Never been in one. To the best of my knowledge never owned one of their products. I don’t have much need/use for cheap shit.
That’s basically what I came in to say. I like that most of their furniture has spare, clean lines (no random scrollwork etc. for the most part) but I can drop serious change on things you can pick up with one hand. My bedside table, for example, is much less crowded since I found a slender columnar lamp (instead of the traditional cone shade and big round base) and on top of being exactly what I wanted, it was about twenty bucks.
Kitchen stuff is good, too. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the nonstick pan I picked up there. Twelve bucks I figured it would be a short lived product but it’s held up nicely.
Its not that Ikea is so awesome, but rather that before you get to much better quality, you have to pay a LOT more. IME, the stuff one pr two levels above Ikea isnt any better, and it’s always just as much of a crapshoot to see how it will wear. I agree that Ikea is the McDonald’s of home furnishings, but the analogy holds as you move up: mediocre chain restaurants aren’t really any better or healthier.
I live a 10 minute walk away from one, and I know the layout well enough that I occasionally threaten to set up a guide booth. The majority of the kitchen ware in the house is from there, and a few larger items. I probably drop in about once a month at least, sometimes more often, if only for the vegetarian hotdogs.
The stuff’s generally adequate, and some is really good value, and the returns/replacement policy is better than the local average. I’ve gone in and asked for a replacement screw for a bed bought 10 years ago and got one free. Meh at worst.
I love the cube thing they have, it’s great for storing records, and they are one of the few places that stock a reasonably priced, not ugly corner style tv stand.
I hate going to Ikea. I can’t walk that much without having some sort of problems, and there is no way I could pick up the furniture boxes myself.
I voted nay. I keep seeing people talk about low prices, but I just don’t see it. Looking at their website I see a flimsy couch advertised for more than it would cost me to buy a real couch from a local furniture store.
For example, they have a cheap looking Soderhahm for $509. We bought a comparable quality sofa from Wal-Mart for less than half that. They have a Nockeby loveseat for $636. We just bought a better quality loveseat with a pullout for less than that and it was delivered and set up for no extra cost.
And what’s with the pretentious names for assemble yourself bookshelves that are about like the cheap Sauder shelves you can get at any discount store?
Bumped.
I voted “Yea.” I’ve been to Ikea stores several times. They have attractive, cheap, pretty-high-quality stuff. We have several Ikea bureaus, bedside tables and a chair.
I just bought their throwback mid-century-modern 1956 original that started it all, the Lövbacken side table.
"This time, instead of simply being influenced from the past, they have revived it. Their new LOVEBACKEN side table is a nearly exact replica of the 1956 model the LOVET. "
Quite affordable and an excellent place to rest my beverage.
We have exactly one IKEA item: a bookcase purchased shortly after moving in. It’s going on its second decade; I’d link a picture but their website no longer lists it.
I’m an even bigger IKEA fan then even sven.
I go to IKEA for fun ! I think of it as visiting a design show. Our family is very much into inventions and designs, and many IKEA designs are just brilliant if you know how to appreciate them. Like that whole line of high quality inflatable furniture they had a few years back. You saw that nowhere else. Or those recent mats and floor cushions ( who else thinks of designing floor cushions !) made of water hyacinth, a plant pest in Vietnamese waters. IKEA was the first to find a sustainable use for the plant material, aka to treat it in a special way so it becomes durable and springy and weavable. And then they even make sure the weaving is done fair trade style. :: swoon::
Or this year, when they invented a new loom for their Indian workers to make mats faster and easier.
Or the recent collection of containers that allow you to take leftovers with you for lunch, thus providing a little part of a solution for food waste.
And even their food is really innovative. They sell vegan sausage rolls; vegan caviar made of seaweed; vegetarian versions of the famous Swedish Meatballs. I could go on and on. Their kid furniture is particularly well designed, kids are challenged, soothed and intrigued.
I also love to integrate IKEA furniture, new or second hand, into self made furniture solutions a.k.a. IKEA-hacking.
My kid loves to stay for the alloted hour in Smaland, the IKEA daycare.
I often offer my mad IKEA skills to friends and aqaintances. They are always surprised how easy I make it look. 
I voted Yea.
I’ve been buying IKEA furniture for almost 20 years, and have been generally happy with its quality, value, and durability. I have always appreciated the clean Scandinavian designs, and don’t care for the more elaborate look of much traditional furniture. When I lived on my own, virtually everything in my condo was from IKEA. My decor was mostly black leather, glass, steel, and light wood. A friend called it “relentlessly masculine.”
I still have about a dozen Billy bookcases that have made at least four moves, and except for the one that the movers damaged, they all are still in pretty good shape, despite being veneer over particle board. I’ve had other pieces – sofas, dining room sets, coffee tables, etc. – that also suited my needs at the time and were priced well. When I married in 2011 and moved into my wife’s house, I sold or gave away most of my IKEA pieces, except for the bookcases.
I don’t think I’ve ever had an IKEA piece break, but my stuff has gotten fairly light duty. For most of time in question I was a single person; I married six years ago. No kids, and we don’t do a lot of entertaining. Our living room and dining room furniture is more traditional, non-IKEA stuff that my wife bought before our marriage.
But four years ago we bought an Ektorp sectional and matching armchair for the family room. We spend a lot of time on them and they are extremely solid and comfortable. We bought them before the IKEA store in Las Vegas opened, so they were shipped from Los Angeles. Even with about $150 for shipping, they were a good deal.
