An architect friend of mine once said that he admired IKEA above all other furniture manufacturers because it made a modern range of aesthetics available to the masses. IKEA had done more to evolve the public taste than any other manufacturer.
And I do have to agree. I can remember what ghastly furniture most shops used to have around here. There was a lot of what we call "cabin furniture" - which isn't made to look good, just be practical. (Well, some people like that look, but it is a bit...dull). Sure, there was more solid wood furniture, but guess what: that durability comes at a cost. Not only in terms of money, but also in terms of how easy it was to install and move.
And who buys furniture to pass it on to your kids? Your kids will be unburdening themselves of your old furniture before you are in the ground.
As for quality: I have owned some pricey designer furniture and I can't say that I'm always impressed with the quality. Yes, if you have a lot more money you can get really well built furniture. But IKEA is more often than not more than sufficient quality. (Also see their "hidden tags" campaign)
If I pay $5000 for a chair I have reason to expect a lot from it. And more often than not, pricey furniture doesn't actually deliver sufficient quality to be able to defend the price. (Collectible furniture is a whole different deal where you don't actually care all that much about quality, but more about it being an original piece).
For those of you who look down on IKEA furniture, I'd like to hear about what alternatives you think need mentioning. Especially for young people or people of modest means. And I'm not trying to make some clever rhetorical point here. I can't really think of any company that offers what they offer and comparable quality, looks and price here in Europe.
>IKEA had done more to evolve the public taste than any other manufacturer.
I have lived and worked around a fair chunk of the western world, establishing my local headquarters each time, building myself a home.
Long, long ago, I gave up on IKEA for everything except cookware and meatballs.
The reason?
I grew rapidly tired with seeing my living room everywhere. Move across the US, get invited over for dinner with new colleagues: oh, that's my old couch. Cross Germany for personal reasons, stay at a friends place - yeah, that's the kitchen I had in LA. Couch-surfing for a few months in Tokyo? Right, you get the point, same coffee table.
It just became, impersonal. I get it, mass furniture, for the masses, has its time and place and economies.
But as I got older and traveled a lot more out of my own box, I saw the repetition.
These days I go to what remains of those ghastly furniture shops, or the second hand markets, or the good flea markets (which don't accept IKEA stuff) .. and do my best to assemble my living devices from older, antique things.
Its not so easy.
But, it does accomplish one thing: it's mine. I won't see this setup anywhere else in the world, again.
>For those of you who look down on IKEA furniture, I'd like to hear about what alternatives you think need mentioning.
One should not overlook the value in spending the IKEA budget on tools and instead rolling ones' own ...
My hypothesis is that phones are inherently personal and personalisable: it’s our photo on the lock screen and our text messages in the app.
Whereas most people don’t even consider attempting to personalise their couch or their car, so the desire for personalisation is satisfied by having a wide variety of options and colours prior to purchase. And also by having styles rapidly evolve so that many “trendy” and “anti-trendy” options are available at the time of purchase.
Interesting. Judging by the number of "skinnable" computer and phone apps, a lot of people seem to really care about this kind of personalisation. I have never so much as changed the default background on a phone that I've owned. I think I changed the background on my first Windows computer, decades ago, but not since.
Back in the 1990s, it seemed literally like every other person had that Ikea bentwood rocking chair. So I relate to your point. Ikeas poor-sellers remain obscure though.
This is in a thread about them having to be beautiful and modern. "Modernity" seems to boil down to actually being a bit afraid that your AirPods could have a near-monogamous relationship with you, and that this would mean that you're falling behind.
Monotony and monoculture is not beautiful in some people's opinions. It seems that part of the definition of beauty is exception.
iPhones and speakers (headsets, earsets) are accessories, furniture is more permanent (unless it’s near-disposable). You don’t typically update furniture every two to three years (with exception for people who like to show off their wealth and remodel every four years).
IKEA is fine when you’re just starting out, but after years, you realize that it’s got a shelf life. Good furniture really is better. You can get great stuff for very reasonable prices on Craigslist and Facebook marketplace, and it’s much more solid, durable and interesting than the cookiecutter ikea stuff.
While helping friends move, as one does, I often challenge them to disassemble and reassemble their IKEA gear and still have it tight on the other side, so to speak, of the particle board ..
Some do it with grace, some of us with a bit of duct tape. Others, not at all.
It depends very much on the furniture, I think citation needed on exactly which items you’re talking about. Name and shame!
The big wardrobes? They are the worst combination of impossibly heavy, awkward to disassemble and expensive to repurchase - best bet is to sell to the next occupant. On the other hand I have a solid table and chairs and they flat pack and reassemble perfectly. Same with bed frames. Shelving units go straight in the van. I wish the office desktops had metal threaded inserts for the legs instead of nylon, but otherwise also have moved several times and no real issue.
I couldn’t justify the cost of the furniture I really want. So off to IKEA I go!
And if you have a bit of skill at choosing and assembling IKEA furniture, then you can customise things on the cheap so at least it can look the way you want.
Some of it is very good, although you have to dig to find it. They use real wood in many pieces; it's not all disposable.
I don't think that the good stuff is popular, though, and it certainly isn't highlighted. When a durable (often secretly classic) design slips in, it doesn't last more than a few years. The price is usually too high and it's usually too heavy (for their audience, not for me.)
I've still got some really elementally designed and sturdy mounted shelves from them that I've carried from place to place, and installed and removed many times, for the past 30 years. They were probably discontinued 28 years ago; I couldn't find them in back catalogs and AI couldn't even help. I would have started to doubt that I got them from IKEA except that I have one set of components that is still in the packaging. It's simple steel and simple wood, and the wood (IKEA pretending like a plain flat wooden board is a product) is easily replaceable.
I have to be honest, I don't really value furniture that is heavy for the sake of it. I like hippy-futons, simple wooden tables with drawers and removable legs, transformer chairs*, etc. Being able to be disassembled and easily moved or stored is something I value, and being able to be flattened against a wall so the room can be temporarily reconfigured (a requirement for colonial US furniture) is ideal (double drop-leaf tables are wonderful.) Wood and steel are durable, and simple designs with standard hardware are easily reparable.
Funny you should mention this. Just yesterday my wife and I went to the local Ikea to pick up some bookcases. I was originally just going to buy a bunch of the Billy bookcases; we have a few and know their limitations.
But then I noticed they had a much better series called the Hemnes made with actual solid wood shelves and legs so you can route power cords and clean under them. Nice.
So instead of a bunch of Billy's for $70 each I ended up with a bunch of Hemnes' for $350 each. We'll see if it's worth it when they get delivered tomorrow.
I've got a bunch of BILLY bookcases that have survived several moves and are conveniently easy to mod with basic power tools.
Sadly, I don't know if it's worth trying to keep them at this point, because they replaced the previously decently durable wood veneer surfaces with glued on wood-pattern paper wraps (https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/ikea-furniture-inflation...). It's lead to me having a mix of old ones that still look like the day I put them together and new ones where all the corners are already visibly raveling from the wear of a single move.
Eventually, even IKEA becomes “collectible” and not owned by many people. For example, I can no longer find my beloved (and inappropriately named) “Jerker” line of desks which are great for walking treadmills.
There is also some life stage appropriate utility in its ~disposable entry tier pricing.
For example, having young kids is not a good time to have a nice teak dining room table. (Or new wood floors for that matter) (or really anything nice you don’t want to hide in a locked box or room)
Also, pets, like a cat is wonderful. But without great diligence a more lower mid-tier couch will get clawed up the same as an ikea special. At least it may be more comfortable in the meantime.
I suspect wealth may be having your cake and eating it too—-you have fancy furniture that kids or pets wreck and you file that under dc.
All of it screams for automated materials reprocessing. One can only hope that the collision of robotics and AI will reduce the amount of landfill we create.
> For those of you who look down on IKEA furniture, I'd like to hear about what alternatives you think need mentioning. Especially for young people or people of modest means.
I look in antique/thrift/charity/freecycle/secondhand stores or groups. Where I live you can pick up a solid hardwood dresser for a few hundred bucks, because as you say - nobody wants their parents’ heirlooms. And lots of things can be had for free if you can hire a van to collect.
Also "estate sales/auctions" and/or online returns auctions.
A month ago I got an entire king-size bed headboard (with storage), with cabinets on each side, and a bridge that connects the two cabinets across the top (and has lighting - also there is power in the headboard - needs a few upgrades though).
It was made in 1986 - solid wood.
I paid $1 CAD at an estate sale...
Now, the matching dresser with a tri-fold mirror was $175.
Why the difference? No one wanted the hassle of disassembly for the bed unit - but many felt they could probably flip the dresser.
Admittedly, I had to rent a U-Haul (say about $100 including gas) and rope in a family member to help with the move. (because, it had to be at least 800lbs of awkward parts...)
So, my all in was $276 plus some auction fees.
But - still cheaper, more durable and better looking than most "DIY assembly options".
OTOH - if we move again, this sucker stays with the house...
I have had goodluck with this and have gotten many pieces of furniture that will last for the rest of my life used. It is very hit or miss based on your location though and it does restrict your style choices.
At least here, you'll also find a lot of IKEA furniture at those stores as well. Most of the nicer stuff tends to go to higher end stores and ends up being rather pricy.
> If I pay $5000 for a chair I have reason to expect a lot from it. And more often than not, pricey furniture doesn't actually deliver sufficient quality to be able to defend the price.
That's not the point. A large chunk of the price is the name on it and the marketing/image you associate yourself with. I thin, as engineers, that's hard to relate to. But that is how it works.
The price is not a reflection of quality, it's an outcome of a process to pick a price just enough people are willing to pay.
For years I consistently wore a Seiko around people who had watches that cost more than my car. Proudly. When asked why I didn't have a "proper watch" I'd point out that their swiss masterpiece wasn't nearly as accurate as my cheap quartz watch.
They'd laugh because they knew it wasn't about the accuracy.
And I'd get some satisfaction from the fact that they thought I didn't already know that.
I too own things where the price tag can't be justified by the objective merits of the product. So I do get it. But what they have in common is that these things generally are very good -- but you can get the same level of quality for less. I won't buy a low quality product with a hefty price tag.
Anyway, these days most people around me wear some kind of smart watch. And the funny bit is that the people who own expensive watches now have to choose: show off or practicality :-)
I once paid $3500 for a very deep and low chaise lounger/sofa. It was very high quality. You did have to get used to having your feet on the seat because it was so deep, but it was a great guest bed.
But more importantly, to me, at the time, it looked very cool in my tiny downtown apartment.
IKEA is great for stuff where I'm willing to sacrifice some quality for a proportionally large price discount.
But for furniture where quality is more of a concern, and I'm willing to go up a rung on the price ladder, I've been very happy with both Crate & Barrel and Room & Board (noun & noun) here in the US. I have a C&B sectional sofa and quite a few pieces from R&B such as our king size bed, dresser, nightstands, kid's dresser, dining room sideboard cabinet.
They're not $5000 for a single chair range, but $5000 for bed + nightstands + dresser, though you can certainly get stuff for less.
But for "young people or people of modest means" I agree that you probably can't beat IKEA. There certainly are other cheap furniture retailers but you don't really know what you're getting and the style leaves a lot to be desired.
I’m not sure I understand this perspective, I’m looking forward to inheriting some of my parents furnitures and getting rid of some of the ikea crap.. they are furniture that have been in the family in some cases for over 200 years, and I learned to maintain them and care for them as a kid just as a regular part of housework. Some have had amusing changes in use as the times changed, like an old wardrobe being turned into a chest of drawers as larger wardrobes became available, etc.
> I’m looking forward to inheriting some of my parents furnitures and getting rid of some of the ikea crap.. they are furniture that have been in the family in some cases for over 200 years, and I learned to maintain them and care for them as a kid just as a regular part of housework.
Your experience is an extreme outlier.
Most people don't have parents with such old, valuable furniture.
Of those who do, most don't value it themselves.
Of those who do, most don't know how to take care of it.
