Meh. I’ve only been to one a couple of times. The couple of pieces we got were definitely a step up from the second-hand furniture (or nothing) that we had, but it’s still relatively cheap stuff. Not bad, we might even get something else there like curtains, but I don’t really get the love some people have for it.
I voted meh. I have no experience with their furniture, having never purchased any. The overall style of their pieces doesn’t appeal to me. I am more of a traditional gal.
I like the kitchenware and towels. We enjoy a trip to Ikea about once a year. We like to eat in the restaurant and walk through the store to pick up a few little things. My boys are still young enough to enjoy sitting on all the furniture and exploring the little fully furnished living spaces.
The males in the house like the restaurant’s Swedish meatballs. I like their smoked salmon and gravlax. The lingonberry drink is a nice change of pace. Ikea has or had a Christmas smorgasbord that looked tempting.
I’m a true believer. Sure, the items don’t last forever. But between kids and frequent moves, I’m happier with furniture that can get banged up without worrying about it.
There is an art to finding decent items. The cheapest items are (not surprisingly) cheap, and the most expensive options are not worth it. But many of the mid-range items are a good value.
I own one piece of Ikea furniture. This thing, which I bought so the Roku in the bedroom doesn’t sit on the floor. It seemed like cheap crap when I unboxed it, but is surprisingly sturdy when put together.
I don’t see myself being a regular customer, but I’m happy enough with my one purchase.
Hell Nay.
I said yea, but I’m actually in no-mans-land, somewhere between meh and yea.
mmm
The quality and value you get depends on the product. The general marketing pitch is low prices and good value, which you sometimes get, sometimes not. Items range from pretty shoddy to really good quality, with prices to match, but most items are reasonably made. Like anywhere, careful shopping is required. Many of the larger items like bookcases and cabinets are pretty extensively customizable, which is a major plus. The downstairs “market” section is also a good source for some kitchenware, bed linens, some lights and electrical items, candles, and various miscellany.
It’s true that the whole store philosophy is based on “guiding” the visitor systematically through the different store areas, but there’s no reason you need to follow the sequence, and the store is full of signs pointing to shortcuts to other sections. In fact sometimes I go to IKEA just to pick up a few things from the market section, so I bypass the main store altogether and just take a shortcut directly there. The layout is not designed for that, so you kind of have to make your way the wrong way through the checkout area, but it can be done!
I like IKEA but shopping there can’t be a casual thing.
I consider it to be an outing. The wife and I will go with some ideas in mind, then wander about on their twisty track. We’ll invariably see some items we didn’t plan on buying but decide we must have. At some point we’ll stop for food (their Italian Wedding Soup alone is worth the trip to me and I’ve hated that soup anywhere else I’ve eaten it). Finally at the end of the day we have our items both big and small ready to purchase then we head home.
I’ve never regretted buying anything there, but I’m a picky buyer so I probably just avoided the total crap (and yes some of the items they sell seem worthless and/or awful). Everything has held up well from the cheap plastic children’s utensils to the shelving units. My office chair has seen extensive use for years and is as sturdy as the day I bought it, but it was a pricey investment. All in all I give it a “yea”.
I have expensive taste, and wouldn’t shop there if I had more resources. But for what it is, it’s fantastic.
The best things are the solutions for staying organized in really small spaces. If you go see their sample tiny apartments, you’ll be amazed at how comfortably one could live there.
I don’t know what I’d have done without them the last ten years or so.
Also, the salmon in the restaurant is great. And the food shop has these wonderful frozen crepes. . .
I like it. My house mainly has non-Ikea furniture but the kids rooms and the rumpus room are filled with Ikea desks, beds, shelving, etc. The quality is fine as long as you understand that there is a broad range and you get what you pay for. If you buy the cheapest desk then yes it will be particle board. We have sold our spare bed which was an Ikea model, but it was fine. It had particle board in places and metal reinforcement in places that needed it. It was strong where it needed to be. In general I feel that Ikea quality varies in proportion to price as expected, but the design quality is consistently good and it all fits together very well. If I ever hear of someone having trouble putting some furniture together, I am 99% certain that it is user error rather than a design fault.
Apart from some drinking glasses, everything I’ve ever bought from ikea has been a big disappointment. As someone has noted, the ensembles in the store look much better than the items do at home, while the particle board may be sturdy enough to do what it is supposed to, it looks and feels flimsy and cheap and the founder was sort of a fascist. So I’m nope, no more, fell for the hype too many times because it seems so darn clean and bright and simple, but you can have my Pïēcdūßhïtē bookcase any time, except that it got damp and swelled to twice its size and I chopped up it, bork bork bork!
I voted Meh. Sorta this.
If you enjoy window shopping you can do a lot in a place like that in a couple hours. But not on a weekend. The more you like the clean “Euro” style the more entertaining you’ll find Ikea.
The furniture is utter shite from end to end. Acceptable enough for poor college students or working class folks who’ll be moving to another apartment in a year anyhow. If that’s you, go for it. If not; not.
The housewares are better. Like going to Crate and Barrel or Williams Sonoma but for 1/2 or 1/4th the price respectively. That’s a winner in my book.
