dollars of furniture.
middle-class
That's your explanation.
The modern professional "middle class" was once called the petit bougeuosie and characterizes itself by trying to replicate aristocratic aesthetics and lifestyles with earned wages, which is mostly a lost cause and just creates a endless treadmill of labor and consumption.
Good on you for being so thoroughly free of the compulsion that they're an alien bafflement to you!
What you describe doesn't seem "enormous" at least as bedrooms are normally used in descriptions. I have a den/living room which is what we normally use with company as we don't really watch TV so there isn't one there. That has a sofa from my brother. A couple other good futons elsewhere (guest bedroom and a very small TV room) but just futons. And that's about it.
We bought some sofas secondhand when moving into our first home. They were great, and they held up well for many years. But ultimately we sold them and bought new ones because we didn't know if they had the fire-retardant chemicals that used to be mandated in CA (until they were discovered to be carcinogenic). The new sofa (from Costco) seems good but the sofa chairs (from Wayfair) are not so good.
It seems like the frame in the back has some sort of support that is made out of a material that is closer to cardboard than wood. When our kids run into it, the back of the chair deforms a bit and has to be bent back. I have no idea why the frame of a chair would be made out of something so weak. I expect we'll have to replace them in 5 years or so, and we'll aim for something more old-school.
Wayfair is largely dropship trash.
Yeah we used filters to search for just solid wood (no MDF), but apparently even the "solid wood" stuff is still pretty flimsy.
I've liked reading this blog - https://insidersguidetofurniture.com/buyers-guide-to-furnitu... and basically what it comes down to is most modern cushioning will fail in five years or so.
You need 2.5 density foam or higher, or you need a "uncushioned" style couch.
I have two pre-WWII Gispen chairs with thick foam seats, and only recently (last couple years) they started to dry out (become 'crispy' at the top surface). I suspect it is because I am not actively using them anymore, rather than because of their age.
I second your comment on high-quality foam. If you're looking at re-doing some old furniture or having your own made, study up on foam - not just the density - which is important - but also the type and grade. Decent stuff should last 25+ years - and be more comfortable along the way.
(A little tip - the density you want for proper comfort varies by the thickness of the cushion, the weight of the intended users, and the whether it's the seat bottom or the back. The back needing a softer foam.)
The highest quality furniture can be found in antique stores or estate sales. Perhaps it's just me but my default has always been to buy old things with the idea that, if they've lasted this long, they'll probably last longer. I've always felt it was lower risk. But please don't all rush to buy old things; because I like the low prices too.
There are charity shops in the UK that get good furniture donated and they resell cheaply, the British Heart Foundation for example. You do have to check regularly to find something of a specific style/type though.
Sometimes they don't know what they have, I picked up a Herman Miller office chair for £30. It did have some paint specs on, which might have been why it was sold so cheaply. They came right off with a damp cloth though.
Don't worry I don't think this comment is going to the move the antique furniture market. Your secret is safe :)
The article seems to exaggerate a bit, because neither in 2024, nor in 2004, would I have expected a $1,200 couch to be 'well-made'. (Although I wouldn't expect either one to actually fall apart in two years of use.)
This isn't exactly a novel problem.
Correct. According to this 1975 catalog https://ikeamuseum.com/en/explore/ikea-catalogue/1975-ikea-c..., Ikea sofas could be bought for the equivalent of $1000 today.
Higher-end sofas would have logically cost much more...
About 10 years ago I went shopping at Furnitureland South, mentioned in the article. The selection was a bit overwhelming, but we picked out a solid wood bedroom set from a manufacturer in Canada. It's held up great, as has my kids' IKEA bedroom furniture.
I've purchased couches from West Elm, Restoration Hardware, and a few other well-known places, and they've all been disappointing. From now on I'll stick to Furnitureland and IKEA, but I don't know if I have the energy to go couch shopping at Furnitureland.
Our kids destroy all the nice furniture (dumb ways, like sitting on couch soaking wet from the pool, spilling food, drawing on the cushion while doing homework or a project, doing gymnastics off the cushions, fort building). They aren’t actively destructive like attacking with scissors but I can’t see investing in nice furniture until they are adults (even teens can be rough as you can imagine). By then, I don’t know if I’ll care?
In the mid 80s I had a sofa and wing-back chair made by a little factory called Bader and Fox(?) in Portland OR. I went to the factory (the two owners were the only ones there) and picked out fabric/style/etc with some special instruction about the angle of the arms and stiffness of the stuffings. Cost about $1600.
Best furniture ever. Carted across the country twice. I still use both pieces every day. They've been reupholstered once.
To be fair, that must have been a lot at the time right? Adjusted for inflation its certainly a lot compared to furniture now.
In 1986 a Mustang GT was under $11k, now its about 3x that price.
1985 median home sale was $80k, 2023 median home sale was about $450k.
Any opinions on Ekornes sofa from Norway?
My parents got one 15 years ago and it's still in great condition with no real effort on their part. I have no idea what has changed at Ekornes in that timespan though, for all I know they got acquired by private equity and turned to crap.
There are absolutely sturdy, beautifully made sofas constructed in the United States. There are custom designer pieces made here or in France or Italy or Scandinavia, which tend to be prohibitively expensive for the masses. But low- and mid-priced sofas are a relatively new phenomenon, and, frankly, they often suck.
But do they suck less than not having a sofa at all? I am a several-time-over beneficiary of cheap made-in-southeast-asia sofas. Shipped in a fridge-sized box right to my doorstep, assembled (by me) in ~15min, and perfectly serviceable. Is it up to the same quality level as a $5000 made-in-USA solid wood hand-woven twine-joinery (etc etc) masterpiece? No, but I couldn't have afforded that kind of sofa. And it didn't have to be hand-packed by a furniture transportation expert, and it didn't weigh 800 lbs.
I don't really see the "loser" here exactly - broke grad students, college kids, people in rural areas, and starving artists win; workers in developing countries win (the furniture factory sure beats the rice paddies); Instagram-sofa tech bros win. And gilded solid wood sofa makers can always market to the rich, who can afford to spend several months' worth of my rent cost on a piece of furniture.
The losers are the middle class who want something 2x the price and 2x the quality, not 10x the price and 3x the quality.