The reality: Kids often live far away, in smaller houses/apartments. They're married and their spouses may not like the old furniture - they've already invested in the furniture they bought. Also, as people get old, they often need to downsize, so they have to get rid of much of the furniture while alive.
When you have 3+ kids, you can hope at least one of the kids will value it. These days, having 3 kids is an outlier.
For me, personally: I just don't like heavy furniture. I wouldn't want to figure out how to get it into my house, positioned where it's needed, and who's going to move it later if I decide to change the layout of my rooms? Pain, pain, pain.
> I’m looking forward to inheriting some of my parents furnitures and getting rid of some of the ikea crap..
I think you are confusing the perspective of the GP here.
Your perspective is that of the "kid". You like the parents' furniture and eventually want to use them and that's all fine.
But GP is describing the parent perspective which, they argue, shouldn't be to plan life such that the kids will be inheriting and using things later. That puts pressure on them to actually do instead of making their own choices. It's a subtle but important difference.
I see similar issues with people buying the neighboring lot and building a second house there such that eventually their kids can move in their with their family, once they have one. Some kids certainly so, and that's great. But think about your own life, would really have wanted to do that? Or grow up feeling that's expected of you? Most of my friends live half a day of travel away from where they grew up. Most of them would despise the idea of moving in next to their parents. Which doesn't mean they don't love them, just that they value their independence and made choices free from the constraint that it needs to be exactly there. (Besides, a couple usually consists of two people and they often didn't grow up in the same neighborhood.)
Generally, trying to plan for leaving inheritances (of substantial value) is overvalued. Modern society is striving to less dynasty building and I think that's a good thing. A lot of the poor/rich divide is rooted in that and governments should discourage it (through inheritance tax) rather than encouraging it (through e.g. lack of actions against housing costs which forces people to get a big inheritance to be able to live anywhere.)
Though I'm really getting too far from the topic as that was about furniture. :)
This is a complex topic and I’m not going to do it justice in a comment, but I feel like modern society might just be destroying social mobility in the name of what you described, while the already rich are dynasty building just fine as usual via a variety of legal means only available to them selves.
Yes, the tried-and-true first apartment cheap stuff is still there. But the majority of what's for sale in IKEA these days is of significantly better quality (and significantly higher price).
The best alternative to IKEA furniture is more expensive IKEA furniture.
> But IKEA is more often than not more than sufficient quality.
I am not so sure about that. There are some product lines that are somewhat OK price/quality e.g. IVAR seems to be OK. But most IKEA products are too much optimized optimized on the cost side for my taste. The good days of "wooden furniture" is over.
The one criticism I can offer on IKEA furniture is that some of it doesn't move well, specifically the particle board stuff which will fall apart at the joints if it's not carefully handled.
Having said that, I also tend to not buy the particle board stuff.
I'd prefer it if IKEA offered more options (dimensionally) on their durable furnishings.
>For those of you who look down on IKEA furniture, I'd like to hear about what alternatives you think need mentioning. Especially for young people or people of modest means.
I don't know about Europe, but a drive through most SFH residential areas in the US and you will score more usable furniture than you could ever need (skipping mattresses, fabric couches, etc...). At my last home, I ditched a lot of furniture by leaving it out front and never had to wait more than a day to have it gone. Failing that, there are a plethora of thrift shops with dirt cheap furniture (and other household goods). And if you want something more classy, go to antique shops loaded with cool oak furniture that is out of style so isn't worth much anymore.
Compare that to the obnoxious particle board Ikea crap that is the antithesis of buy it for life (and thus TCO is terrible).
Nitpick but solid wood furniture does not weigh more than the particleboard furniture from Ikea.
Also, my 2 cents, but it is high time for a return to utilitarianism in furniture. Just getting a basic leather sofa without cup holders and other e-garbage is a huge pain. (Ironically, Ikea is ok for this.)
> Nitpick but solid wood furniture does not weigh more than the particleboard furniture from Ikea.
What is this special space time dilation wood you found? If its made of hardwood it will be a lot heavier. If it weights similarly and its solid wood is usually very soft and will live as long or less than IKEA furniture.
100% wood is way heavier, even the lighter variant.
Interesting note... I recently disassembled an IKEA cupboard from 1999 made from MDF. It was definitely much heavier than their MDF products (eg. Metod kitchen cabinets) from today.
It depends. Solid particleboard is pretty close, but a many Ikea pieces are hollow, with internal cardboard support. I prefer some of these to particle board because of the lightness. Like the Lack or the Linnmon table tops.
You can easily get better kitchen for example here in Europe, but you have to pay >2x more. Their price/value ratio is stellar usually (but not always). Some designs are great, some are... obscure and I would not want it at home even for free. Taste is eye of the beholder and all that.
One problem is - its sort of take it or leave it. You can't really make custom sized kitchen, you only compose of lego-like bricks of 20-40-60-80cm width and try to cover the inevitable gaps, but they are there. Fine if you don't have constraints, but we do - square-like shape with hard dimensions on all 4 sides. Sloped roof on one side. A lot of custom work and its not perfect, cannot be, its Ikea.
But we got big kitchen for... 11-12k altogether, including artificial stone worktop. Only due to the fact that their sub-contracting company (here in Switzerland!!) messed up first delivery, and white worktop with small black veins came as black with white veins (order came good to factory but out came reverse). Second delivery - each plate was mildly different coloring, so when put together, it looked very cheap and amateurish. Raised with Ikea, after some discussion they offered another one but couldn't guarantee color uniformity. I've chosen another look that would work in any case, but then they seemingly decided cut off that supplier and just returned all the money for worktop, while we kept our current one. Around 5k that was.
Also my massive pet peeve with their kitchen - you have to take their always crappy dishwashers, buying directly say Bosch products won't make them fit well with closing mechanism. I had to throw away perfectly functional Siemens dishwasher and buy their Bosch one. Sounds good, but never ever do Ikea rebrands work the same, offer same quality as originals, don't understand why but even previous time I did that, their Whirlpool-rebrand was crappy, every single device had big issues. That new top of the line (in Ikea) Bosch is massively subpar to older (5 years max) basic Siemens one.
When we did a full renovation, we had the cabinet maker install an Ikea kitchen, with a custom non-Ikea worktop and a small amount of his expertise to adapt it for our non-Ikea dishwasher etc.
This was a massive cost saving on a fully custom kitchen, and let us shift the budget to custom built stairs/bedroom cupboards elsewhere.
I love IKEA because I could furnish entire office (apart from chairs, they don't have anything of Herman Miller quality) with practical and good looking desks and other fixtures and I didn't spend a fortune. I don't know what it would look like if I had to use other suppliers. Not many showroom if at all, long lead times, often problematic assembly.
> For those of you who look down on IKEA furniture, I'd like to hear about what alternatives you think need mentioning.
Word! My desk at home is a very wide T-shaped desk made of three Kallax and two kitchen countertops: I share it with my wife and there are four monitors, two desktop PC towers (inside modded Kallax), two laptops, one shared printer, etc. and we've still got plenty of room on the desk.
Our chairs: we've each got an Aeron (mine is just out of warranty, 13 years old and the wife's got an used one, don't know how old but older than mine). That's quality stuff (it took me a few minutes to set up correctly: when you put your hands behind your head, an Aeron should lean back and then when you put your hands above the keyboard, it should move forward)... Fun fact: neighbor's kid sat in my chair (by himself, I wasn't offering him to try it) and exclamed "wow, that's a good chair!". My Aeron has already been to four countries with me. The "hit hurts my leg" is bullshit from people who haven't spend the 15 minutes needed to read the manual to set it up correctly.
> And who buys furniture to pass it on to your kids? Your kids will be unburdening themselves of your old furniture before you are in the ground.
This highly depends on the furniture. As an example, my dad built some custom pieces out of solid oak that are absolutely finding a place in my house after he's gone.
Your father did not buy those so that isn't a counterexample to what the GP said. Clearly, something your father made with his own hands will have a different value to something he bought.
IKEA furniture is great for small adjustments to fit your needs. Not costing a fortune also makes it easier to experiment with it.
Since they're so common, it's easy to find CAD drawings for most of them.
I did a small hack/conversion on a Billy closet to hide some pipes in our apartment.
https://vanderwalt.de/blog/customizing-ikea-billy-to-hide-pi...
My mind immediately went: I’m sure there is some German law or ordinance or regulation against hiding your Gaszähler. This surely goes against die Niederdruckanschlussverordnung.
Now that you have published this online, police will visit you to remove the Billy!
As long as you can easily slide it out of the way and it isn't fixed to the wall, it wouldn't be a problem for anyone who needs to service it. Therefore, it would not be against regulations, because all regulations in Germany are logical
I really hope not! But it does look much better this way, it was an eyesore. And the regular heizung guys didnt complain when they saw it like this, so im assuming all is well
Presumably because it's cheaper. Ours was also originally in home; the utility recently came through and replaced all of ours with exterior units, likely at great cost (horizontal drilling machines aren't cheap)
I suspect the tragedy in Pennsylvania [1] was the catalyst. There are lots of potential issues with keeping these things indoors.
I read, IKEA first wanted to have them closed down, but then they realized, it does not matter why someone buys their stuff, as long as they buy it.
I like Ikea. I lived in so many countries, and it is an excellent place to buy furniture if you have to. But I consider it "throw away" furniture. Quality is okay or soso and it is unlikely to survive several moves.
If you can afford and have a place for long term. Buy better stuff. Used quality furniture, even antique, can be incredibly cheap.
IKEA furniture can hold up very well if you follow the instructions precisely and don't disassemble them (in most cases).
We have furniture from IKEA that we bought at least five years ago that still functions great. A mattress we got from them is absolutely stellar with a memory foam topper; all of our guests love it. I think our coffee table is ten years old now.
However, everything goes to hell once you try to take it apart. This is why our mattresses are not on IKEA bed frames. Taking them apart has ALWAYS weakened them significantly. (We use Thuma Japanese joinery bed frames, which are AMAZING for moving and very high quality).
Which is kind of moot when you're talking about high-quality furniture, as they are usually single pieces as well.
I've started wood-gluing together my IKEA and other flat-pack furniture to try and increase its usable life since - as you said - it's counterproductive to dis/re-assemble most of it anyways. I've not been at it long enough to claim effectiveness, but so far nothing has started to wobble.
I do the same. I don’t plan to take it apart but wood glue is part of any woodworking shop and I don’t see why assembling Ikea should be qualitatively different. I want my assemblies to stay together, not vibrate, to feel sound. Gluing joints is fundamental.
Even the cheapest cardboard-filled IKEA units hold together much better when glued, and makes moving the units less stressful (no more "it's creaking / skewed when I pick it up").
For what is worth, I had an IKEA kitchen for 12+ years, we disassembled it and gave it to some people that could reuse it, and it's still fine. OTOH my IKEA couch fell apart in half that time, but my wife fixed it up and it lasted until we renovated. We gave that away too.
IKEA has a wide range of products, some fall apart quickly, some last longer.
I have several pieces that have survived 3-4 moves. The trick is when assembling, use wood glue with any dowels. On their own, these dowels only have friction to hold them in place, and over time, the surface of the area where they are inserted compresses, reducing friction. Hence you get that typical side to side sway. The glue mitigates this problem.
I don't see this mentioned enough! Wood glue will improve the stability massively.
Obviously beds and huge bookshelves might need to come apart again, so use your best judgement. But chairs, dressers, end-tables, etc. are completely worth it.
This makes any assembly 1-way, though. Some people (with a very high time:money ratio obviously) might find the collapsible, portable nature of Ikea an advantage.
I'm sure I'm not the only person to have built a wall unit in a bedroom only to learn, later, getting it out the door, and through the hall, and down the stairs turns out to be job for Dirk Gently.
That said, moving some of this flat pack furniture has been a mixed bag. Some move well, some don't.
I did have a wall unit, a $99 hardware store particle board piece assembled with big screws and those interesting, round cam fasteners. It survived three separate moves, including one where it flew out the back of my pickup truck onto asphalt (thankfully in a gas station, vs the freeway I was about to get on). Corner got dinged, door flew off, but it survived!
