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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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…)
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 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).
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.
$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.
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!).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
Hmm, I’m not sure that’s necessarily true everywhere. We replaced our IKEA (or equivalent) stuff with solid wood antiques and they were all $1000+. We had only two items to really replace, but compared to the $50 that the IKEA stuff cost it was quite an expense.
Yeah, maybe this place was unusually cheap, but chatting with the owner made it sound like the supply far outstripped the demand, so I don’t think that’s fundamentally true. That said, I’d still take the $1000 solid antique over the $600 mostly solid IKEA piece.
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.
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.
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 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 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.