I'm generally very skeptical of brand/store loyalty type arguments, but lately I've found that in the US, Macy's furniture is still good value for good quality. I've had to completely furnish a few rooms over the last couple of years and looked at all the usual, e.g.: costco, ikea, wayfair, jordan's, etc., as well as expensive hand-made local shops, and I keep ending up at Macy's in the end.
Can you elaborate on why you chose Macy's over others?
My wife and I spent a couple grand on a "leather" couch about 5 years ago.
A little over a year ago the "leather" started developing holes in it from wear all over the place. The so called leather is literally paper thin and bonded to some low quality fabric.
I've never had this sort of problem with a couch before. It's very frustrating.
heh, nice leather shoes or boots cost in the hundreds, no way you're getting that much leather at any kind of decent quality for that price. maybe starting at 10x that.
I have decent and great furniture. Penny Mustard is outstanding and Room and Board is ok. My kids treat the Penny Mustard couches like a bed.
My Room and Board sofa from 2011 is still rock solid. I was a bit nervous buying it used a few years ago because of the age but it turned out to be a great purchase.
Most people buy IKEA sawdust or are low information consumers, and the market responds accordingly. As such, people don't buy fine furniture or understand how to discern quality in a specific durable good.
The funny thing is that IKEA sawdust will most likely last longer than some more expensive ”drop-shipping luxury brand” described in the article.
Lots of people suggesting buying second-hand because the old stuff is made better - and it really is. The problem with thrifting is that everyone is doing it. The word is out. Price goes up and supply dwindles.
Same situation with buying used cars. New cars suck. You can't work on them yourself and they have terrible UX. So people started only looking for used. Except the used prices skyrocketed to match supply & demand.
We can't keep this up. We can't all keep thrifting. Everyone knows it's better, everyone is on the prowl, and everyone has easier access to buyers, thanks to the internet.
I mean, we can, as long as repairing is part of it, and rethrifting is too.
The US largest generation is approaching life expectancy and we are below replacement numbers.
This article about about sofas opens with "The most important piece of furniture in your home..."
Did anyone else find this weird / funny?
Like, just off the top of my head I'd put my bed at the top of my list, waaaay ahead of a sofa. Next might be the desk & chair I WFH at, and then it goes on from there.
I get that the article wants to build engagement by "raising the stakes", but c'mon. Sofas are not that important :)
I get there would be some caveats here, but when it comes to furniture others see, for most beds and office chairs are down on the list. Of furniture guests are apt to see and use the sofa is pretty high up.
I hate buying furniture because it's easy to tell that most of what's out there is utter junk, but not very easy to figure out what's at least decent but isn't super expensive. Or what's expensive but not just marked up.
This is how I've begun to feel about almost every consumer product out there these days. This "enshittification" of the bulk of the output of our economy puts so much burden on any discerning consumer to do all the research needed just to get some basic dignified standard of quality from whatever they are forking over hard-earned money for. It will soon make more sense to put all that time and money into producing these things yourself via some micro cottage industry. (Personally I already do this for a growing number of things.)
It's really depressing that we have gotten to this point, seemingly the logical conclusion of the so-called efficient capitalist market.
My leather sectional cost as much as a decent used car and it hurt to write that check, but it's definitely well built.
Yup. A few years ago I bought a $1500 sofa from I think BluDot? It was trash. It rocked back and forth on a flat, level floor because the legs weren't all the same length. One of the legs was already cracked when it was delivered (independent from the different lengths problem). And the cushions were absurdly hard, but also too soft. I didn't take the cushions apart to see what was going in there but it felt like you were sitting on a wooden board with a way-too-soft spring underneath. They offered a 10-day return policy, and what do you know, when I requested a return on day 2 and then again on day 5 and then again days 6,7,8,9,10,11 ... they just didn't respond, until eventually like a month later I managed to get someone on the phone and they told me the 10day window had already elapsed so no backsies. When I left a bunch of 1star angry reviews calling them a fraud on every website I could think of, someone hired some mover-on-demand service and an old minivan showed up at my house to take it away. The mover didn't know where they were supposed to take it to. I gave them the store address where I bought it. What an absolute trash company.
Years later I spent $3500 on a sofa from Design Within Reach and it's terrific.
Christianity
I have a leather Benchmade Modern couch that has lasted half a decade no problem now. I think they switched facilities/materials at one point though ..but I got grandfathered into the real wood, better facility when I got my second couch (I called and asked)
...not to mention furniture stores seem to keep no inventory, so you get it 6-8 weeks after you buy because that's how it takes them to build and ship your new couch
I bought a sub $700 leather coach from Costco in 2007. It lasted 6 moves and 16 years until my kids finally found its weak point (leather seams at the cushioning and back) playing “the floor is lava.” Honestly, it’s probably repairable even after that, but the wife wanted new furniture anyways.
I haven’t had to replace any of the relatively cheap stuff I’ve gotten from cost plus world market over a decade.
I might just be lucky or special, but I don’t think cheaper furniture is necessarily bad or throwaway. I’m not sure what the trick is. We’ve tended to buy robust looking furniture— solid wood dining table, welded metal dining chairs, a plush and thick sofa. Frankly, our stuff looked very pedestrian compared to some of our friends, but it has lasted.
Built my own sofa. Fabric from JOANN, foam from a shitty IKEA thing thrown on the street, some plywood and pine from Home Depot, hardware, staples. Cost me $75. It's comfy and I can lay on it or sit on it. What the fuck about this is supposed to cost >$1,000, I have no idea. Are they stuffing sofas with live minks or something? It's just wood, bolts, foam and fabric.
For cushions I already had some, but you can easily make them with more JOANN fabric and a big box of poly stuffing. Extremely basic sewing skills and a pair of scissors are all you need.
Give a man a fish...
They are bad because they don't cost 10-15k. Human bodies are difficult. They weigh quite a bit and often move about. Put multiples of them onto the object then stresses and strains will add up. Want that object to look cool, perform perfectly for multiples of years then you have a challenge!
We need an app to design your own sofa. When done order the parts precut with a drawing and instruction videos.
You also have to make a selfie so that you can see yourself construct it in the videos.
This article seems to make it an American (US) thing, but I can assure you the sofas here in Argentina are mostly shit. If you look under the hood, they are every bit as crap or worse than described in TFA.