But I've had other pieces that assemble and are rigid, when torqued around through the moving process start to come undone. The particle board and fasteners are designed for loads only in specific directions and tend to not do well, and fail, outside of those.
I've owned a lot of IKEA furniture, and at no point have I ever considered disassembling them. And I don't think IKEA really even advertises their stuff to be a flatpack-to-furniture-to-flatpack design.
> and at no point have I ever considered disassembling them
That is wise. I don't claim disassembling it for move was a good idea, but it compressed my stuff into a compact car.
Consider also that some of their beds don't fit through a doorway built (esp if doorway is not code width) so some level of disassembly may be required for mere room-to-room moving.
I'm only calling out a tradeoff that may or may not apply. Not everyone is you and me.
> I don't think IKEA really even advertises their stuff to be a
The whole point of this thread (this site?) is repurposing outside of creator intent.
No many real furniture out there with entire ecosystem of storage/containers sized for it. IKEA sheet/stamped metal stuff that introduced a few years ago will last forever.
I've got the Ikea PLATSA wardrobe and none of their organisers fit properly in the drawers. My wife instead got some of the MUJI organisers and those fit much better because they're made of cloth/canvas thus bendy/squishy.
I think my GALANT desk with a glass top survived multiple moves, including one that had it travel about 800 km in a trailer. Worked fine until the day I got a standing desk, at which point I put it up online and someone bought it from me. That desk might still be kicking around to this day.
I think really the only IKEA product that has given me issues is the MARKUS chair, and more specifically, the gas spring leaking. Apart from that, I think everything is more or less functional? Even the five-euro LACK coffee table is still fine, even if it has signs of use on it. I've also bought used IKEA shelves and they're still holding up fine.
> If you can afford and have a place for long term. Buy better stuff. Used quality furniture, even antique, can be incredibly cheap.
IKEA is ideal for a certain stage of your life. It's ideal for optimizing vertical space. It's largely function over form. It looks like middle school classroom furniture. And when junior writes on it w/ a sharpie ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
When you have the space for a separate dining room, agreed that used antiques are comparable in price.
I wouldn't touch their couches rich or poor though; they're painful.
It's very use and location dependent. I'm going to get a good or at least relatively good dining room table. Some cubbyholes/shelves for a closet? IKEA is fine. I also have an IKEA bureau in my bedroom. I occasionally wonder if I should have splurged on a "real" piece of furniture but it saved me thousands of dollars and is perfectly adequate.
I have an IKEA LANDSKRONA (in Gunnared dark grey) and it's a good sofa for like 650 €. I don't think I've really considered sofas to be that markedly better than mine even if they're double or quadruple the cost.
Whenever I looked at using IKEA stuff to hack or incorporate into a larger build, the cost, effort, and quality never seemed worth it to me.
I built my current desk from some butcher block counter tops and shelfs and 4x4's. I don't think it cost me all that much more from what I could have done from IKEA and the quality is astronomically better.
If you're already dealing with saws and drills to hack the IKEA stuff, you really only need to toss is a sander and maybe a router and you can just work with real wood.
I also did a butcher block top. Cut it down and routed to perfectly flow around what passes for a "straight wall" in this house, spent entirely too long sanding and finishing.
Then put it on some IKEA drawer blocks, because I want drawers, but I'm not equipped to build those in any reasonable timeframe.
Cutting down a desk top is something you can do with sawhorses and some good weather. More intricate things need an actual workshop for good results.
Unless you like the look of veneer on MDF instead of butcher block wood. I think anyone considering IKEA is probably interested in the IKEA finish. After sanding, stain &/ seal is another step people like to avoid
I did something similar, but just bought the wooden desk top from Ikea. Sanded/stained and added some standing desk legs. Perfect balance between customization and not building from scratch.
I'd be hesitant to recommend a novice to pursue a glue-up/planing project if they weren't already interested in woodworking.
Eh, most IKEA desk hacks is to buy the wooden kitchen countertop, cut it to shape, and put it on some drawers. So you're not really describing anything different.
A butcher block desk with 4x4s for legs is pretty simple and forgiving. Matching the quality of appearance of a lot of other IKEA furniture would require quite a bit more skill and tools.
Like a Kallax, unless you're a real wizard you couldn't cobble one of those together without a lot of skill.
I have a few of those butcher block tops because I scaled down my shop, but I just can't throw them away. one was purchased 50+ years ago and my family used it as a breakfast table. they make excellent work benches and tables. they're robust and attractive. really all you need is a belt sander and some food safe mineral oil and you can completely resurface them if they get funky. I usually just weld a piece of 1/4" angle to a square plate for legs and weld a nut at the bottom for a threaded foot, but you can really do anything. it absolutely lovely to have a clean butcher block top for food preparation.
As a Kallax enjoyer I used to hate that I was limited to ~32cm width and height, it took me years to realize that I can just remove some of the dividers and make the nooks either wider or taller if I rotate (!) the shelf. It obviously affects load carrying capacity, but it's still plenty strong if you are smart about it.
How it's better than that: you can not only rotate them 90 degrees, but you also move the dividers. Now due to how their built, it may not be the sturdiest thing to do but you definitinely can turn a 2x 32 cm into a 1x40cm and 1x24cm. I do that for my PC tower (and the wife's): it's too tall to fit in 32 cm, but then I don't want to waste space. I simply make new holes for dowels (once again, YMMV but I do it since years) and move a divider up.
I can't stand Ikea furniture quality but am often confronted with the only option for higher quality being an order of magnitude more expensive. Where is the middle ground between a Stickley Morris chair and an Ikea chair?
Also their particleboard and cardboard furniture should be banned. Furniture should not dissolve when a drink gets spilled on it.
When I moved from LA to St Louis many years ago, there wasn’t an IKEA yet. I was truly confused about where one was supposed to go to buy lamps. Any furniture stores that had them were selling ones that gave off strong grandma vibes.
One of the best furniture life hacks you can recognize is that you can replace the top panel of most self-assembly storage furniture items with a custom work surface suited to your usecase.
Take two drawer units, and instead of putting the tops on them they were supplied with, put a slab of desktop across both of them with a gap between and you’ve got yourself a desk.
> Take two drawer units, and instead of putting the tops on them they were supplied with, put a slab of desktop across both of them with a gap between and you’ve got yourself a desk.
Definitely. My go-to is three units (I explained it in another comment too): two horizontal along the back wall and the third one in the middle, perpendicular to the wall. Then I put two kitchen countertops: that's now an ultra bad ass T-shaped desk for me and the wife. Plenty of room for monitors, laptops, the printer, physical notebooks, even plants (!) etc.
I used to spend hours pouring over the https://ikeahackers.net/ site - but never actually hacked much of our furniture (no more than adjusting the height, or changing handles/worktops).
As cheap as Ikea was, being in London in my 20s just as Freecycle started, meant we ended up with a lot 'vintage' furniture for free or next to nothing - some we still have now.
My current standing desk is a custom desk built from some wholesale parts from Linak and a custom MDF board. When we went to build a similar one for my partner we no longer had access to the same MDF supplier (i.e. my dad's startup), so we just went down to the local IKEA and bought a desk board and put it together all the same. Sure it's cheap chipboard, but all the magic is in the frame, actuators and control box so to replace the board is really straightforward and cheap as chips.
I was thinking along the lines of Ikea-style furniture from scratch. Most local hardware stores carry these giant CNC routers, and the technicians there can cut particle board sheets to requirements.
How cool would it be if they offered a simplified furniture CAD program, where you could choose what material you need how many shelves of what size, etc and it would generate the needed program that would drill the required holes, and would tell you what size of screws and pins and dowels you need to pick up.
I definitely would use something like that, instead of trying to cut preexisting furniture to size.
> Most local hardware stores carry these giant CNC routers, and the technicians there can cut particle board sheets to requirements.
Do you mean local woodshop? CNCs that fit a full sheet-good are very large and expensive and not at your typical hardware store. Especially once they can load and unload, change bits.
Sheet-good sized CNC's are mostly for batch jobs do not really make sense economically for one off designs. You'd be better off with just panel and cabinet saws.
> How cool would it be if they offered a simplified furniture CAD program, where you could choose what material you need how many shelves of what size, etc and it would generate the needed program that would drill the required holes, and would tell you what size of screws and pins and dowels you need to pick up.
This is most modern cabinetry businesses now internally. Some companies have started offering direct to consumer products, but most are still b2b.
In Europe a CNC, or at least good and repeatable saw is available at large hardware stores. You can get any product cut to any shape precisely as long as it's a rectangle. I've not noticed one that offers more than this such as drilling holes.
But even if you were to get the wood cut and prepared perfectly, there's still a lot of skill to turn that into nice desk for example, with good joinery, veneer on exposed end grain, etc and a lot that can go wrong, and you are likely to end up with a worse result than a mass produced desk for a much higher price. This type of manufacturing can't compete at all with the cost optimizations that Ikea can do. So where you see B2C in this space is built-in furniture like for kitchens. This has a limited design space so a lot of the parts are standardized, and the design can be constrained to not have the end user work on details like exposed end grain. I guess this doesn't really have an alternative mass-produced option, so the price comparison is to hiring a contractor, so it makes sense as an offering.
But it's evidently hard to get right. If you go to an Ikea that sells returned goods, that section is filled with kitchen countertops cut to the wrong length (good source of cheap wood for projects by the way).
I live in Europe, never ever seen a CNC in a hardware store.
I ordered my kitchen fronts from such a place, to fit on … an IKEA kitchen. Giving it a different look, but the benefits of standardised units and the IKEA universe. This was customised mass-production, but still about 3x IKEA price point.
> In Europe a CNC, or at least good and repeatable saw is available at large hardware stores. You can get any product cut to any shape precisely as long as it's a rectangle. I've not noticed one that offers more than this such as drilling holes.
That's not the case in the US.
The big box hardware stores have a large track saw vertically mounted that can cut full sheets of wood, but there usually isn't someone working who is trained to operate it. They also have a rickety cart with a hand saw and tape measure attached with too short cables that you can try to use to make your cuts of dimensional lumber.
I've long been considering this idea as I make a lot of my own cabinetry, and would love to get automated cutting and drilling lists depending on if I'll use screws or dowel pins or some nice wooden joints.
In general, you always start with outside dimensions, board thickness, having a kick plate or not (eg. when you make it wheeled), will you chamfer/round the edges and then the rest is simple calculation. You add internal shelve/drawer dimensions and it can consider those too.
I had some scripts that worked with an older version of FreeCAD and printed the cutting list to a CSV, but it still was not the perfect solution.
Interestingly, local chipboard/MDF shops here in Serbia would do that as a service for you on their CNC machines (at additional cost, obviously :)).
I think you’re right, and there’s definitely potential for disruption of kitchen and also wardrobe offerings in some countries.
(I say some countries as IME there’s a huge difference in existing competition between countries. For example, I found that the kitchen options in Germany were hugely restricted vs. what I was used to in the UK.)
If you're interested in that I would search for a maker space or hacker space in your area. They usually have tools (like a CNC router) that would be far too expensive for an individual to buy and they let the public use them after taking a short class and paying a membership fee.
Look at the very popular Lack table, it's made from cardboard hexagons with four pieces of wood-like thing in the corners to hold the legs. You can't make that yourself for cheap, and just the material cost in eg. wood, would be more expensive than the full table in ikea.
Otherwise, there are many youtube channels specializing in woodworking where you can learn all the basics to design your own furniture, but it won't be cheap.
People like to complain about it not being solid wood but the furniture from Ikea, such as Lack and Kallax is fit for purpose and remains a low price despite the cost of wood going up a lot. And what you can get at a similar price point from Wal-Mart in North America, or Conforama in Europe, is much much worse quality. Especially the veneer which holds up from Ikea but is more like wallpaper if you spend the same price somewhere else.
It depends on your comparison; a Lack table is maybe an extreme example.
I say this because I’m currently working on a project to build a full kitchen’s worth of cabinet carcasses using good quality 19mm plywood, and I’m aiming for it to be cost neutral with Ikea’s kitchen cabinets, having sourced the plywood from a local DIY store. (Obviously ignoring the cost of my existing tools.)
