Not Ikea specific, but proper wood furniture only really makes sense if you’re staying somewhere long term, have your own house, etc. If you have to move every couple of years for work, because rent is getting too expensive, etc etc, solid wood furniture is really inconvenient and expensive to transport.
I’ve got an Ikea couch I bought fifteen years ago that’s made a move across the US three times. I have two kids in their teens. The couch is still in good shape. I also have an entertainment center/TV stand that I bought from them 10 years ago from Ikea that’s in great shape.
That’s cheap! I paid $800 for a sectional sofa from a scratch and dent markdown furniture store. It was among the cheapest furniture they had. And it had slight cosmetic damage.
I make and restore wood furniture. I have taken plenty of “all wood” furniture apart, repaired it, or just salvaged whatever actual wood scraps I could find.
Whatever idiot wrote this has no idea how expensive true wood furniture is. There is hardly ANY actual wood furniture in the market, PERIOD. You think it’s wood, but it’s veneered ply or fiberboard. That is the state of the entire industry, not just IKEA. This is a simple fact of life in a world that has already been heavily deforested even before all 8 BILLION PEOPLE currently living were born. Wood is precious. You also don’t need solid wood for your fucking nightstand. So maybe you should buy a nightstand made out of the particleboard that is waste product from milling lumber for other uses, like construction. That’s called using everything, wasting nothing. It’s sustainable.
There is nothing wrong with IKEA furniture for most people’s everyday needs. And you are not going to get a 150-year all wood piece for the same price. LOL fuck no. When you are in your 40s and have made it big time you can go to a craft furniture maker and get a solid oak bedroom set. It will cost more than your first car did.
IKEA furniture does not fall apart in 3 years, either. I’m about to go get my pajamas out of the IKEA dresser I’ve had since 2001. It won’t last centuries like a real craftsman made wood dresser. But it’s not 3 year garbage either, and looks and works like the day I bought it, despite me using it daily for 22 years and moving it between at least 4 houses in that time.
IKEA furniture is good for what it is and very cheap. One of the reasons it’s cheap is that it is flat packed for efficient shipping. Assembly by the customer also saves cost. And seriously, if you can’t figure out the IKEA instructions, you must not be trying very hard.
And seriously, if you can’t figure out the IKEA instructions, you must not be trying very hard.
You missed the part where the same idiot posting stupid misunderstandings about the furniture market is the one trying to assemble the furniture. They’re working their ass off trying to assemble that nightstand, but it’s too damn complicated. Just opening the box took years off their life.
They don’t use text in the instructions, just pictures. This lets them print the same instructions book for all the hundred countries they sell in. But it can make assembly just a little bit more tricky. This is the only even moderately challenging part, but like you say it’s usually fun.
Have you tried putting furniture with written instructions together? IKEA is a million times easier because they show you right in the pictures what you gotta do, instead of trying to explain it in words.
Yeah, you’re right about that. Pictures are good. It would just be helpful if you had the ability to use text with the pictures sometimes. They have to not do that.
IKEA is a lot better quality than Walmarts build-your-own furniture. I have both. The IKEA stuff is a lot more dense, the connections are more precise and stronger, and overall the IKEA stuff is just better quality.
The problem is any of the stuff like shelving or say a load bearing surface like a desk. Those flat surfaces are almost always MDF or whatever cheap engineered wood products IKEA uses. The furniture looks nice initially, especially for the price, but the horizontal surfaces always sag after 2-3 years even under low weight. I have a dresser, a desk, and shelving that all developed this problem and some of the shelves barely have anything on them.
Same here, most of my flat is ikea stuff and they’ve been going strong for 10 years. I don’t buy the cheapest options at ikea but still, a kallax will easily last you that much if you don’t jump on it. Only thing I don’t recommend is mattress.
I’ve had my Billy bookshelf for 20 years, always stocked full with books and never did any of the shelves sag. Same for my ikea desk that’s used every day.
Flat pack stuff has been around much longer then IKEA. The real wood stuff was great, but heavy and inconvenient to transport. That’s why the flat pack stuff caught on so fast.
Particle board is heavier than un-processed wood. Ikea does sell some stuff made from actual wood if you look for it. I bought an unfinished pine table from them for $60 a few years ago.
It really depends on the variety and the wood. MDF or medium density fiberboard is quite dense and heavier than say, pine wood. But not all particleboard is the same. There are many kinds and they vary greatly in density and composition.
I’m not sure what being heavier is supposed to mean though. Heavier doesn’t mean stronger.
I also said dense. Particle board comes in many densities (as does wood). The range of both of them overlaps, so there is no way to make a sweeping comment that one is more dense than the other.
Well you made a very strong statement to someone: “that’s just false.” And you were not correct. Correcting that with actual nuanced information is not being pedantic.
I have one of their cheapest desktops with like third from the bottom tier legs and it’s been going strong for about 8 years because it’s in a low traffic area and only used for a laptop and a few desktop items. Is it made of cardboard and tin and good intentions? Yes. Will it crumble like a stale cookie if I ever damage it in any way whatsoever? Also yes. But so far so good, and for $40, it’s already lasted like 5 years longer thsn i thought it would when i bought it.
On the other end of the spectrum, I used to have their ALEX desk and it was sturdy as hell, and my old JERKER was a fucking tank. Only reason I don’t still have them is I needed to downsize.
You spend bottom dollar, you get junk. But, Ikea’s “junk” will still outlast damn near anything else you can find at the same price point. Like shit, I have some of those cheapass LACK side tables I got in college that are nearly through their teens now and still hanging in there. Not everything has fared as well, and I’m much more discriminating and scrutinous in my purchases because of that, but overall I’d say I’ve been generally satisfied with the longevity:price ratio, and often pleasantly surprised. There are very few stores about which I would say that.
I can spend a good deal of time criticizing Ikea but on one thing I can’t: their furniture is incredibly easy to copy and upgrade into a better version with minimal effort.
I took the time to break down, piece by piece, in a crazy exercise of reverse engineering, a love seat, to understand how they had designed and put together the thing.
After that, I sat to run the “numbers” and realised I could make it cheaper, sturdier and add storage room to it, with minimal modifications to the basic plan.
In fact, I live in a country where being a carpenter is not even a hobby and traditional, small scale carpentry shops are very uncommon.
We had a very strong push to shift the country towards services and white collar professions during the 80s and 90s.
For myself, whatever little “carpentry” I know comes from personal curiosity. What I do is use the services of a carpenter to do what I can’t, which is usually the cutting and rough fitting of parts, and I do the finishing, like sanding, stain, varnish, etc, which is also the most expensive and labor intense but requires less tools.
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