It's not "cheap imports" either, I don't think sofas here are imported. They are made to order in my country. They are just garbage.
I'm talking about midrange and even higher priced sofas. If you see the armature, it's mostly crap wood with "lots of staples" as mentioned. And a fancy cover, of course.
Is online shopping turning most everything into a market for lemons?
I dream of an inflatable couch. Bear with me. It could be well designed and high quality. And with a nice slipcover.
There is somebody who makes them but for the life of me I can't recall who.
They come with a built-in compressor.
This is a good dig into changes in design and manufacturing trends, which makes sense for Dwell, but I suspect we'd see more people complaining about their furniture quality these days even without manufacturing changes because many people are like 50% heavier than the people in sitting in couches 50 years ago -- and often more likely to collapse into a sofa than to set themselves down upon it.
So it's actually kind of a two sided loss in quality: the designs are flimsier even while the engineering requirements have become more demanding.
I've had a two-seat sofa from Living Spaces since.... 2017 and it's held up really well. Even the cushions have no wear despite my dog loving "digging" into them (basically scratching for a while digging an imaginary hole). I think this sofa was like $800 plus tax/delivery but I sit on it every day and it's held up really well, especially through one move.
I think there's probably just quality:price tiers and mine happens to be in the economical but decent quality range.
I just bought a sofa 6 months ago. It was my first time buying a big piece of furniture from a proper furniture store. It's (allegedly) American made. It is one of those pull-out queen bed convertible things, and that part is fantastic. The couch is nearly identical to the pull-out-bed couches I see in hotels. The only difference is the fabric. The bed mechanism is rock solid, but the couch itself is creaky and the cushions are already noticeably deformed. It's like they wrapped a great, tried-and-true bed mechanism inside a much shittier couch. It's clearly a step above Wayfair detritus, and I certainly didn't break the bank to get it, but I'm still a little disappointed.
A while back I moved half way across the country, the only two pieces of furniture I took with me were the standing desk and a leather sofa. Cost a lot to have them moved.
Whatever else goes on in my life, I've got that sofa problem handled.
The best way to acquire a quality sofa is to purchase a used one made by a furniture maker known to create high quality pieces. It requires a bit of research. You need to figure out which builders around you produced excellent furniture 50 or more years ago. In the USA, Dunbar is an example. Buy an old Dunbar sofa from the 1950s and reupholster it. It will easily last another 100 years.
Sofas and rugs are inherently labor-intensive things to make well, where quality materials make a huge difference. I grew up with real wool-silk rugs my parents brought over from old country, or my dad bought on work trips to Afghanistan or Pakistan. I never gave them a second thought until I bought my own house and tried to furnish it. What I had thought were just regular rugs would cost $5,000+ in America.
I have always found that the best sofas are the ones you least expect. Never a rich person's big fancy sofa but some girlfriend's, who lives in her tiny apartment, beat up, sofa, for example.
OT:
I can’t read the site due to a massive “We value your privacy” pop up informing me about the 1532 data-harvesting “partners” they sell information to, and there’s only “Allow All” button accessible (which is illegal by GDPR).
They really value my privacy, for its resale value.
I have not read the article, but I bet the answer is a plain and simple: "Because people buy cheap instead of quality!"
I imagine that they can go sofa but no further. Probably get some hate for this silly comment, someone had to say it.
Amish furniture is built extremely well. And the price is not cheap but not exhorbiant. And clearly American made :)
After being burned by this many times, finally got a couple Chesterfield style sofas from Costco about 4 years ago and everything about them has been rock solid. And they were about $700 each.
I later wanted something matching for a different room - but the problem is, the Costco furniture changes seemingly every day and you never see the same thing again.
The cookies “partners” on the page is insane! Had to scroll through 100s of these then navigated away without reading the article!
Sofa bases seems to be getting shitter and shitter as manufactures value engineer with increasingly more low quality engineered wood. At this point my next sofa frame is going to be sturdy metal outdoor furniture. I've also seen a few tiktok sponcon videos of sofas with industrial plastic molded frame, like industrial pallets. Probably not enviromentally friendly, but seems durable.
Seems like Sofas are last to make the economical steel channel furniture jump, you can get tons of sturdy/durable bedframes for like $100 shipped on Amazon. Most cheap metal futon frames also last forever if it wasn't for the moving mechanical components. I'd like to see more steel + bolt sofas.
TL;DR: Capitalism breeds innovation. Just not the type of innovation the consumer would like.
Around 5 years ago I tore down my sectional sofa to the sticks and completely rebuilt it. This was around 5 years old at the time, and was a cheap sectional (at most $600, possibly less, I don't recall), my wife convinced me to go cheap because "the kids will destroy anything we get".
I will agree with the upholstery person in this article: it's not going to be worth it to pay someone to do it. I ended up reupholstering ours for around $500, but that's because I did all the labor myself. An amazing amount of work.
It was made with a lot of OSB, some of the most curved pine I've ever seen, and lots and lots of staples.
I fixed the frame by adding a variety of supports and glue and screws. The frame went from being barely sufficient to quite solid. I doubled the webbing and springs, and completely rebuilt the cushions. To an extent I used the existing fabric as the patterns for the new fabric, except: my wife wanted the cushions to have piping (that was a huge effort), and originally it had the back cushions built in and stuffed with polyfill, but I wanted to make them removable so I had to redesign the back and custom design the cushions.
The biggest mistakes I made were the foam I used for the cushions was way too firm. If I were to redo it I would do something like a 3 layer: firm, medium, maybe latex or low density memory foam. I'd also probably have used a leather considering all the effort I put in, largely to keep the cats at bay.
The real down side is that we're thinking of getting rid of it because it's really too big for our space, and unless I redo the cushions it's way too firm to use without additional pillows. But, despite all the work I put into it, I'd be willing to bet that we could't sell it, and probably couldn't give it away (selling furniture on craigslist is so frustrating).
End result: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Q8DMxQU7L9AggCBDA Starting reassembly: https://photos.app.goo.gl/rQRJfmYmSLew3rSN8
Seems like the market rate for a well made sofa is more like 3-4k these days. If you think you're getting that for 1k you will be disappointed.
I would rather have a hardwood bench with good thick cushions tied on. Then instead of reupholstering, you just replace the cushions.