Which is to say, if you could source plywood in volume (therefore cheaper per square meter) and amortise the cost of the CNC machine and other tools over time, I think it would be feasible to be close to cost competitive with IKEA‘s kitchens.
I'm not using CNC; I just agree with the previous poster that there's an opportunity. (I'd note that none of your subsequent post related to the comment you made about CNC?)
For my project, I believe 19mm is plenty for carcasses - just about every mass-produced kitchen uses 18/19mm chipboard frames, and they can last for decades, outside of abnormal abuse. The main reason for using the same size is easy compatibility with standard doors/fronts together with standard fitment hinges/runners, all of which I'll be purchasing. The tops will be either granite or concrete.
I don't disagree with there being an opportunity or using CNC, I only point out that pinning everything to materials suitable to widely available CNC is too limiting.
Like, using plywood for verticals is overkill, they don't experience any bending, while 19+19 is 48 so you might as well use glued wood board for example.
Billy bookcases though are just slabs of laminated engineered wood cut to rectangular dimensions, drilled with precision positioned and sized holes, plus a stack of dowels and camlock fasteners.
yeah, those cardboard tables.. I had to glue in 2-4 (5 by 10 cm) stringers and refix legs to them for it to hold a measly epson c8600 and even then it stands on wooden planks to distribute the load.
ikea is a great inspiration for making your own furniture and then a source for bearable spare parts.
there's an place in Seattle, WA that does this called shelf.me for what looks like zero-hardware self designs.
my shop is next to a cabinet maker who does most of is work in that same birch hard-ply. he's got the full sheet router, but he only really uses it for special projects. its mostly just the big table saw. he's got a subcontractor that just does drawers. most cities have several of his kind of shop, and while they don't have a design website they generally work from napkins. I think that birch ply has gotten really expensive in the last 5 years though.
I love KALLAX the most of all IKEA series. Sturdy as heck, can take a lot of weight, extremely versatile and durable. I've used it as a bookshelf, for putting boxes away, as a wardrobe organizer, you name it. Oh and the price is right. Nothing else comes close.
Most impressive / annoying thing about Ikea is how they keep value engineering products, some products are cheaper relative to inflation vs decades ago, but at the same time it be nice if they just settle one some "timeless" perennial basics like lego. The expedite -> kallax transition still lives rent free in my head, and my curse is being able to identify either sku from a distance.
Creating luxury closets from the modest PAX platform is my favorite Ikea hack read (currently working on such project). And by the way, the non-nerds take it to a different level.
Some time ago I realised that second-hand Ikea furniture is a cheap source of material for DIY projects. Facebook Marketplace (UK) has plenty of Pax cupboards which provide useful large boards. Prices vary, but you can pick up almost pristine items for almost nothing. If you don't need whole boards, spot damage is acceptable. Buying similar new materials would perhaps be better, but cost considerably more.
If people haven't listened to the episode of the podcast Acquired about the history of Ikea[1], I strongly recommend it. Fair warning, it's 3.5h long, but the story is fantastic and the hosts do a great job making it engaging.
Great work, mate. Workbench looks spectacular. I happened to find a cheap relatively-stable one for my 3d printer but I really should have tried to assemble something like the one you have. In the end it worked out because the measurements land perfectly for my wife and me to have our desks with the printer, homeserver, assistant rig, and Cricut CNC in the middle. But I think she would have enjoyed the IKEA rework more. Good photos of the process too. Thanks for sharing.
At Leroy Merlin, you can order either particle boards, or normal wood boards, whether 16mm for walls, or 30mm for the table top, cut to your sizes (as long as they're rectangular), with end faces laminated as well, and all of that at a fraction of the price.
I had a broken cupboard in a rented apartment, and just built a new replacement one for €15. The bureau in the article could cost 2x..3x of this, which is still lower than overpriced IKEA furniture. (Good furniture, that isn't made of cardboard, is overpriced in IKEA.)
For functional sturdy furniture like this, if you are OK with the look, you can make the base/frame from aluminium 80/20 extrusions (the kind with t-slots and all kinds of standard brackets etc for fastening them together). Misumi has a simple CAD interface to design a complete unit, and this generates a single part number for you to purchase everything cut to length, with holes if needed, and all required accessories and fasteners to assemble it. You can easily add a wooden countertop or shelves if desired.
It's not very cheap but it's infinitely configurable (unlike Ikea hacks) and doesn't require much skill (unlike building from wood at least if you want it to look OK).
Re: the slight wobble, you should be able to find some inexpensive thin-sheet backing board at a hardware store. Use small ribbed tacking nails or glue around the edges to attach it at the back, and it should help stabilize and prevent racking.
I like the Trofast system for making stuff for storing kids toys and organizing their rooms. Honestly there is a lot to love and customize about their offerings for kids and luckily the good stuff also gets picked up by other manufacturers/suppliers, so you get access to other things that go together - furniture too, but also stickers, and other functional decor stuff. Because kids grow up fast and you may be swapping/change their stuff more often, it’s a god send to have these to help out.
A non-hack I learned about yesterday. I was taking apart an IKEA dining room table. The screws and bolts were obvious, but the top would not separate from the frame.
After much parsing of the assembly manual (which took some effort to find online since they don't make this model any more), I realized that the top had slid over a knobbly dowel. Pulling horizontally popped it off.
I Sharpied the directions on the bottom before I reassembled it. We'll see if far-future me can figure out what I meant.
Anymore I almost don't buy any IKEA stuff without intending some modification. I do woodworking as a hobby so it's nice to be able to skip all the rote stuff like building a large flat wooden surface or a square box or table legs. I can just focus on building a highly focused and functional piece of furniture for my space.
I couldn't find any kind of an enclosure that fits the TidyCat Breeze XL litter box. The toy box drawer (Smastad) was big enough, so I cut an entry hole on one side, and a hole on the back side for removing the pad insert.
I hadn’t been to IKEA in a decade or more but went this weekend to get new furniture for our kids. Today I put together a “vanity” for my daughter, and couldn’t help but think of the vanity I had in my room as a teenager that my mom had I inherited from some other family member, solid wood with beautiful birds-eye maple veneer. “Simulacrum” was the word I kept muttering to myself as I thought about what this next year in AI coding will bring.
People do so much hacking and such on things like the Billy bookcase. They'd be just better off getting the plywood and building the carcass themselves, and it'd be 10x more durable than the ikea cardboard version. I've watched several videos of people spending multiple weekends turning them into built-ins....and then at the end of the day, it's still a cheap ikea, cardboard shelf, that will bow under weight, etc....
I wonder about the psychology. Is it like chain restaurants - the brand name and decades of experience guarantees a floor on quality, with people estimating their DIY as having a much lower floor. Plus the laziness of starting from scratch
Then when you start it's obvious sunk cost fallacy
Do you have an example of these "furniture panels" that are higher quality and require less effort than a mod to a fully-realized piece of furniture with easy instructions?
I left off "as cheap" because you didn't say it, but it's a huge part of the puzzle that you deliberately ignored, too. But I'm really interested in seeing these "furniture panels" that you're recommending.
In the UK at least, furniture panels from B&Q, Wickes, Selco, etc, are very much inferior to the stuff some IKEA (e.g. METOD and PAX) furniture is built from. That was why I used PAX carcases to create built-in wardrobes. Plain furniture panels would have been lower quality.
The low cost makes it perfect for diy as for an amateur you know that you have the safety to be able to easily buy a new unit if you screw up.
Looking into ideas, I was a little bit disappointed to not find community website of people sharing ideas, experiences and results around such hacking.
In 2014, IKEA made headlines when its legal team sent a cease-and-desist letter to Jules Yap, the founder of IKEA Hackers, demanding that she hand over the domain name. Good to see the site still online, after the PR department took note that legal teams were not-only filing useful claims.
Ever since then, I avoid sharing pictures of IKEA furniture. Like Mattel, suing barbie blogs of children. If I did not design it, I won't share a picture of it. Even building architects will sometimes sue if you photograph the house.
> Even building architects will sometimes sue if you photograph the house.
? In the US there's the 1a - you can photograph anything you can see (from a public place).
In the there's the assumption you can photograph anything without a 'do not photo, military dogs' etc.
Never heard of a non-publishable building. Even gchq can be photo's.
In typical HN fashion, the blog post is a run of the mill “hack” and instead of commenting on the article, a Hacker News instead word vomits their favorite IKEA furniture.
An architect friend of mine once said that he admired IKEA above all other furniture manufacturers because it made a modern range of aesthetics available to the masses. IKEA had done more to evolve the public taste than any other manufacturer.
And I do have to agree. I can remember what ghastly furniture most shops used to have around here. There was a lot of what we call "cabin furniture" - which isn't made to look good, just be practical. (Well, some people like that look, but it is a bit...dull). Sure, there was more solid wood furniture, but guess what: that durability comes at a cost. Not only in terms of money, but also in terms of how easy it was to install and move.
And who buys furniture to pass it on to your kids? Your kids will be unburdening themselves of your old furniture before you are in the ground.
As for quality: I have owned some pricey designer furniture and I can't say that I'm always impressed with the quality. Yes, if you have a lot more money you can get really well built furniture. But IKEA is more often than not more than sufficient quality. (Also see their "hidden tags" campaign)
If I pay $5000 for a chair I have reason to expect a lot from it. And more often than not, pricey furniture doesn't actually deliver sufficient quality to be able to defend the price. (Collectible furniture is a whole different deal where you don't actually care all that much about quality, but more about it being an original piece).
For those of you who look down on IKEA furniture, I'd like to hear about what alternatives you think need mentioning. Especially for young people or people of modest means. And I'm not trying to make some clever rhetorical point here. I can't really think of any company that offers what they offer and comparable quality, looks and price here in Europe.
>IKEA had done more to evolve the public taste than any other manufacturer.
I have lived and worked around a fair chunk of the western world, establishing my local headquarters each time, building myself a home.
Long, long ago, I gave up on IKEA for everything except cookware and meatballs.
The reason?
I grew rapidly tired with seeing my living room everywhere. Move across the US, get invited over for dinner with new colleagues: oh, that's my old couch. Cross Germany for personal reasons, stay at a friends place - yeah, that's the kitchen I had in LA. Couch-surfing for a few months in Tokyo? Right, you get the point, same coffee table.
It just became, impersonal. I get it, mass furniture, for the masses, has its time and place and economies.
But as I got older and traveled a lot more out of my own box, I saw the repetition.
These days I go to what remains of those ghastly furniture shops, or the second hand markets, or the good flea markets (which don't accept IKEA stuff) .. and do my best to assemble my living devices from older, antique things.
Its not so easy.
But, it does accomplish one thing: it's mine. I won't see this setup anywhere else in the world, again.
>For those of you who look down on IKEA furniture, I'd like to hear about what alternatives you think need mentioning.
One should not overlook the value in spending the IKEA budget on tools and instead rolling ones' own ...
I don’t understand this at all.
Everybody has my phone and my AirPods, or a model close to them, and that’s fine. I don’t need my AirPods to have a monogamous relationship with me.
My hypothesis is that phones are inherently personal and personalisable: it’s our photo on the lock screen and our text messages in the app.
Whereas most people don’t even consider attempting to personalise their couch or their car, so the desire for personalisation is satisfied by having a wide variety of options and colours prior to purchase. And also by having styles rapidly evolve so that many “trendy” and “anti-trendy” options are available at the time of purchase.
Interesting. Judging by the number of "skinnable" computer and phone apps, a lot of people seem to really care about this kind of personalisation. I have never so much as changed the default background on a phone that I've owned. I think I changed the background on my first Windows computer, decades ago, but not since.
I wonder how many are like me.
People often place their home in a different category than computer accessories.
And even in your example people spend a lot of time picking out cases or decorations for those items.
Back in the 1990s, it seemed literally like every other person had that Ikea bentwood rocking chair. So I relate to your point. Ikeas poor-sellers remain obscure though.
