This is meant to be a very general question but I feel like its difficult to find middle of the road furniture. If I am looking to buy any type of quality furniture it seems like I would have to spend upwards of several thousand dollars and if I want to buy furniture that is affordable I will probably end up with cheap plywood that easily breaks. Is there any kind of middle ground where I might be able to buy quality furniture which is stable and will last but isn’t necessarily intricately designed? What I am looking for is good quality materials and quality construction without all the fancy designs that make it so expensive. I am having a hard time finding anything of this sort.
Since the OP is looking for advice, let’s move this to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
What type of furniture are you looking for (Beds, dressers, living room seating, coffee tables, dining tables, chairs etc) and where are you looking to buy? The answers will vary widely.
I am currently looking for a lot of furniture, we have donated a lot of our older stuff to the kids as they set up their houses so the new house is going to be pretty vacant until we find the things we like.
Ikea can be good for some items, they have some great couches and some very nice solid wood bedroom sets that are much more durable than their standard pressboard options.
We’ve found a local furniture store that had great prices on the table we wanted but appalling high prices for chairs.
I’ve been shopping around for a desk for my home office for 5 months and finally found a piece I loved for a reasonable cost online through a shopping club.
So without more details the answer from my experience is shopping around and a huge amount of patience.
Yup, “shopping around” is the answer. Ikea has some stuff that will last. Check out other local stores–bargains might be found. There are always sales.
I’d also suggest second hand furniture. From Goodwill to the higher-end consignment shops, investing time will produce some good values…
Shop around. There are furniture stores that carry “knock-offs” of the expensive designer furniture made out of solid wood, usually a cheaper variety (birch not maple), but solid wood nonetheless. And don’t dismiss IKEA or similar stores, yes they have cheap stuff, but they also carry some higher end solid wood furniture that is reasonably priced.
I’ll second the recommendation for thrift stores, but try to find ones in higher-income/wealth areas. We have gotten some screaming deals on very high quality pieces at thrift shops here in Boulder, which is no Palo Alto, but is still relatively wealthy.
For new, good quality furniture at mid-range prices, we have gotten stuff at Ethan Allen and Room & Board. We’ve also found good deals by going to local modern/Scandinavian design places and finding floor models of pieces rotating out of stock–we got a really good purple(!) leather love seat for about $400 that way.
I get most things secondhand online completely FREE! I just find that the qualitatively better things are free. They’re from people who were happy with their bookcase for a long time and who are getting a new one and they just want someone to pick up the old one. If you look at things that cost €50-€100, it’s all absolute crap: it’s all people who are looking to make money off their old rubbish. The people who are just getting something new give their stuff away.
I recently got a lovely farmhouse sink, looks like this. It’s huge and perfect, but didn’t fit in the kitchen of their new house so they gave it away.
So I just look at the free listings. I’m currently in the Netherlands though, so the specific websites I use won’t help the OP.
If you’re not in a hurry, consider estate sales. True antiques won’t be cheap but there will be plenty of solid, high quality furniture. And since many estate buyers are there for the antiques, the newer stuff can sell cheap.
Seconding IKEA. We just outfitted my kid’s entire room with stuff from that place. Sure, if you buy the absolutely crappiest thing there and then abuse it, it will fall apart, but that’s true for any furniture. Sure, you have to put it together yourself, but it’s not hard and that’s the reason it’s cheap.
Seriously, if there’s an IKEA near you, go to it.
So I have looked at Ikea online and I am not very impressed with a lot of their stuff If I actually go to the store do they have better furniture there? Maybe the stuff online is quality furniture but it all looks thin and flimsy in the pictures.
I had a similar impression of Ikea - that most of the furniture is crap - because that’s their reputation.
Then when my wife and I bought our house, we went looking for some cheaper but decent quality bookshelves, and I found a couple of Ikea’s “brands” that were solid wood, not veneer, and held together with real wood screws and pegs-and-glue - not those flimsy things you’d see on pressboard furniture. Impressed me a small bit, let me tell you.
So, yes, Ikea has some crappy furniture barely meant to survive 4 years in a dorm room, but they also have some decent-quality stuff. I’d suggest going to a store and touching-and-feeling their display units, rather than just looking at the pictures, it’ll help establish the quality level a lot.
For wood furniture I like unfinished stuff and stain it myself. A good gel stain like General Finishes plus proper prep can look really nice.
I’ve gotten all my quality furniture from estate sales and people giving it away. My mother once got a solid couch and chair set for one dollar at an estate sale because nobody else wanted to buy it (not an antique).
The idea of buying used furniture is a brilliant idea. A lot of people are moving into smaller places and sell really good stuff for next to nothing.
Used. For example, I just bought two task chairs that together cost new around 1400$ We got them for Under 300$ and they were in good condition, barely used. Of course, this was basically a warehouse full of office furniture, not a garage sale.
I also recommend garage sales, and craigslist.
I can think of three things you should never buy new if you can help it, and furniture is one of them. Unless it’s a custom piece, but that’s another type of product, really.
Furniture rental places have outlets at which they sell the stuff they can no longer profitably rent out.
It may have a -if-you-look-underneath defect or may be a part of a set and the other part was destroyed, out of fashion, etc.
And estate sales are handy - if you have truck and extra hands (though the staff may load it for you). Otherwise, find out how long it can stay where it is.
If you can work with the group, get on their email list for notifications - they send out pics of the stuff. Greatly helps limit the number of sales you attend.
As a Scandiwegian, I just want to mention that around here there are a few absolute truths: 2+2=4, the sky is blue, and IKEA is where you go for quality affordable furniture.
(Then you pick up some of those large blue shopping bags and bring them home to use as laundry bags. Scandinavia’s number 1 laundry solution! They’re unbeatable.)
Ditto on the thrift stores! You can get great stuff for a song - I got a nice couch for $10 and a real wood sewing table for $14.
Also let your friends and friends of friends know that you’re looking for furniture - lots of families have an item or two they kinda want to get rid of but haven’t yet.
When I got divorced and had to ramp up a new place in a hurry my friends really came through for me - a futon from one guy, coffee maker and mini-fridge from another, etc… I was all set up in a week with no $ out.
Good luck!
I’ve lived in my apartment for 25 years, and almost all of the furniture was purchased used – some of it for the place I lived in before. In fact, the only pieces that have worn out and been repeatedly replaced are the upholstered ones that I bought new. I don’t know if they’re still around, but when I first moved into the place before this one, my Dad took me to a store connected with a furniture rental place – they sold furniture that had previously been rented out. That was in 1985, and I still have and use the dresser, end table and kitchen table that I bought there.
I’m also fortunate to live in a city where people leave perfectly good furniture on the street for scavengers when they move out. I now have two slightly lower quality dressers and a really cool fancy office chair that were scavenged off the street.
Estate sales and thrift shops in good neighborhoods are your best bet, but with the resurgence of bed bugs I’m wary of buying used furniture anymore.
I have a lot of used furniture, but I got it from households that I knew were bed bug free.