I'd like a sofa that:
- is comfortable
- isn't full of fire retardant chemicals which turn out to be cancerous right after the warranty expires
- for less than $10k.
Pretty sure that means I'm going to have to learn how to sew.
In the UK I would thoroughly recommend these guys: http://www.ecosofa.co.uk/
We picked them because they were one of very few UK suppliers who could supply a sofa that's not covered in toxic flame retardants (the UK has kept some very dubious legislation in place on this issue, I think mainly because the industry lobbies for it as a protectionist measure).
The sofa we bought was on the expensive side, but not ridiculous. It's also seems beautifully made in general, and was carefully delivered by the firm themselves, who spent about half an hour manouevring it in.
The funny thing is someone told me this in an IRC channel about 20 years ago, a full decade before I'd even be in a position to buy my own sofa. Can't remember which channel it was, certainly wasn't a sofa-related channel, probably Linux related. I've never forgotten it for some reason.
in my experience when it comes to sofas the old "buy cheap buy twice" holds true. there are reputable brands such as ligne roset for example. they are pricey bit if you can commit to buying and owning for > 15 years. owning a clam and a togo for more than ten years and the are basically like new. foam & fabric. i understand this might unaffordable to a lot of people but buying second hand can be a great deal on high end sofas.
The part about springs is interesting because all the sofas I've owned in the past decade have used foam, and I don't miss springs... When they are new maybe it's ok, but over time they wear out and the sofa becomes really noisy and uncomfortable as they aren't even. The same thing with mattresses, I'm never buying a sprung mattress again.
One of the draws of the DTC model (and IKEA) is the apparently heavily commission-based pay structure of the sales staff of most brick-and-mortar furniture stores.
And why are the cushions so freaking soft? Sure you don't want your back to perch on lumber but you don't want to sag inside like an embryo, either.
People want new sofas every few years bur can’t afford good ones
All of the "steals" pictured look anything but comfortable.
Second hand sofa market is surprisingly good in all cities ai lived in (Europe) You can get great stuff for less than 100eur. Good luck figuring out there transport and cleaning though.
Not a sofa; but I'm sitting in an Ecornes Stressless recliner.
It's the best piece of furniture I've ever bought. It's made from "engineered wood", covered in quite good leather; I should have chosen a lower grade of leather, because hide isn't as easy to look after as some of the lower-grade leathers.
FTR, I've bought sofas and armchairs from artisan/craftsman makers, from junk shops, and I've also bought cheap disposable shit. After the Stressless, my best buys were all from junk shops. But this Stressless, I more-or-less live in it.
This is a major issue we have found while building https://www.unwraplife.co/.
We only list brands that are A) plastic-free and B) use non-toxic materials.
The list of large-ish brands that fit those specifications can be counted on one hand.
The industry is rife with corner cutting, greenwashing, and lack of disclosure.
I know I'm going to sound like an old person shouting about how "they don't make'm like they used to", but it's honestly true. This isn't just sofas - it's almost everything. Businesses know that it's far cheaper to make something look high quality than to actually make it high quality. And if you can make it seem expensive, then you can charge expensive prices for it.
Manufacturers discovered the same principles as the software industry. Most sofas are probably made by LLMs.
Has anyone found good options that are between stapled together cardboard with cheap foam that will fail in a couple years or $5000 and up designer brands? I love buying high quality goods that will last a lifetime but who has $5k for a couch/sofa?
A bit off topic, but my best investment has been in a good mattress for sleep. We spend half of our lives in bed, and it has been my best decision.
I wish I could find a sofa that was designed for repairability. The only thing that ever wears out is the cushioning under the seat but I've never been able to find someone who offers repair services.
The key aspect that allows the businesses to get away with this is the buying frequency. You might buy a couch once every 10 years so it's very difficult to judge quality. Whereas with something like coffee beans I'm buying it every week so I have 52 opportunities every year to analyze the quality and change brand. The couch seller knows you probably won't make a repeat purchase so it's all about marketing tricks.
I have nothing to contribute but this video from comedian Rob Paravonian It's probably 20+ years old, but it frequently pops into my mind when I think about the apartments I lived in during my 20s. The materials were shoddy, but the price was right!
Remembering the old adage: don’t cheap out on anything that touches the floor (shoes, sofas, beds, cars, etc)
Soon the cheapest Ikea sofa I could find in 2015 (about 200 $) has lasted me a decade. Sure, the cover worn is worn out and covered with another textile for that reason, but it's still usable. I can sit on it and watch my TV, which is even older.
Easiest way to find happiness in material quality of life is to lower one's standards.
Glad to hear everyone agrees that most couches are pretty subpar. I bought $10,000 worth of stuff from a high end furniture place because the French girl started working there. Then that boat got stuck in the Suez Canal, the shipping container finally arrived months late, and it was empty. So I got a full refund and she still got her huge commission, and after reading this the couch probably sucked.
Perhaps this Wirecutter article can help: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/guides/buying-a-sofa/
This reflects my experience so much it's surprising to read
If you're looking to reupholster, I've had great luck with https://www.slipcovershop.com/. They make custom slipcovers and sell affordable cloth by the yard that you can use to easily reupholster stuff yourself if the shape is not too complex.
Other than that, I wish this article went less into things that don't matter (properly sized brackets are no worse, and sometimes better, than joinery, etc.) and more into the ergonomics, types of foam and other materials that actually matter. Like, how do I tell how long a cushion filling or fabric will last, or tell if there are springs that will sag without taking it apart.
I look through the antiques subreddit often and lots of really nice quality furniture is hardly valued now because it's out of style. A good quality sofa should be able to be re-foamed and fabriced forever but I think we're all just too mindset on cheap and disposable since that's the easiest route.
...modern consumers "are buying a couch online that looks four times as good, costs two times the price, and is made twenty times more poorly."
My friend had an Article couch and after a handful of months it was so uncomfortable it was as if the stuffing somehow just vanished.
And yet when I look around the net all I can see are glowing reviews of Article couches all over :\
FYI, if you're in or near Los Angeles and have a budget, I can strongly recommend https://www.thejonesesla.com/
Got a custom from them and (partly because I asked) it's crazy sturdy. Cost a lot, and I got what I paid for :D
We got a couple of secondhand ex-living room sofas very cheap. IKEA. Full leather, looked nice and an absolute dream to sit and lie on, just exactly the right combination of firm and soft.