You don't stare at your AirPods, they don't create the room vibe, whereas, arguably, the furniture does, along with the lighting.
rooms are way different that phones tho
it's called personal style
To be truly fashionable, one must be /ahead/ of fashion
This is in a thread about them having to be beautiful and modern. "Modernity" seems to boil down to actually being a bit afraid that your AirPods could have a near-monogamous relationship with you, and that this would mean that you're falling behind.
Monotony and monoculture is not beautiful in some people's opinions. It seems that part of the definition of beauty is exception.
iPhones and speakers (headsets, earsets) are accessories, furniture is more permanent (unless it’s near-disposable). You don’t typically update furniture every two to three years (with exception for people who like to show off their wealth and remodel every four years).
IKEA is fine when you’re just starting out, but after years, you realize that it’s got a shelf life. Good furniture really is better. You can get great stuff for very reasonable prices on Craigslist and Facebook marketplace, and it’s much more solid, durable and interesting than the cookiecutter ikea stuff.
We're talking about the masses. Non-cookiecutter stuff costs more. Not everyone can afford to pay 5x or 10x what an IKEA product would cost.
If it’s even available.
I think most of America’s options are the big warehouse furniture places or an ikea if it near by, they do delivery well.
While helping friends move, as one does, I often challenge them to disassemble and reassemble their IKEA gear and still have it tight on the other side, so to speak, of the particle board ..
Some do it with grace, some of us with a bit of duct tape. Others, not at all.
I challenge you to dissemble your bespoke furniture and have it still usable after reassembly
I’ve got a 10 year old Ikea bed that has passed this test twice now, even though I’ve lost some pieces.
It depends very much on the furniture, I think citation needed on exactly which items you’re talking about. Name and shame!
The big wardrobes? They are the worst combination of impossibly heavy, awkward to disassemble and expensive to repurchase - best bet is to sell to the next occupant. On the other hand I have a solid table and chairs and they flat pack and reassemble perfectly. Same with bed frames. Shelving units go straight in the van. I wish the office desktops had metal threaded inserts for the legs instead of nylon, but otherwise also have moved several times and no real issue.
Define “good”.
I couldn’t justify the cost of the furniture I really want. So off to IKEA I go!
And if you have a bit of skill at choosing and assembling IKEA furniture, then you can customise things on the cheap so at least it can look the way you want.
Shelf life? I have items from Ikea that I have had for over 40 years, like Ivar shelving and Poang chairs. And they'll be handed down to my kids....
Some of it is very good, although you have to dig to find it. They use real wood in many pieces; it's not all disposable.
I don't think that the good stuff is popular, though, and it certainly isn't highlighted. When a durable (often secretly classic) design slips in, it doesn't last more than a few years. The price is usually too high and it's usually too heavy (for their audience, not for me.)
I've still got some really elementally designed and sturdy mounted shelves from them that I've carried from place to place, and installed and removed many times, for the past 30 years. They were probably discontinued 28 years ago; I couldn't find them in back catalogs and AI couldn't even help. I would have started to doubt that I got them from IKEA except that I have one set of components that is still in the packaging. It's simple steel and simple wood, and the wood (IKEA pretending like a plain flat wooden board is a product) is easily replaceable.
I have to be honest, I don't really value furniture that is heavy for the sake of it. I like hippy-futons, simple wooden tables with drawers and removable legs, transformer chairs*, etc. Being able to be disassembled and easily moved or stored is something I value, and being able to be flattened against a wall so the room can be temporarily reconfigured (a requirement for colonial US furniture) is ideal (double drop-leaf tables are wonderful.) Wood and steel are durable, and simple designs with standard hardware are easily reparable.
[*] https://www.core77.com/posts/58815/Different-Design-Approach...
Funny you should mention this. Just yesterday my wife and I went to the local Ikea to pick up some bookcases. I was originally just going to buy a bunch of the Billy bookcases; we have a few and know their limitations.
But then I noticed they had a much better series called the Hemnes made with actual solid wood shelves and legs so you can route power cords and clean under them. Nice.
So instead of a bunch of Billy's for $70 each I ended up with a bunch of Hemnes' for $350 each. We'll see if it's worth it when they get delivered tomorrow.
Hemnes is a municipality in Norway. 10 minute drive from where I grew up.
I've got a bunch of BILLY bookcases that have survived several moves and are conveniently easy to mod with basic power tools.
Sadly, I don't know if it's worth trying to keep them at this point, because they replaced the previously decently durable wood veneer surfaces with glued on wood-pattern paper wraps (https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/ikea-furniture-inflation...). It's lead to me having a mix of old ones that still look like the day I put them together and new ones where all the corners are already visibly raveling from the wear of a single move.
Exactly. I've referred to Ikea as the MacDonald's of furniture. Which is a little harsh and I do own a few pieces.
Eventually, even IKEA becomes “collectible” and not owned by many people. For example, I can no longer find my beloved (and inappropriately named) “Jerker” line of desks which are great for walking treadmills.
There is also some life stage appropriate utility in its ~disposable entry tier pricing.
For example, having young kids is not a good time to have a nice teak dining room table. (Or new wood floors for that matter) (or really anything nice you don’t want to hide in a locked box or room)
Also, pets, like a cat is wonderful. But without great diligence a more lower mid-tier couch will get clawed up the same as an ikea special. At least it may be more comfortable in the meantime.
I suspect wealth may be having your cake and eating it too—-you have fancy furniture that kids or pets wreck and you file that under dc.
All of it screams for automated materials reprocessing. One can only hope that the collision of robotics and AI will reduce the amount of landfill we create.
> For those of you who look down on IKEA furniture, I'd like to hear about what alternatives you think need mentioning. Especially for young people or people of modest means.
I look in antique/thrift/charity/freecycle/secondhand stores or groups. Where I live you can pick up a solid hardwood dresser for a few hundred bucks, because as you say - nobody wants their parents’ heirlooms. And lots of things can be had for free if you can hire a van to collect.
Also "estate sales/auctions" and/or online returns auctions.
A month ago I got an entire king-size bed headboard (with storage), with cabinets on each side, and a bridge that connects the two cabinets across the top (and has lighting - also there is power in the headboard - needs a few upgrades though).
It was made in 1986 - solid wood.
I paid $1 CAD at an estate sale...
Now, the matching dresser with a tri-fold mirror was $175.
Why the difference? No one wanted the hassle of disassembly for the bed unit - but many felt they could probably flip the dresser.
Admittedly, I had to rent a U-Haul (say about $100 including gas) and rope in a family member to help with the move. (because, it had to be at least 800lbs of awkward parts...)
So, my all in was $276 plus some auction fees.
But - still cheaper, more durable and better looking than most "DIY assembly options".
OTOH - if we move again, this sucker stays with the house...
I have had goodluck with this and have gotten many pieces of furniture that will last for the rest of my life used. It is very hit or miss based on your location though and it does restrict your style choices.
At least here, you'll also find a lot of IKEA furniture at those stores as well. Most of the nicer stuff tends to go to higher end stores and ends up being rather pricy.
> If I pay $5000 for a chair I have reason to expect a lot from it. And more often than not, pricey furniture doesn't actually deliver sufficient quality to be able to defend the price.
That's not the point. A large chunk of the price is the name on it and the marketing/image you associate yourself with. I thin, as engineers, that's hard to relate to. But that is how it works.
The price is not a reflection of quality, it's an outcome of a process to pick a price just enough people are willing to pay.
For years I consistently wore a Seiko around people who had watches that cost more than my car. Proudly. When asked why I didn't have a "proper watch" I'd point out that their swiss masterpiece wasn't nearly as accurate as my cheap quartz watch.
They'd laugh because they knew it wasn't about the accuracy.
And I'd get some satisfaction from the fact that they thought I didn't already know that.
I too own things where the price tag can't be justified by the objective merits of the product. So I do get it. But what they have in common is that these things generally are very good -- but you can get the same level of quality for less. I won't buy a low quality product with a hefty price tag.
Anyway, these days most people around me wear some kind of smart watch. And the funny bit is that the people who own expensive watches now have to choose: show off or practicality :-)
I once paid $3500 for a very deep and low chaise lounger/sofa. It was very high quality. You did have to get used to having your feet on the seat because it was so deep, but it was a great guest bed.
But more importantly, to me, at the time, it looked very cool in my tiny downtown apartment.
IKEA is great for stuff where I'm willing to sacrifice some quality for a proportionally large price discount.
But for furniture where quality is more of a concern, and I'm willing to go up a rung on the price ladder, I've been very happy with both Crate & Barrel and Room & Board (noun & noun) here in the US. I have a C&B sectional sofa and quite a few pieces from R&B such as our king size bed, dresser, nightstands, kid's dresser, dining room sideboard cabinet.
They're not $5000 for a single chair range, but $5000 for bed + nightstands + dresser, though you can certainly get stuff for less.
But for "young people or people of modest means" I agree that you probably can't beat IKEA. There certainly are other cheap furniture retailers but you don't really know what you're getting and the style leaves a lot to be desired.
Couch: I'd never get from IKEA. Comfort really matters.
I have 2 IKEA beds. Quite happy with them!
Ditto dressers and nightstands.
I don't see why I'd get something more expensive.
I’m not sure I understand this perspective, I’m looking forward to inheriting some of my parents furnitures and getting rid of some of the ikea crap.. they are furniture that have been in the family in some cases for over 200 years, and I learned to maintain them and care for them as a kid just as a regular part of housework. Some have had amusing changes in use as the times changed, like an old wardrobe being turned into a chest of drawers as larger wardrobes became available, etc.
> I’m looking forward to inheriting some of my parents furnitures and getting rid of some of the ikea crap.. they are furniture that have been in the family in some cases for over 200 years, and I learned to maintain them and care for them as a kid just as a regular part of housework.
Your experience is an extreme outlier.
Most people don't have parents with such old, valuable furniture.
Of those who do, most don't value it themselves.
Of those who do, most don't know how to take care of it.
The reality: Kids often live far away, in smaller houses/apartments. They're married and their spouses may not like the old furniture - they've already invested in the furniture they bought. Also, as people get old, they often need to downsize, so they have to get rid of much of the furniture while alive.
When you have 3+ kids, you can hope at least one of the kids will value it. These days, having 3 kids is an outlier.
For me, personally: I just don't like heavy furniture. I wouldn't want to figure out how to get it into my house, positioned where it's needed, and who's going to move it later if I decide to change the layout of my rooms? Pain, pain, pain.
> I’m looking forward to inheriting some of my parents furnitures and getting rid of some of the ikea crap..
I think you are confusing the perspective of the GP here.
Your perspective is that of the "kid". You like the parents' furniture and eventually want to use them and that's all fine.
But GP is describing the parent perspective which, they argue, shouldn't be to plan life such that the kids will be inheriting and using things later. That puts pressure on them to actually do instead of making their own choices. It's a subtle but important difference.
I see similar issues with people buying the neighboring lot and building a second house there such that eventually their kids can move in their with their family, once they have one. Some kids certainly so, and that's great. But think about your own life, would really have wanted to do that? Or grow up feeling that's expected of you? Most of my friends live half a day of travel away from where they grew up. Most of them would despise the idea of moving in next to their parents. Which doesn't mean they don't love them, just that they value their independence and made choices free from the constraint that it needs to be exactly there. (Besides, a couple usually consists of two people and they often didn't grow up in the same neighborhood.)
Generally, trying to plan for leaving inheritances (of substantial value) is overvalued. Modern society is striving to less dynasty building and I think that's a good thing. A lot of the poor/rich divide is rooted in that and governments should discourage it (through inheritance tax) rather than encouraging it (through e.g. lack of actions against housing costs which forces people to get a big inheritance to be able to live anywhere.)
Though I'm really getting too far from the topic as that was about furniture. :)
This is a complex topic and I’m not going to do it justice in a comment, but I feel like modern society might just be destroying social mobility in the name of what you described, while the already rich are dynasty building just fine as usual via a variety of legal means only available to them selves.