One thing I don’t do is wait in lines to pay. Anywhere. If there’s a line at the exit I leave my cart sitting there and depart. Management won’t fix it until / unless it hurts. More likely, as I walk in I look at the cash registers. If it looks busy I’m either leaving then or knowing that I’m on a window shopping trip, not a buying trip.
Meh. Been to Ikeas twice. Good for inexpensive furniture, people lacking means will find what they need with one stop shopping, I guess a reasonable quality for the price. Nothing I’d be interested in anymore and I see pretty much the same things available at other big box stores, just not all in one place like that. I suppose if I was 20-something again besides going “Yippee! I’m young again” I’d probably take a trip to Ikea to furnish an apartment.
I have only been once and it was too damned big. I would have enjoyed it FAR more if I’d had money to burn. I loved the lamps and the dishes. I did buy some small bowls for a buck and they’re the perfect size for what I needed them for. If I’d had a few hundred dollars to blow I’d have spent it all in the kitchenware and grocery sections. I didn’t care for the patterns on the bedding and towels. Blah. Looked no different from what you can find at Walmart.
I really enjoyed my lunch there, and the raspberry sandwich cookies I brought home to my daughter were delicious as well.
Like many sweeping generalizations, there are lots of examples where this is true, and lots of examples where it isn’t. For instance I was looking for a TV stand years ago and couldn’t find a decent looking one anywhere, not at IKEA or anywhere else, but then I found the ideal thing in the IKEA Business section, kind of a small office credenza that is really sturdily made and finely finished in what looks like rosewood. It wasn’t cheap, but it’s the ideal height for a typical large-screen LCD TV and is far nicer than anything else I saw anywhere. Likewise, you can put together some amazing bookshelves by stringing together multiple units of some of their basic bookshelves and adding various options like wood and glass doors, extra shelving, special inserts, and lighting.
That said, I have little experience with their actual “furniture” in the sense of sofas and beds and such. I did have one of their small sofas once in the days of my youth, and it was pretty cheap and crappy. I’m sure some of the higher end stuff is fine.
Same deal – there’s good stuff and there’s crap. The prices on most things are amazingly low. I’ve found that their imitation-Teflon pans don’t retain their anti-stick properties very long – I have a French-made pan that I’ve had for many years and stuff just slides right off. But I have a few regular IKEA pots that are just fine, and a bread knife that probably cost no more than a couple of bucks and which my friend claims is far superior to his expensive Henckels – not that I would ever replace my regular Henckels chef’s or utility knives with IKEA knives!
Some of their stuff isn’t bad; some is. In terms of assemble it at home furniture I feel you are much better off with Sauder.
We’ve long said that Ikea is Swedish for crap.
^ This. If you’re in college/20’s it’s good furniture for the price, as you age up, hopefully you can afford better. The marketplace (downstairs) ranges from inexpensive (good value) to cheap (low quality, “you-get-what-you-pay-for”). We’ve bought one-time (for on the beach) use champagne glasses there rather than plastic ones from the party store because they were about the same price & glass is classier than plastic. I think we even held our pinkies out when drinking.
I have lived close enough to one that it was no big deal to run over to get something, including just going in for a meal. This means I knew my way around & could get to exactly where I wanted without going thru the [del]rat[/del] human maze.
There is both a restaurant (cafeteria) & a snack bar (pizza, hot dogs, soda, vanilla fro-yo, & cinnamon buns only). While they’re not as good as say, Cinnabon, they’re $1 each or 6/$4. The restaurant is better than fast food; better quality, not much longer time-wise & in the same ballpark price-wise.
They also have a ballpit/playroom/babysitting where you can drop off your little ones for up to an hour so you & the S.O. can shop in peace. On a cold winter’s day, when it’s too cold to send 'em outside, I know people who’ve taken them over there while sitting on the bench reading a book - the kids burn off energy w/o going all Cat-in-the-Hat destroying the house & Mom gets some downtime as a bonus.
As an added bonus, they’re a good source to carry out Presidential policy.
Twenty years ago I was a huge fan: I even brought furniture home on planes and trains when we didn’t yet have a store in Chicago. A dozen years ago I bought a lot of stuff for my office, my bedroom, did an entire custom kitchen. But about that time they seemed to shift from crisp Scandinavian modernism for nearly everything to a lot of country French, maybe country Swedish, stuff. Overstuffed flowery sofas, distressed wooden tables with turned legs, that sort of crap. Maybe that’s more in line with what suburban Americans buy, but much less interesting to me.
It’s not, but a lot of people think IKEA means “particleboard and plastic”. In fact it tends to be solid wood more often than other chains in similar price ranges, at least in Western Europe. And I’ve seen quite a few more-expensive places which had less-solid furniture.
MrDowntown, it’s what people in your area buy. They sell different things in different locations. Some of it is pretty evident with a bit of thought, such as bedding types (some countries like flat bedsheets and consider it uncouth to not have them; others think that flat bedsheets are the height of imbecility), but which specific models get offered also changes by location.