These were for the kid areas. They had reduced the previous (IKEA Ektorp) sofas to rubble over a couple of years. These new ones didn't last long at all. The suspension underneath the cushions is criss-crossed webbing in a softwood frame. Well you can imagine, a 90lb child jumping on that, the forces that develop. And then the frame breaks at the front. And there's nothing structural at the front of the sofa, just some 1/4" thick fiberboard, to anchor replacement frame material to so you can't really fix it.
Oh well. One of them now has solid plywood - very well fastened to what structural elements are available - so it's now very firm but the kids don't care. The other, I had the inspiration of mounting the plywood lower and putting another layer of cushioning in there (leftover seat cushions from the demolished Ektorp sofas). That's actually pretty good.
But without rambunctious kids, these sofas, which were already 10-15 years old, would have lasted quite a while longer. It's wizardly, the seating comfort they got out of such simple and cheap materials.
Because people don't want to pay for good plywood, proper webbing, and quality fabrics. Real furniture weighs a lot, and doesn't make sense to ship around the planet.
Thus, people get foam, OSB, and cardboard in a fake canvas bag.
Good upholsterers are hard to find, often eccentrics, and usually will not tolerate cheapskates. If you own something pricey like a boat or restaurant, than most are happy to get something that will last. Even a few yards of period correct fabrics or leather is more expensive than the typical Ikea living room set.
One needs to learn these things if you want to stay married. lol =)
When my mother was younger she used to reupholster furniture as a hobby.
Older, antique furniture was much easier to work with and most newer furniture was practically impossible to reupholster at all.
I was pretty easy to see the difference once the bones were exposed.
Most are cheap junk bought sight unseen. My stressless couches are built from real wood, full grain leather, etc... My eames chair likewise. But you're adding a 5-10x multiplyer to furniture costs for that quality.
Bought an Ikea particle board couch back in 2017 and it's still going strong despite heavy use by two fat people and 3 moves where it was dis/re-assembled. I recently added a support to the armrest where the unbacked fiberboard had caved in a bit.
Sure, quality furniture is great but I'll wait until we settle down. For now, no regrets.
For some reason people hate IKEA in the US. Was trying to sell a standing desk I bought there for 750$ and nobody wanted it. Ended up selling it for 150$. I also had a Jarvis and it was gone in an instant, even though the IKEA one was much much better.
I Often hear people saying that IKEA furnitures don’t travel well or don’t last long. It’s like we’re not going to the same IKEA.
IKEA is beloved by many in the US and generally one of the most specifically in-demand brands in the market for used contemporary furniture. You might just be in an unusual region or had some other reasons why your listings didn't perform the way you expected.
That said, I am one of those people who doesn't get a lot from them so I can speak to some of criticism. Part of it is just the aesthetic, and theirs doesn't match how I decorate my own space or what I usually feel good around. That's just the nature of aesthetics, though, and there's always going to be some difference in taste between any two people and any two regions.
As for quality, though, I think the critique you hear reflects the quality of their budget products. If you're eyeing modern or euro designs at a fancy furniture studio and then go to IKEA to find a cheap approximation, you discover that much of the cheapest stuff has the same flimsy glueboard, peeling laminate, and unstable joinery of the cheap stuff at Wal-mart.
That shouldn't rally be a surprise (cheap is cheap for a reason) and doesn't hold true for their mid-range and higher products. And heck, it's not even really fair when Walmart and Target furniture isn't any better, but it's enough to keep feeding the reputation.
I legitimately had no idea IKEA sold anything of real quality. TIL.
I think IKEA is sort of like the Toyota of furniture. It doesn't look amazing, but it's higher quality than the price would lead you to believe because they work very hard to design things economically.
It’s also engineered incredibly well. There are no weak points or flaws in the design. It feels like someone poured their heart and soul in to producing the absolute strongest and most practical item possible given the budget.
Please tell me you’re not still talking about IKEA.
I am. So many other companies products seem to have one weak spot that completely ruins an otherwise strong design. Meanwhile ikea stuff seems perfectly designed for the material budget.
This chair for example is way stronger than it has any right to be. I’ve seen it used in a ton of cafes so it clearly holds up to heavy usage https://www.ikea.com/au/en/p/taernoe-chair-outdoor-foldable-...
The look and price feels like it should be a flimsy piece of junk but in reality it’s incredibly solid.
God no, it's awful. At least 50% too small in all dimensions. It's a chair that deliberately ignores that someone larger than 160cm 50kg girl might sit on it.
Found IKEA's CEO everybody.
I mean, it depends what you mean by ‘real quality’; you’re not going to get hand-crafted expertly made stuff that will last for centuries or anything. But for the price, their mid to high end stuff is excellent.
I don't mean anything like artisan or hand-crafted. I mean well-built, out of quality materials. A good quality table, for instance, should last decades.
I'm writing this comment sitting at a basic IKEA particleboard desk that I've had since 2014. It has survived daily usage for 10 years and 2 moves (one coast-to-coast). The only signs of wear is some scuffed paint where the hands rest in front of the keyboard and veneer is starting to peel slightly in one the corner.
I think a lot of their solid wood stuff (it’s not all chipboard!) would fit the bill, tbh. You do have to be slightly careful with the assembly (it’s not difficult, but some people like to treat the instructions as suggestions, and then get annoyed when it falls apart…)
Yeah, I have a couple of Ikea chairs in a room that replaced (cheap) wicker that was falling apart. They haven't been used hard but, to me, they were pretty inexpensive, look good, and are very comfortable.
On the other hand, I bought a dresser with a lot of particle board and, no, it's by no means well made. But it's in a bedroom and it works. I could have spent 4x (or more) for a nicely made hardwood dresser from a good New England brand. But even getting it into the bedroom upstairs might have been a bit of an adventure.
Have you never been in an IKEA store? They sell a lot of solid wood.
I have IKEA furniture that's lasted for decades. It's value-optimized, but it's usually well designed; if you put it together properly, it will last.