Yes, the tried-and-true first apartment cheap stuff is still there. But the majority of what's for sale in IKEA these days is of significantly better quality (and significantly higher price).
The best alternative to IKEA furniture is more expensive IKEA furniture.
> But IKEA is more often than not more than sufficient quality.
I am not so sure about that. There are some product lines that are somewhat OK price/quality e.g. IVAR seems to be OK. But most IKEA products are too much optimized optimized on the cost side for my taste. The good days of "wooden furniture" is over.
> And who buys furniture to pass it on to your kids?
That's just the excuse people tell themselves to justify a purchase.
The one criticism I can offer on IKEA furniture is that some of it doesn't move well, specifically the particle board stuff which will fall apart at the joints if it's not carefully handled.
Having said that, I also tend to not buy the particle board stuff.
I'd prefer it if IKEA offered more options (dimensionally) on their durable furnishings.
They move OK if you dismantle them.
I think Ikea is great. But my overall goal is to replace all of our Ikea furniture with better and/or self-made furniture. It's easier said than done.
Likewise. I signed up for woodworking classes. I think I'm in for a rude awakening.
>it made a modern range of aesthetics available to the masses
It made lack-of-aesthetics available to the masses: the same monopoly pre-selected designs for everybody, saturating every home.
>For those of you who look down on IKEA furniture, I'd like to hear about what alternatives you think need mentioning. Especially for young people or people of modest means.
I don't know about Europe, but a drive through most SFH residential areas in the US and you will score more usable furniture than you could ever need (skipping mattresses, fabric couches, etc...). At my last home, I ditched a lot of furniture by leaving it out front and never had to wait more than a day to have it gone. Failing that, there are a plethora of thrift shops with dirt cheap furniture (and other household goods). And if you want something more classy, go to antique shops loaded with cool oak furniture that is out of style so isn't worth much anymore.
Compare that to the obnoxious particle board Ikea crap that is the antithesis of buy it for life (and thus TCO is terrible).
Nitpick but solid wood furniture does not weigh more than the particleboard furniture from Ikea.
Also, my 2 cents, but it is high time for a return to utilitarianism in furniture. Just getting a basic leather sofa without cup holders and other e-garbage is a huge pain. (Ironically, Ikea is ok for this.)
> Nitpick but solid wood furniture does not weigh more than the particleboard furniture from Ikea.
What is this special space time dilation wood you found? If its made of hardwood it will be a lot heavier. If it weights similarly and its solid wood is usually very soft and will live as long or less than IKEA furniture.
100% wood is way heavier, even the lighter variant.
Interesting note... I recently disassembled an IKEA cupboard from 1999 made from MDF. It was definitely much heavier than their MDF products (eg. Metod kitchen cabinets) from today.
It depends. Solid particleboard is pretty close, but a many Ikea pieces are hollow, with internal cardboard support. I prefer some of these to particle board because of the lightness. Like the Lack or the Linnmon table tops.
> Nitpick but solid wood furniture does not weigh more than the particleboard furniture from Ikea.
While perhaps IKEA sells some heavy wood furniture, most of it is fairly light.
You can easily get better kitchen for example here in Europe, but you have to pay >2x more. Their price/value ratio is stellar usually (but not always). Some designs are great, some are... obscure and I would not want it at home even for free. Taste is eye of the beholder and all that.
One problem is - its sort of take it or leave it. You can't really make custom sized kitchen, you only compose of lego-like bricks of 20-40-60-80cm width and try to cover the inevitable gaps, but they are there. Fine if you don't have constraints, but we do - square-like shape with hard dimensions on all 4 sides. Sloped roof on one side. A lot of custom work and its not perfect, cannot be, its Ikea.
But we got big kitchen for... 11-12k altogether, including artificial stone worktop. Only due to the fact that their sub-contracting company (here in Switzerland!!) messed up first delivery, and white worktop with small black veins came as black with white veins (order came good to factory but out came reverse). Second delivery - each plate was mildly different coloring, so when put together, it looked very cheap and amateurish. Raised with Ikea, after some discussion they offered another one but couldn't guarantee color uniformity. I've chosen another look that would work in any case, but then they seemingly decided cut off that supplier and just returned all the money for worktop, while we kept our current one. Around 5k that was.
Also my massive pet peeve with their kitchen - you have to take their always crappy dishwashers, buying directly say Bosch products won't make them fit well with closing mechanism. I had to throw away perfectly functional Siemens dishwasher and buy their Bosch one. Sounds good, but never ever do Ikea rebrands work the same, offer same quality as originals, don't understand why but even previous time I did that, their Whirlpool-rebrand was crappy, every single device had big issues. That new top of the line (in Ikea) Bosch is massively subpar to older (5 years max) basic Siemens one.
When we did a full renovation, we had the cabinet maker install an Ikea kitchen, with a custom non-Ikea worktop and a small amount of his expertise to adapt it for our non-Ikea dishwasher etc.
This was a massive cost saving on a fully custom kitchen, and let us shift the budget to custom built stairs/bedroom cupboards elsewhere.
Ten years on, it all still looks as good as new.
I love IKEA because I could furnish entire office (apart from chairs, they don't have anything of Herman Miller quality) with practical and good looking desks and other fixtures and I didn't spend a fortune. I don't know what it would look like if I had to use other suppliers. Not many showroom if at all, long lead times, often problematic assembly.
> For those of you who look down on IKEA furniture, I'd like to hear about what alternatives you think need mentioning.
Word! My desk at home is a very wide T-shaped desk made of three Kallax and two kitchen countertops: I share it with my wife and there are four monitors, two desktop PC towers (inside modded Kallax), two laptops, one shared printer, etc. and we've still got plenty of room on the desk.
Our chairs: we've each got an Aeron (mine is just out of warranty, 13 years old and the wife's got an used one, don't know how old but older than mine). That's quality stuff (it took me a few minutes to set up correctly: when you put your hands behind your head, an Aeron should lean back and then when you put your hands above the keyboard, it should move forward)... Fun fact: neighbor's kid sat in my chair (by himself, I wasn't offering him to try it) and exclamed "wow, that's a good chair!". My Aeron has already been to four countries with me. The "hit hurts my leg" is bullshit from people who haven't spend the 15 minutes needed to read the manual to set it up correctly.
> And who buys furniture to pass it on to your kids? Your kids will be unburdening themselves of your old furniture before you are in the ground.
This highly depends on the furniture. As an example, my dad built some custom pieces out of solid oak that are absolutely finding a place in my house after he's gone.
Your father did not buy those so that isn't a counterexample to what the GP said. Clearly, something your father made with his own hands will have a different value to something he bought.
IKEA furniture is great for small adjustments to fit your needs. Not costing a fortune also makes it easier to experiment with it. Since they're so common, it's easy to find CAD drawings for most of them. I did a small hack/conversion on a Billy closet to hide some pipes in our apartment. https://vanderwalt.de/blog/customizing-ikea-billy-to-hide-pi...
My mind immediately went: I’m sure there is some German law or ordinance or regulation against hiding your Gaszähler. This surely goes against die Niederdruckanschlussverordnung.
Now that you have published this online, police will visit you to remove the Billy!
Perhaps I am too pessimistic with German laws.
PS: It looks much better this way.
As long as you can easily slide it out of the way and it isn't fixed to the wall, it wouldn't be a problem for anyone who needs to service it. Therefore, it would not be against regulations, because all regulations in Germany are logical
Good to know! It slides in/out like a puzzle, so should be fine then.
You need a vent there as well so gas can't build up.
I doubt a billy book case is anywhere near air tight.
It has nothing to do with air tightness.
If it leaks slightly it could keep the gas/air at an explosive ratio within the box.
Best to just have it vent out into the room. then it's noticeable.
I really hope not! But it does look much better this way, it was an eyesore. And the regular heizung guys didnt complain when they saw it like this, so im assuming all is well
There is a requirement for having a vents if you are boxing in that device.
One high and one low one, this is so the gas does not build up in case of a leak.
Would highly suggest you get that sorted, your insurance might be void in case you do get a fire.
This look lovely and probably felt extremely satisfying once everything was said and done.
Thanks!
I came looking for this comment. I suspect Billy is the most hacked piece of IKEA furniture!
I've been pretty disappointed with "medium quality" slightly more expensive furniture from places like west elm and pottery barn.
Now I will either get older recycled furniture for quality or pieces from IKEA for cost.
Wow, that's gorgeous! I hope the other poster isn't right about violating ordinances.
I’ve just put an IKEA kitchen in. I had to do a very similar modification to fit the plumbing in.
You should add some RGB backlighting to it.
God please no
That is weird.
Why is it inside your apartment?
Does someone have to check the meter regularly?
Anyway, great job.
Presumably because it's cheaper. Ours was also originally in home; the utility recently came through and replaced all of ours with exterior units, likely at great cost (horizontal drilling machines aren't cheap)
I suspect the tragedy in Pennsylvania [1] was the catalyst. There are lots of potential issues with keeping these things indoors.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrimack_Valley_gas_explosion...
Meter still looks very accessible to me
Sure, but somebody has to be home if the gas company wants to look at it.
There are tons of websites like this: https://ikeahackers.net/
I read, IKEA first wanted to have them closed down, but then they realized, it does not matter why someone buys their stuff, as long as they buy it.
I like Ikea. I lived in so many countries, and it is an excellent place to buy furniture if you have to. But I consider it "throw away" furniture. Quality is okay or soso and it is unlikely to survive several moves.
If you can afford and have a place for long term. Buy better stuff. Used quality furniture, even antique, can be incredibly cheap.
IKEA furniture can hold up very well if you follow the instructions precisely and don't disassemble them (in most cases).
We have furniture from IKEA that we bought at least five years ago that still functions great. A mattress we got from them is absolutely stellar with a memory foam topper; all of our guests love it. I think our coffee table is ten years old now.
However, everything goes to hell once you try to take it apart. This is why our mattresses are not on IKEA bed frames. Taking them apart has ALWAYS weakened them significantly. (We use Thuma Japanese joinery bed frames, which are AMAZING for moving and very high quality).
Which is kind of moot when you're talking about high-quality furniture, as they are usually single pieces as well.
I've started wood-gluing together my IKEA and other flat-pack furniture to try and increase its usable life since - as you said - it's counterproductive to dis/re-assemble most of it anyways. I've not been at it long enough to claim effectiveness, but so far nothing has started to wobble.
I do the same. I don’t plan to take it apart but wood glue is part of any woodworking shop and I don’t see why assembling Ikea should be qualitatively different. I want my assemblies to stay together, not vibrate, to feel sound. Gluing joints is fundamental.
This is the way.
Even the cheapest cardboard-filled IKEA units hold together much better when glued, and makes moving the units less stressful (no more "it's creaking / skewed when I pick it up").
For what is worth, I had an IKEA kitchen for 12+ years, we disassembled it and gave it to some people that could reuse it, and it's still fine. OTOH my IKEA couch fell apart in half that time, but my wife fixed it up and it lasted until we renovated. We gave that away too.
IKEA has a wide range of products, some fall apart quickly, some last longer.
The finger jointed pine stuff is much more robust than the mdf or hardboard products.
IKEA does stuff not out of MDF and cardboard?
I’ve heard their kitchens are far higher quality than the rest of their products. Why - not sure.
Five years is not much in terms of a furnitures lifespan, i own some pieces my grand grandmother already used that got passed down the generations.
I highly doubt this will happen with ikea furniture. But thats the tradeoff for cheaper and affordable stuff i guess.
> it is unlikely to survive several moves
I have several pieces that have survived 3-4 moves. The trick is when assembling, use wood glue with any dowels. On their own, these dowels only have friction to hold them in place, and over time, the surface of the area where they are inserted compresses, reducing friction. Hence you get that typical side to side sway. The glue mitigates this problem.
I don't see this mentioned enough! Wood glue will improve the stability massively.
Obviously beds and huge bookshelves might need to come apart again, so use your best judgement. But chairs, dressers, end-tables, etc. are completely worth it.
This makes any assembly 1-way, though. Some people (with a very high time:money ratio obviously) might find the collapsible, portable nature of Ikea an advantage.