I can see how people might find the maze-like quality of the store annoying, but once you get to know the layout, you can straight to the Marketplace section if you’re looking for housewares, or use the shortcuts to get to the furniture sections you’re looking for. And yes, the checkout can be time consuming when they’re busy, but I guess I’m not quite as impatient as LSLGuy.
As for the infamous difficulty of assembling the furniture, I’ve never quite gotten it. I am fairly mechanically oriented, so perhaps people who don’t have that knack could get frustrated. But I’ve always marveled at how clever the engineering of most pieces is, and how clear the instructions are. Maybe I should take up a new career of furniture assembler.
Another point in Ikea’s favor - it gave us this great ad: ikea lamp - YouTube
Negotiating an IKEA can actually be fun if you know two things: 1) There are shortcuts you can use to get from one area to another, the trick is to suss them out. 2) Walking through the store against the arrows can be highly entertaining if for no other reason than the look of confusion and fear in the faces of the other harried shoppers looking for the way out. You have to find your entertainment where you can… 
As noted, there are items that are solid wood and last a good long while as far as the furniture goes. I generally like the idea of IKEA and have quite a few of thier items in the house, especially the candles.
I’d like to retract my “meh” from earlier, given that this post is raised from the almost-dead.
Since then, I’ve built my home office with wall to wall hanging bookcases over my wall to wall desk (highly augmented with trim, paint, and other details), and I’ve used Ikea kitchen cabinetry inside the office closet with good success. I hate the drawers, though, and these are the “high end” drawers. The runners are nice! Same as I used on my desk base cabinets. Just, metal drawers seem kind of cheap to me. But it does the job, as these are out of sight.
Meh, because while most of the stuff I’m not interested in, there are a few things that are great. I have five of their cheap white bookcases in my office, still fine after 20 years. And we bought a changing table set there - the drawer part of it is still being used 35 years later. When my daughter was in college Ikea was the place to get bedding and towels and other stuff easier to buy than to shlep across the country. Ikea arranged buses for students.
I was there a few days ago, in the middle of the day, and they had two of 24 registers open despite long longs at each. They eventually opened a few more, which resulted in a free-for-all. So they are incompetent. But walking through the store is good exercise, if inefficient.
My bedroom has waist-high switches and plugs on every wall. The furniture I’m using as a closet (no hangers, but the immense majority of my clothes are the folding-not-hanging type) is officially one of those TV pieces for the living room, with the large hole surrounded by closet space. The other furniture stores where I looked either had the back covered, didn’t fit in the space, were worse quality or wanted to make it to order (3 months or more). The pieces which are supposed to hold it against the wall don’t work with Spanish walls (sorry Ms Swedish Designer, we have baseboards); we used some shelf supports instead, turned upside-down.
[Pet peeve mode]
No they are not incompetent; rather the opposite. They are maximizing profit, not customer service.
Until people loudly abandon their carts right there and walk out without buying it isn’t costing management a penny for you to stand there for 15 or 30 minutes. Rather the contrary; it’s saving them 2 or 3 or 6 cashiers’ wages.
If there is any incompetence, it’s on the part of the customers. If you (any you) are dissatisfied with the total combo of price and convenience, send that message to management. If you’re satisfied, keep silently doing what you’re doing and you’ll get more of the same.
We (collectively) get what we (collectively) demand.
[/pet peeve mode]
I disagree.
They might not have the customer’s time as their priority, but they are not achieving the goal of maximizing profit if they intentionally reduce their throughput.
Assuming a very crowded store (big assumption), if two cashiers are overloaded, and they do a total of 30 transactions per hour between them (random guess of 4 min per), the store is only selling 30 transactions worth of merchandise per hour, and many people could wander away.
But if they open a few more registers and get 60 transactions out in the same hour they will increase profit. A fully engaged cashier is earning his or her wages, so that won’t affect profit.
It’s staff scheduling and unpredictability of load that is more the problem.
I’m thinking both the “incompetent” and the “maximizing profit” arguments are opposite extremes–the store management are likely neither, they are simply trying to get work done and dealing with the variables involved, sometimes better and sometimes worse.
I agree you’ve identified the two extremes. And that the flux at the registers is lumpy, not smooth over the course of a day.
But until a customer actually doesn’t buy something due to the lines, all fewer cashiers do is delay the receipt of the same total money by a few minutes. It’s false to say more cashiers result in more sales over the course of a day. Unless folks are walking out or are chased out empty-handed at the end of the day before the store closes. Or are not shopping there at all.
The tough problem for management is as much as they can observe and react to people abandoning carts & fussing at the few staff on duty, they have a very hard time quantifying the number of people who choose to window-shop instead or to not go there at all.
That last option is me. None of their measures can detect the fact I shop elsewhere because, and only because, of the excessive checkout lines. Ditto Costco, Sams Club, etc. They can’t manage what they can’t measure.
So it falls to the people who are there and can do measureable things to send the message that overall, long lines are hurting their business. But they don’t hurt by making existing customers wait. They hurt by making would-be customers no-show. Those are the extra sales that extra cashiers would capture. And which would, IMO more than pay for their meager wages.
YMMV.
I remodeled the kitchen in our old house, everything except the kitchen sink came from Ikea. Everything went together with ease, I glued and added additional fasteners for strength. The buyers of the house loved the kitchen, it was the best selling point of the house. Redoing the kitchen of our new house is on the list of things we want to do if we stay here. I am retiring next year and we are considering moving to a small town to get away from the Seattle creep. If we move and the kitchen of that house needs to be redone, I will use Ikea again. I won’t buy furniture from Ikea, too many bad experiences.