If one wants durable from IKEA, shop by material. They have sheet steel and solid wood that will outlast any particle board. The steel is a little thin on the budget line and the wood is not very aesthetic for some tastes, but they usually have options that last or outperforms more expensive particle board furniture that are more complex due to aesthetics. Hell even plastic there is fine, so many cafes with shitty beater IKEA cafe furniture.
The other thing you can do is glue-and-screw instead of just using the screws. I’ve had a bookshelf or two break due to the screws blowing out of the chipboard during a move. Using regular wood glue/PVA meant that that never happened again although it also means you can’t disassemble it. Disassembling is kind of overrated though, the screws don’t ever go in as tight the second time, especially after it’s been sitting loaded with books for a few years.
Underrated trick for ikea furniture. Do not use the ikea nails, they are junk … use staples.
Much stronger, easier to remove and you can remove them without damaging the part like the back of PAX
Oh, yeah, I discovered this not because I thought staples would be stronger but because I built one shelf first and was tired of trying to nail those stupid brad nails in by hand... so for the next shelf I pulled out the staple gun. Was so impressed with how much more rigid it felt that I went behind the other shelf and drove a bunch of staples through the backing cardboard :)
When replacing screws in soft material, I slowly turn them to the left to feel when they drop into the existing thread rather than making new grooves. And in my experience, IKEA furniture reassembles fine multiple times. You also have to make sure such screws are and remain tight, because if they start getting loose that working back and forth will destroy the threads of the softer material. If a piece of furniture isn't solid, figure out why and shore it up before it gets progressively worse.
I'm not going to argue too much with this, but I think this is underselling Ikea quite a bit.
Their cheap stuff is definitely made out of cheap materials. But I've found it to be well-engineered compared to walmart with reinforcements in critical places and general overall good quality control (doesn't come pre-scratched).
Walmart-level furniture on the other hand is often designed to look a certain way, with no consideration for how loads will be placed on it or long-term durability.
I feel like the cheapest thing in a certain price category in IKEA is "doesn't survive two moves" stuff, but everything above it is ... basically fine. Like it's a table, there's only so many ways to put 4 metal bars and a piece of wood on top. It'll be fine.
For what it's worth I've had better luck with Walmart furniture than Ikea, but that was because I was careful about the Walmart stuff and just trusted the Ikea would be fine.
I think more than a bit of it is typical American trademark laziness and inability to follow directions. I see so many of the bookcases without the backing sheet on them. Even if it's just thin cardboard, it provides a lot more of the structural integrity than you might think. The point is to keep the cubes from deforming and having a progressive failure.
The bracing provided by the backing sheet makes all the difference.
Some of the simple desks the sell are nothing more than a tabletop and four screw in legs. With no bracing the desk is unpleasantly wobbly.
The very popular Ikea cube bookcases (https://www.ikea.com/us/en/cat/kallax-shelving-units-58285/) aren't sold with a backing sheet - thankfully they seem stiff enough without it.
The quality of IKEA budget products is far higher than you should expect for the price.
I appreciate IKEA for offering good quality products at affordable prices
Yeah, they’re definitely opinionated about design. Personally, I like it, but if the design doesn’t work for you, Ikea isn’t going to work for you.
Back in 2012 I furnished a home with Ikea furniture.
Yes I hate them.
You'd spend $60 on a book case and spend the next 4 hours trying to understand what the instructions mean and how to build it. You also needed a partner to hold corners together.
Now today, the furniture instructions are better and instead 16 different weird fastener, there are 8.
Its a frustration thing. Ikea didn't really do anything but be low cost. We blame Ikea like we blame Walmart for having drug addicts.
I think this every time I built something ikea, then I build something from another brand and I discover a new abyss, then I go back to ikea. It's a cycle.
Yeah I don’t get the complaints about IKEA instructions. They have the best furniture-assembly directions I’ve seen.
They have a lot in common with old LEGO set instructions. Maybe people who hate them didn’t do a bunch of that as a child?
I have a really hard time understanding people that don’t get how to assemble furniture of that kind in general.
Instructions or no instructions, there’s only so many ways you can put a bunch of planks together.
I know these people. They aren’t stupid. Many of them just aren’t good at visualizing things they haven’t done or been shown before.
They may know X should go into Y but the task is so unfamiliar or counter to how they think that they hit their working memory limit before it makes sense to them.
Impatience just makes that worse.
IKEA’s instructions are extremely helpful in this case.
Probably poor spacial reasoning skills. Didn’t spend enough time playing with Lego or sticking wood blocks through shaped holes.
Yeah, I’m not particularly handy (I break out in a cold sweat whenever anything requires more than trivial assembly), but I’ve never had any issue with assembling Ikea stuff.
I'm with you -- I've assembled a lot of random stuff recently and I wish everyone had instructions half as good as IKEA's.
Agreed, self assembly is terrible but IKEA is generally the least terrible.
I love IKEA instructions and construction. I honestly get a buzz from the puzzle. If I have to construct more than one of an item then I'll compete with myself on speed and efficiency.
It's basically Lego for adults (which was more exciting until Lego pushed its market into the adult demographic).
Which is actually part of Ikea's brand identity. When you put it together yourself, you feel closer to the furniture than if someone just plonked it at your house. OTOH, if you hate that kind of thing, you'll never go back, but I guess they have an assembly service these days.
I just don't like walking through their ENTIRE store.
You don't have to. Every IKEA store has shortcuts to quickly go to the section you want. And at the start, after the stairs usually, you can go directly to the restaurant and to the small stuff section, if you want to skip the furniture show rooms completely.
IKEA is actually awesome for this scenario.
Wife no shortcut.
You should start at the warehouse section and walk though it in reverse to get where you want to be.
$750 for an IKEA desk is crazy money. Does it have hydraulics to raise and lower the desk?
But depreciation on IKEA is huge because while it can last a long time within a household, it moves very poorly so if it has been moved or reassembled once or twice, it’s likely near end of life. But hard to evaluate that, it’s not like it has an odometer — hence value for used it very low.
Those desks do have hydraulics: https://www.ikea.com/au/en/p/bekant-desk-sit-stand-white-s09...
Ikea's goods usually come in different price ranges with the most expensive often not being 'cheap' but 'cheap given the quality'. That being said, often their cheapest stuff is the best value for money because it's so cheap that it lasting more than a year would be a miracle (but they usually do!).