I'm sure I'm not the only person to have built a wall unit in a bedroom only to learn, later, getting it out the door, and through the hall, and down the stairs turns out to be job for Dirk Gently.
That said, moving some of this flat pack furniture has been a mixed bag. Some move well, some don't.
I did have a wall unit, a $99 hardware store particle board piece assembled with big screws and those interesting, round cam fasteners. It survived three separate moves, including one where it flew out the back of my pickup truck onto asphalt (thankfully in a gas station, vs the freeway I was about to get on). Corner got dinged, door flew off, but it survived!
But I've had other pieces that assemble and are rigid, when torqued around through the moving process start to come undone. The particle board and fasteners are designed for loads only in specific directions and tend to not do well, and fail, outside of those.
I've owned a lot of IKEA furniture, and at no point have I ever considered disassembling them. And I don't think IKEA really even advertises their stuff to be a flatpack-to-furniture-to-flatpack design.
> I've owned a lot of IKEA furniture
same.
> and at no point have I ever considered disassembling them
That is wise. I don't claim disassembling it for move was a good idea, but it compressed my stuff into a compact car.
Consider also that some of their beds don't fit through a doorway built (esp if doorway is not code width) so some level of disassembly may be required for mere room-to-room moving.
I'm only calling out a tradeoff that may or may not apply. Not everyone is you and me.
> I don't think IKEA really even advertises their stuff to be a
The whole point of this thread (this site?) is repurposing outside of creator intent.
Cool website, thanks for the link!
Really liked this garden sink for barbecuing: https://ikeahackers.net/2017/06/outdoor-sink-perfect-summer-...
No many real furniture out there with entire ecosystem of storage/containers sized for it. IKEA sheet/stamped metal stuff that introduced a few years ago will last forever.
I've got the Ikea PLATSA wardrobe and none of their organisers fit properly in the drawers. My wife instead got some of the MUJI organisers and those fit much better because they're made of cloth/canvas thus bendy/squishy.
I think my GALANT desk with a glass top survived multiple moves, including one that had it travel about 800 km in a trailer. Worked fine until the day I got a standing desk, at which point I put it up online and someone bought it from me. That desk might still be kicking around to this day.
I think really the only IKEA product that has given me issues is the MARKUS chair, and more specifically, the gas spring leaking. Apart from that, I think everything is more or less functional? Even the five-euro LACK coffee table is still fine, even if it has signs of use on it. I've also bought used IKEA shelves and they're still holding up fine.
LACK is a good inflation indicator, it costs 7.99€ now.
> If you can afford and have a place for long term. Buy better stuff. Used quality furniture, even antique, can be incredibly cheap.
IKEA is ideal for a certain stage of your life. It's ideal for optimizing vertical space. It's largely function over form. It looks like middle school classroom furniture. And when junior writes on it w/ a sharpie ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
When you have the space for a separate dining room, agreed that used antiques are comparable in price.
I wouldn't touch their couches rich or poor though; they're painful.
It's very use and location dependent. I'm going to get a good or at least relatively good dining room table. Some cubbyholes/shelves for a closet? IKEA is fine. I also have an IKEA bureau in my bedroom. I occasionally wonder if I should have splurged on a "real" piece of furniture but it saved me thousands of dollars and is perfectly adequate.
I have an IKEA LANDSKRONA (in Gunnared dark grey) and it's a good sofa for like 650 €. I don't think I've really considered sofas to be that markedly better than mine even if they're double or quadruple the cost.
Whenever I looked at using IKEA stuff to hack or incorporate into a larger build, the cost, effort, and quality never seemed worth it to me.
I built my current desk from some butcher block counter tops and shelfs and 4x4's. I don't think it cost me all that much more from what I could have done from IKEA and the quality is astronomically better.
If you're already dealing with saws and drills to hack the IKEA stuff, you really only need to toss is a sander and maybe a router and you can just work with real wood.
I also did a butcher block top. Cut it down and routed to perfectly flow around what passes for a "straight wall" in this house, spent entirely too long sanding and finishing.
Then put it on some IKEA drawer blocks, because I want drawers, but I'm not equipped to build those in any reasonable timeframe.
Cutting down a desk top is something you can do with sawhorses and some good weather. More intricate things need an actual workshop for good results.
Unless you like the look of veneer on MDF instead of butcher block wood. I think anyone considering IKEA is probably interested in the IKEA finish. After sanding, stain &/ seal is another step people like to avoid
I did something similar, but just bought the wooden desk top from Ikea. Sanded/stained and added some standing desk legs. Perfect balance between customization and not building from scratch.
I'd be hesitant to recommend a novice to pursue a glue-up/planing project if they weren't already interested in woodworking.
Eh, most IKEA desk hacks is to buy the wooden kitchen countertop, cut it to shape, and put it on some drawers. So you're not really describing anything different.
Their point is the effort vs quality.
A butcher block desk with 4x4s for legs is pretty simple and forgiving. Matching the quality of appearance of a lot of other IKEA furniture would require quite a bit more skill and tools.
Like a Kallax, unless you're a real wizard you couldn't cobble one of those together without a lot of skill.
I have a few of those butcher block tops because I scaled down my shop, but I just can't throw them away. one was purchased 50+ years ago and my family used it as a breakfast table. they make excellent work benches and tables. they're robust and attractive. really all you need is a belt sander and some food safe mineral oil and you can completely resurface them if they get funky. I usually just weld a piece of 1/4" angle to a square plate for legs and weld a nut at the bottom for a threaded foot, but you can really do anything. it absolutely lovely to have a clean butcher block top for food preparation.
As a Kallax enjoyer I used to hate that I was limited to ~32cm width and height, it took me years to realize that I can just remove some of the dividers and make the nooks either wider or taller if I rotate (!) the shelf. It obviously affects load carrying capacity, but it's still plenty strong if you are smart about it.
Sidenote "Kallax enjoyer" is a great thing to from an identity around and I'm updating my Twitter bio as we speak
> I can just remove some of the dividers
How it's better than that: you can not only rotate them 90 degrees, but you also move the dividers. Now due to how their built, it may not be the sturdiest thing to do but you definitinely can turn a 2x 32 cm into a 1x40cm and 1x24cm. I do that for my PC tower (and the wife's): it's too tall to fit in 32 cm, but then I don't want to waste space. I simply make new holes for dowels (once again, YMMV but I do it since years) and move a divider up.
I can't stand Ikea furniture quality but am often confronted with the only option for higher quality being an order of magnitude more expensive. Where is the middle ground between a Stickley Morris chair and an Ikea chair?
Also their particleboard and cardboard furniture should be banned. Furniture should not dissolve when a drink gets spilled on it.
When I moved from LA to St Louis many years ago, there wasn’t an IKEA yet. I was truly confused about where one was supposed to go to buy lamps. Any furniture stores that had them were selling ones that gave off strong grandma vibes.
One of the best furniture life hacks you can recognize is that you can replace the top panel of most self-assembly storage furniture items with a custom work surface suited to your usecase.
Take two drawer units, and instead of putting the tops on them they were supplied with, put a slab of desktop across both of them with a gap between and you’ve got yourself a desk.
> Take two drawer units, and instead of putting the tops on them they were supplied with, put a slab of desktop across both of them with a gap between and you’ve got yourself a desk.
Definitely. My go-to is three units (I explained it in another comment too): two horizontal along the back wall and the third one in the middle, perpendicular to the wall. Then I put two kitchen countertops: that's now an ultra bad ass T-shaped desk for me and the wife. Plenty of room for monitors, laptops, the printer, physical notebooks, even plants (!) etc.
I used to spend hours pouring over the https://ikeahackers.net/ site - but never actually hacked much of our furniture (no more than adjusting the height, or changing handles/worktops).
As cheap as Ikea was, being in London in my 20s just as Freecycle started, meant we ended up with a lot 'vintage' furniture for free or next to nothing - some we still have now.
My current standing desk is a custom desk built from some wholesale parts from Linak and a custom MDF board. When we went to build a similar one for my partner we no longer had access to the same MDF supplier (i.e. my dad's startup), so we just went down to the local IKEA and bought a desk board and put it together all the same. Sure it's cheap chipboard, but all the magic is in the frame, actuators and control box so to replace the board is really straightforward and cheap as chips.
I was thinking along the lines of Ikea-style furniture from scratch. Most local hardware stores carry these giant CNC routers, and the technicians there can cut particle board sheets to requirements.
How cool would it be if they offered a simplified furniture CAD program, where you could choose what material you need how many shelves of what size, etc and it would generate the needed program that would drill the required holes, and would tell you what size of screws and pins and dowels you need to pick up.
I definitely would use something like that, instead of trying to cut preexisting furniture to size.
> Most local hardware stores carry these giant CNC routers, and the technicians there can cut particle board sheets to requirements.
Do you mean local woodshop? CNCs that fit a full sheet-good are very large and expensive and not at your typical hardware store. Especially once they can load and unload, change bits.
Sheet-good sized CNC's are mostly for batch jobs do not really make sense economically for one off designs. You'd be better off with just panel and cabinet saws.
> How cool would it be if they offered a simplified furniture CAD program, where you could choose what material you need how many shelves of what size, etc and it would generate the needed program that would drill the required holes, and would tell you what size of screws and pins and dowels you need to pick up.
This is most modern cabinetry businesses now internally. Some companies have started offering direct to consumer products, but most are still b2b.
In Europe a CNC, or at least good and repeatable saw is available at large hardware stores. You can get any product cut to any shape precisely as long as it's a rectangle. I've not noticed one that offers more than this such as drilling holes.
But even if you were to get the wood cut and prepared perfectly, there's still a lot of skill to turn that into nice desk for example, with good joinery, veneer on exposed end grain, etc and a lot that can go wrong, and you are likely to end up with a worse result than a mass produced desk for a much higher price. This type of manufacturing can't compete at all with the cost optimizations that Ikea can do. So where you see B2C in this space is built-in furniture like for kitchens. This has a limited design space so a lot of the parts are standardized, and the design can be constrained to not have the end user work on details like exposed end grain. I guess this doesn't really have an alternative mass-produced option, so the price comparison is to hiring a contractor, so it makes sense as an offering.
But it's evidently hard to get right. If you go to an Ikea that sells returned goods, that section is filled with kitchen countertops cut to the wrong length (good source of cheap wood for projects by the way).
I live in Europe, never ever seen a CNC in a hardware store.
I ordered my kitchen fronts from such a place, to fit on … an IKEA kitchen. Giving it a different look, but the benefits of standardised units and the IKEA universe. This was customised mass-production, but still about 3x IKEA price point.
> In Europe a CNC, or at least good and repeatable saw is available at large hardware stores. You can get any product cut to any shape precisely as long as it's a rectangle. I've not noticed one that offers more than this such as drilling holes.
That's not the case in the US.
The big box hardware stores have a large track saw vertically mounted that can cut full sheets of wood, but there usually isn't someone working who is trained to operate it. They also have a rickety cart with a hand saw and tape measure attached with too short cables that you can try to use to make your cuts of dimensional lumber.
I've long been considering this idea as I make a lot of my own cabinetry, and would love to get automated cutting and drilling lists depending on if I'll use screws or dowel pins or some nice wooden joints.
In general, you always start with outside dimensions, board thickness, having a kick plate or not (eg. when you make it wheeled), will you chamfer/round the edges and then the rest is simple calculation. You add internal shelve/drawer dimensions and it can consider those too.
I had some scripts that worked with an older version of FreeCAD and printed the cutting list to a CSV, but it still was not the perfect solution.
Interestingly, local chipboard/MDF shops here in Serbia would do that as a service for you on their CNC machines (at additional cost, obviously :)).
I think you’re right, and there’s definitely potential for disruption of kitchen and also wardrobe offerings in some countries.
(I say some countries as IME there’s a huge difference in existing competition between countries. For example, I found that the kitchen options in Germany were hugely restricted vs. what I was used to in the UK.)
If you're interested in that I would search for a maker space or hacker space in your area. They usually have tools (like a CNC router) that would be far too expensive for an individual to buy and they let the public use them after taking a short class and paying a membership fee.