Well, an electric motor
Yeah, ikea standing desk prices are crazy. There are plenty of comparable products on Amazon for a lot less money. I kept looking at them in the store thinking that there must be something that could warrant the price, but I just can't see it.
I think a lot of this is attached to a puritan-based work ethic. If something isn't hard to do, or require a lot of time and energy then it's not of high quality or worth having.
It's probably a signaling thing too...
Possibly, though some products like the PAX just truly don’t move well even once.
Yes, Pax is only sturdy when mounted to a wall. It is very unstable by itself. But isn’t it meant to be permanently installed? I’m expecting to leave my Pax when I’m moving out.
Same here — I have an Ikea bedframe that’s nearly a 2 decades old at this point and has moved four times. An office chair lasted me 7 years. Bookcases over a decade old.
I grew up in a nearly all Ikea household, and it’s only later in life I have discovered their reputation.
Am I missing something?
No - Some of Ikea’s furniture really lasts. I have a 25 year old Ikea couch. It needs to be reupholstered but it is still comfortable.
I don't hate IKEA at all, but I've found that a lot of their furniture doesn't last more than a couple of years. I consider it "temporary furniture".
It really depends. IKEA runs the entire range of very temporary to actually pretty good. The trick is knowing which is which, although price points are usually a good indicator.
I mean, if you are comparing with heirloom class furniture then that’s certainly true. After taking the cabinet or bed apart and sticking it together 4 or 5 times, you certainly start to notice some degradation. But then we’re talking about a factor 100 price difference.
The thing is, antique stores are stuffed to the gills with heirloom class furniture, and it doesn’t cost 100x the amount. Gorgeous solid cherry, mahogany, etc, where even the backs and drawer bottoms are solid can be had for a song. We recently tried to find a mostly solid wood IKEA dresser, but because they’re switching all their designs to new anti-tip designs over the next few months, almost everything was out of stock. So we decided to look a bit further afield, and we went to our local antique shop. We ended up spending $600 for a totally refinished solid cherry dresser, delivered into our room. It’s stunning, totally solid cherry, and I think slightly less expensive than the IKEA dresser we were trying to get. Not spending 2 hours cranking screws was a really nice bonus.
Yeah, most stuff at Ikea is either decent or crap temporary things.
Also the style does get really old pretty fast for me.
I think good second hand furniture is where it's at: you get to not buy yet another new thing and get something solid and good.
I dislike their engineered wood stuff. It’s decent for furnishing an apartment but for more permanent things real hardwood just feels nicer, and IKEA has relatively few options with that material.
I had an engineered wood bed frame from them split in half, whereas an older IKEA pine (not hardwood but whatever) bed frame still lives on.
Yeah, I dunno, maybe it’s different stuff in the US? I know at least some of the items are different.
With the exception of the aforementioned table (which I think cost about 8 euro at the time, so, really, what did I expect) I’ve found all their stuff to be of very decent quality, certainly better than what you could get from ‘traditional’ furniture stores at the same price.
I think the reason for this is simple: Ikea does make some pretty poor-quality furniture, but it's often on the floor right next to some very well-built stuff that will last for many years.
Price is sometimes an indicator (I bought two Ikea dressers ~15 years ago; I kept the cheaper one for only a few years while the more expensive one is still going strong) but not always (my 18-year-old sofa was the entry-level option at the time).
In the US alot of peoples first experience with Ikea is buying the cheapest desk, couch, bookcase, etc. for a dorm room or first apartment. And those are largely trash that won't survive a move, spilled water, accidental bump, etc.
They have a line of pine furniture I like, as well as other things that are solid for the price (their kitchen cabinets) but you only have one chance to make a first impression as they say.
The problem with used IKEA furniture is that it's all DIY-assembled. You don't really know if it was built properly.
At least in Germany quality has gone downhill.
I still own some Billies made in 1995 or so by Ikea. Literally massive wood and damn good book shelves. The ones bought by me in 2008 or so very noticeably less well build but still ok. The ones we bought in 2018 or so are shit, especially the shelves are so thin that they begin to sag.
In 2008 or so a friend of mine bought a "kallax" (another name then) and it was awesome, it's still in his basement and looks good. We bought one in 2023 and it's basically only paint, some "wood" and air. It's ok to store stuff in, but it's impossible to drill a screw into the wood. It's like trying to screw paper.
KALLAX used to be EXPEDIT. Both were made from honeycombed cardboard (mostly air, as you say) covered with very thin sheets of painted MDF. Maybe there was a time EXPEDIT was more solid, but I had one in the 1990s, and it was just like this.
You can drill the thin wood in IKEA furniture like this, but you have to reinforce it.
IKEA has always had a mix of wobbly instacrap and solid stuff. I remember they made a short-lived modular shelf called BRODER [1], which was solid steel and came in wall-mounted or freestanding configurations, the kind of solid thing you want in a garage or storage space. I was shocked at how high-end it was. It was discontinued to cost and low sales.
[1] https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3209/3641557199_eb0860e9eb.jpg
Kallax is cardboard? Those brilliant bastards.
Honestly those cubes at least the 4x4 are perfectly fine. And cardboard is a hell of a lot more sustainable than solid wood and probably particle board
Structurally they're fine, and can hold a fair amount of weight. Just treat them well; don't cut/drill into them or let them near water (the cardboard gets soft), don't overload them, and don't move/lift them while they're filled with heavy objects. While they're cheaply made, they're not among IKEA's worst products, I think.
Yes, they are suprisingly versatile. Also, thanks to their low weight (aka "cheapness") they are easy to transport and assemble.
Kallax redesign thinned out outer walls of previous Expedite by 1cm so it looks closer to the thickness of the shelves and dividers. Also saves on a lot of material I imagine with the volumes involved. Also soften edges to be kid friendly and more scratch resistent finish. Cheaper, looks more aesthetically balanced IMO, and basically as statically strong holding stuff and doing furniture work. But thinner walls makes difficult/wobbly moving in larger 4x4, 5x5 variations.
I had to cinched a band of webbing around the outside of the shelf during move to prevent it from falling apart. Gluing all the dowels/joints/connection also helps with strength a lot, but who has time for that.