That would be very expensive compared to ikea.
Look at the very popular Lack table, it's made from cardboard hexagons with four pieces of wood-like thing in the corners to hold the legs. You can't make that yourself for cheap, and just the material cost in eg. wood, would be more expensive than the full table in ikea.
Otherwise, there are many youtube channels specializing in woodworking where you can learn all the basics to design your own furniture, but it won't be cheap.
People like to complain about it not being solid wood but the furniture from Ikea, such as Lack and Kallax is fit for purpose and remains a low price despite the cost of wood going up a lot. And what you can get at a similar price point from Wal-Mart in North America, or Conforama in Europe, is much much worse quality. Especially the veneer which holds up from Ikea but is more like wallpaper if you spend the same price somewhere else.
Solid wood is also a nightmare to move.
It depends on your comparison; a Lack table is maybe an extreme example.
I say this because I’m currently working on a project to build a full kitchen’s worth of cabinet carcasses using good quality 19mm plywood, and I’m aiming for it to be cost neutral with Ikea’s kitchen cabinets, having sourced the plywood from a local DIY store. (Obviously ignoring the cost of my existing tools.)
Which is to say, if you could source plywood in volume (therefore cheaper per square meter) and amortise the cost of the CNC machine and other tools over time, I think it would be feasible to be close to cost competitive with IKEA‘s kitchens.
I applaud you and your project.
But CNC isn't the silver bullet. What I ended up with is 25mm glued wood for frames, 55mm for tops and 15mm plywood plus veneer for facades.
If you use 19mm for frames, you won't have enough strength for hinges, which would inevitably be abused.
If you use 19mm for tops, they will sag and vibrate. The best top I have is actually 55mm IKEA glued oak.
I'm not using CNC; I just agree with the previous poster that there's an opportunity. (I'd note that none of your subsequent post related to the comment you made about CNC?)
For my project, I believe 19mm is plenty for carcasses - just about every mass-produced kitchen uses 18/19mm chipboard frames, and they can last for decades, outside of abnormal abuse. The main reason for using the same size is easy compatibility with standard doors/fronts together with standard fitment hinges/runners, all of which I'll be purchasing. The tops will be either granite or concrete.
I don't disagree with there being an opportunity or using CNC, I only point out that pinning everything to materials suitable to widely available CNC is too limiting.
Like, using plywood for verticals is overkill, they don't experience any bending, while 19+19 is 48 so you might as well use glued wood board for example.
Billy bookcases though are just slabs of laminated engineered wood cut to rectangular dimensions, drilled with precision positioned and sized holes, plus a stack of dowels and camlock fasteners.
That seems parameterizable.
yeah, those cardboard tables.. I had to glue in 2-4 (5 by 10 cm) stringers and refix legs to them for it to hold a measly epson c8600 and even then it stands on wooden planks to distribute the load.
ikea is a great inspiration for making your own furniture and then a source for bearable spare parts.
there's an place in Seattle, WA that does this called shelf.me for what looks like zero-hardware self designs.
my shop is next to a cabinet maker who does most of is work in that same birch hard-ply. he's got the full sheet router, but he only really uses it for special projects. its mostly just the big table saw. he's got a subcontractor that just does drawers. most cities have several of his kind of shop, and while they don't have a design website they generally work from napkins. I think that birch ply has gotten really expensive in the last 5 years though.
I love KALLAX the most of all IKEA series. Sturdy as heck, can take a lot of weight, extremely versatile and durable. I've used it as a bookshelf, for putting boxes away, as a wardrobe organizer, you name it. Oh and the price is right. Nothing else comes close.
Most impressive / annoying thing about Ikea is how they keep value engineering products, some products are cheaper relative to inflation vs decades ago, but at the same time it be nice if they just settle one some "timeless" perennial basics like lego. The expedite -> kallax transition still lives rent free in my head, and my curse is being able to identify either sku from a distance.
Creating luxury closets from the modest PAX platform is my favorite Ikea hack read (currently working on such project). And by the way, the non-nerds take it to a different level.
https://erinkestenbaum.com/2018/12/12/hacking-the-ikea-pax-i...
Enzo Mari's Autoprogettazione Some 52 years ago.
https://archiyou.com/articles/enzo-mari-s-autoprogettazione-...
Some time ago I realised that second-hand Ikea furniture is a cheap source of material for DIY projects. Facebook Marketplace (UK) has plenty of Pax cupboards which provide useful large boards. Prices vary, but you can pick up almost pristine items for almost nothing. If you don't need whole boards, spot damage is acceptable. Buying similar new materials would perhaps be better, but cost considerably more.
If people haven't listened to the episode of the podcast Acquired about the history of Ikea[1], I strongly recommend it. Fair warning, it's 3.5h long, but the story is fantastic and the hosts do a great job making it engaging.
[1] https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/ikea
"Hacking" when used in the context of furniture actually means breaking it with an axe.
What’s the distinction between hacking, whacking, and chopping? And how can we incorporate these terms into tech?
I recently did my own hack that turned out great - it’s a drawer + desk hack. It takes some planning, but so satisfying when it works out:) https://www.reddit.com/r/ikeahacks/comments/1srj3g9/malm_m%C...
Great work, mate. Workbench looks spectacular. I happened to find a cheap relatively-stable one for my 3d printer but I really should have tried to assemble something like the one you have. In the end it worked out because the measurements land perfectly for my wife and me to have our desks with the printer, homeserver, assistant rig, and Cricut CNC in the middle. But I think she would have enjoyed the IKEA rework more. Good photos of the process too. Thanks for sharing.
Always felt like IKEA furniture was begging for customization. Been integrating smart home tech into my Kallax for months.
At Leroy Merlin, you can order either particle boards, or normal wood boards, whether 16mm for walls, or 30mm for the table top, cut to your sizes (as long as they're rectangular), with end faces laminated as well, and all of that at a fraction of the price.
I had a broken cupboard in a rented apartment, and just built a new replacement one for €15. The bureau in the article could cost 2x..3x of this, which is still lower than overpriced IKEA furniture. (Good furniture, that isn't made of cardboard, is overpriced in IKEA.)
For functional sturdy furniture like this, if you are OK with the look, you can make the base/frame from aluminium 80/20 extrusions (the kind with t-slots and all kinds of standard brackets etc for fastening them together). Misumi has a simple CAD interface to design a complete unit, and this generates a single part number for you to purchase everything cut to length, with holes if needed, and all required accessories and fasteners to assemble it. You can easily add a wooden countertop or shelves if desired.
It's not very cheap but it's infinitely configurable (unlike Ikea hacks) and doesn't require much skill (unlike building from wood at least if you want it to look OK).
IKEA furniture is the ultimate open-source hardware. Just don't expect a pull request for new instructions.
Re: the slight wobble, you should be able to find some inexpensive thin-sheet backing board at a hardware store. Use small ribbed tacking nails or glue around the edges to attach it at the back, and it should help stabilize and prevent racking.
I like the Trofast system for making stuff for storing kids toys and organizing their rooms. Honestly there is a lot to love and customize about their offerings for kids and luckily the good stuff also gets picked up by other manufacturers/suppliers, so you get access to other things that go together - furniture too, but also stickers, and other functional decor stuff. Because kids grow up fast and you may be swapping/change their stuff more often, it’s a god send to have these to help out.
A non-hack I learned about yesterday. I was taking apart an IKEA dining room table. The screws and bolts were obvious, but the top would not separate from the frame.
After much parsing of the assembly manual (which took some effort to find online since they don't make this model any more), I realized that the top had slid over a knobbly dowel. Pulling horizontally popped it off.
I Sharpied the directions on the bottom before I reassembled it. We'll see if far-future me can figure out what I meant.
Anymore I almost don't buy any IKEA stuff without intending some modification. I do woodworking as a hobby so it's nice to be able to skip all the rote stuff like building a large flat wooden surface or a square box or table legs. I can just focus on building a highly focused and functional piece of furniture for my space.
I couldn't find any kind of an enclosure that fits the TidyCat Breeze XL litter box. The toy box drawer (Smastad) was big enough, so I cut an entry hole on one side, and a hole on the back side for removing the pad insert.
Minimum Carpentry Protocol (MCP)
I hadn’t been to IKEA in a decade or more but went this weekend to get new furniture for our kids. Today I put together a “vanity” for my daughter, and couldn’t help but think of the vanity I had in my room as a teenager that my mom had I inherited from some other family member, solid wood with beautiful birds-eye maple veneer. “Simulacrum” was the word I kept muttering to myself as I thought about what this next year in AI coding will bring.
People do so much hacking and such on things like the Billy bookcase. They'd be just better off getting the plywood and building the carcass themselves, and it'd be 10x more durable than the ikea cardboard version. I've watched several videos of people spending multiple weekends turning them into built-ins....and then at the end of the day, it's still a cheap ikea, cardboard shelf, that will bow under weight, etc....
I wonder about the psychology. Is it like chain restaurants - the brand name and decades of experience guarantees a floor on quality, with people estimating their DIY as having a much lower floor. Plus the laziness of starting from scratch
Then when you start it's obvious sunk cost fallacy
Working with blunt blades can be really dangerous. Worth taking consideration for next time.
IKEA hacks are the perfect way to get into woodworking. Low prices mean you don’t have to stress about making mistakes!
Always wonder why those "IKEA Hackers" don't just start from plain furiture panels. More quality for very little less effort.
Do you have an example of these "furniture panels" that are higher quality and require less effort than a mod to a fully-realized piece of furniture with easy instructions?
I left off "as cheap" because you didn't say it, but it's a huge part of the puzzle that you deliberately ignored, too. But I'm really interested in seeing these "furniture panels" that you're recommending.
In the UK at least, furniture panels from B&Q, Wickes, Selco, etc, are very much inferior to the stuff some IKEA (e.g. METOD and PAX) furniture is built from. That was why I used PAX carcases to create built-in wardrobes. Plain furniture panels would have been lower quality.
Love a good IKEA hack. Readily available, standardized, low-cost materials are a great platform to build creatively!
2
congrats you built something ugly
Build more real stuff, everyone.
IKEA is trash. Let’s not pretend otherwise.
What is the device at the end that looks like a laser engraver sans laser module?
Ahh I just created a blog post about my Ikea Helmer modification: https://atoav.com/2026/08/30/ikea-helmer-mod/
Turning the thing into something a little bit more mobile.
I have this whole website dedicated to it bookmarked since a long time: https://ikeahackers.net/
The low cost makes it perfect for diy as for an amateur you know that you have the safety to be able to easily buy a new unit if you screw up.
Looking into ideas, I was a little bit disappointed to not find community website of people sharing ideas, experiences and results around such hacking.
There’s <https://wiki.eth0.nl/index.php/LackRack>
https://ikeahackers.net/
In 2014, IKEA made headlines when its legal team sent a cease-and-desist letter to Jules Yap, the founder of IKEA Hackers, demanding that she hand over the domain name. Good to see the site still online, after the PR department took note that legal teams were not-only filing useful claims.
Ever since then, I avoid sharing pictures of IKEA furniture. Like Mattel, suing barbie blogs of children. If I did not design it, I won't share a picture of it. Even building architects will sometimes sue if you photograph the house.
> Even building architects will sometimes sue if you photograph the house.
? In the US there's the 1a - you can photograph anything you can see (from a public place). In the there's the assumption you can photograph anything without a 'do not photo, military dogs' etc. Never heard of a non-publishable building. Even gchq can be photo's.
Check the "Freedom of Panorama" article on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_panorama - lots of restrictions around the world.
> In the US there's the 1a - you can photograph anything you can see (from a public place).
Just because you can photograph it does not mean you can necessarily publish it. IP rights are a recognized exception to the 1a
Taking photos and publishing photos are 2 different things. The first one doesn't involve copyright for a start.
In typical HN fashion, the blog post is a run of the mill “hack” and instead of commenting on the article, a Hacker News instead word vomits their favorite IKEA furniture.
Lol, that's true. It's even funny.