I have a lot to complain about their decline in quality (at least with IVAR they realized they've gone too far and reintroduced metal rails) - but don't diss my boy EXPEDIT/KALLAX. :)
IMO, it's one of their most brilliantly engineered pieces of furniture. Sure, it's engineered to be cheap - but definitely not cheaply engineered. The whole geometry etc. is designed around what is possible with the materials.
They are really low-priced, versatile, easy to move, and TBH, for veneered cardboard it has no right to still be this sturdy, especially the 2x4 and smaller variants - and as another poster has said, even the large ones, as long as you don't try to move them around with heavy stuff inside. Just be dilligent when assembling and see that the screws are tightened really well.
Thanks, that's fascinating. Ar least in my recollection, the expedit I knew was comparable to a Billy in wood density, but I might be mistaken - it's nearly twenty years.
Funnily, the most sturdy piece of furniture we own is from Ikea. Two massive desks build from solid steel frames and a plate made with wood furnishing. Totally indestructible, weighs a ton and was made by Ikea in the 99s or so. Funnily enough, we didn't even know that they where from Ikea. We inherited them from my father in law and were cursing their weight like "man I wish Ikea made this, than it would be easier to carry". After dismantling them for transport we discovered various Ikea stickers. Sadly we don't know the model, just that they where manufactured by Ikea.
The most endurable piece of furniture I know of is the kitchen of my mother in law. Made in the 70s or so it uses resopal finishing and the counters itself looks like new, despite years of heavy use and non stop smoking.
You're quite correct about the Lack. They're cheap as hell (15 bucks at time of writing?), but as a result quite manipulatable, such as creating 3d printer enclosures [0]. You can see some of their insides as they go through the process.
[0] https://blog.prusa3d.com/mmu2s-printer-enclosure_30215/
Now that I look Finnish prices it is surprising. The coffee table is 40/50€, tv stand is 15€. Side table 8€ or 10€ for next size.
Okay those cheap ones make sense, but for coffee table it is robbery...
The "enterprise edition" is more than three times as expensive, while providing less stability than two of the regular products combined.
https://wiki.eth0.nl/index.php/LackRack
The LACK RACK https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=eth0.nl
Though I'm also going to point out that a LACK side table ($13 now) for 8 years is a rather good deal.
The internals are revealed on the Ikea page too: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/lack-side-table-black-brown-801...
I made a Lego table out of one Lack end table, four Lego baseplates and some rubber cement. The baseplates cost about 2x what the table did.
IKEA is a fascinating outlier in this discussion.
At some point in my twenties, I decided it was time to upgrade from my broke college student IKEA lifestyle which to me meant West Elm. Every thing I got from West Elm was absolute garbage and none of it lasted more than a handful of years.
Now I'm in the prime of my career and could move up to something actually nice if I really wanted to, like Design Within Reach (truly the most ironic business name in existence). But it's just so hard for me to justify a 5x or more price jump, when, honestly, the IKEA furniture I have has been so good.
I have a decade-old IKEA couch that is still in great shape despite surviving cats, dogs, young children, a snoring spouse who slept on it every night for about a year, and being mostly occupied throughout the entire pandemic. It's a tank, and still looks good to me.
I think I've committed myself to having a style that is basically "IKEA + some vintage stuff" which seems to work well quality wise and is about an order of magnitude cheaper than getting new quality non-IKEA furniture.
So your snoring spouse: what happened after a year? Divorce? Did the snoring stop? How?
I got an IKEA couch about 9 years ago. It was like... $700? The construction is definitely very cheap and you can tell if you flip it on its back, but it's very comfortable and sturdy enough that it still feels solid in normal use.
I don't think "cheap" construction is necessarily a bad thing, honestly. There's ways to do cheap construction such that it works just fine.
Ikea has to engineer it. They are a global company and they can invest in engineering to avoid as many returns/refunds. It's worth it to them.
So while the materials are cheap and the style not high end, from what I've seen they maximize the engineering to make it durable.
I avoided the LACK after seeing someone spill drink and watching it bubble up like paper.
My coffee table is still from IKEA, but it’s metal. I’ve had it for 11 years now. It’s on wheels and some of them look like they’ve seen some stress over the years… and it’s been moved to 8 homes in those 11 years, which could have been the cause. But it still works great and I don’t know the the average person visiting my home would notice that.
I have been thinking of getting something a little larger and more grown up, but I love the functionality of the wheels, how it can get out of the way, and that I don’t have to baby it. It doesn’t look like they sell it anymore, but it was $40 well spent.
Well, it is literally paper laid in a honeycomb pattern.
Congrats on the new server rack when you decide to take it out of service as an end-table: https://wiki.eth0.nl/index.php/LackRack
Also… I haven’t priced out Lack tables in a while but it looks like they’re still only $20?! I last bought one in probably 2006 and they were $20CAD at the time.
IKEA is better then almost everything by Ashley home furnishings.
I have an Ikea Lillberg sofa from 2005 that I never dreamed I would hold onto as long as I have.
Every time I've moved, I think this will be the time I replace it, but the joinery has stayed rock-solid, the wood has aged beautifully (though I admit this is likely owing to a lack of pets or children) and even the upholstery has never pilled or visibly worn (though I keep thinking about ordering a replacement slipcover set from Comfort Works, which makes aftermarket upgrades for long-since-discontinued Ikea products). And the minimalist, Danish-influenced style somehow never looks out of place no matter what else I put around it.
This article has me thinking I may yet keep the Lillberg for years to come.
After a lot of digging a few years ago, I settled on the IKEA Finnala. So far it's held up pretty well.
It's not as well made as quality pieces, but I worked from the assumption that any couch I bought would be trash. Some of the nice things about a buying into a system like the Finnala are that when an arm, cushion, cover, or whatever fails, I can just replace that piece; there are aftermarket covers and legs; if I move it can be disassembled; and if a new place is smaller, the whole thing doesn't have to be trashed.
I love quality furniture, but it doesn't always fit the bill for a society where people can't afford a single family house or put down roots. (Note: that still doesn't necessarily justify all the items being sold today that are destined for a landfill in a few years.)
I've found Ikea furniture is great and lasts a long time as long as you don't move it to another apartment, that seems to really stress the joints and it will get rickety after 2-3 moves.
Yup, we've had the same IKEA furniture for 16 years now, it's still going strong.