How do Americans view IKEA?

24 comments

1. It’s cheap furniture. Idk what more to say.

2. Cheap furniture. I hate the store’s layout.

3. Meatballs with Lingonberry jam ! It’s reliable, cheaper furniture that is good. Honestly would prefer solid wood furniture but I’m not quite there yet. Hemnes and Kallax is my jam.

   One day I’ll get Amish furniture, but that day is not this decade. So ikea is the cats pajamas

4. It’s cheap disposable furniture with trendy designs.

5. It’s cheap furniture, consider affordable but of mediocre quality.

6. >meanwhile I see some Americans online making fun of IKEA furniture.

   You don’t get clicks by talking about how perfectly normal stuff is.

   The opening of an IKEA is usually a pretty big deal. And if you don’t have a local IKEA, it isn’t uncommon for people to make day trips to the nearest one especially if you’ve just moved in and…well, need furniture.

   Before central Indiana got one, the closest was Cincinnati.

7. Pretty good place for furniture when you’re young, don’t have a ton of money to spend, and aren’t looking for something you want to feel like you need to take good care of.

   Ikea is a great place for college students or young people just out of college looking to furnish their first apartment/home. It’s pretty low-quality, though. In my experience it doesn’t stand up well to normal wear-and-tear and doesn’t last all that long.

8. I’m mixed opinion, personally.

   I do like that their furniture is crazy-affordable.

   I absolutely dislike that the store is designed as a cash-extraction machine. It’s very literally (and famously) designed so that you can’t just walk in, buy one thing, and walk out.

   So if you’ve got a friend or romantic partner with you who’s succeptible to that? Be prepared to walk out with a very empty wallet.

9. It’s good for the money, but it’s cheap, plain furniture. It’s not meant to last. Good if you need to furnish a place cheap on a budget and either don’t have time for second hand or don’t like second hand, but even people who shop there will sometimes joke about it. I do like some of their household goods. People will make a trip of it if they need furniture.

   I used to go there for lunch on a weekday fairly often, when I worked in the same neighborhood as one. Decent food, excellent price.

10. One of the best things to come out of Sweden since Minecraft. Good furniture.

11. It’s disposable furniture you by very cheap.

    It usually lasts like two moves before you have to get rid of it. Sometimes only one.

    I think everyone I know has or has had the Lack end tables.

12. As a home builder. They’re furniture is cheap. They have some small items that seem reasonably priced. I can see why an American, middle class white woman would spend her afternoon there. Why do they like buying cheap shit?

13. It’s pretty nice furniture.

14. We make fun of IKEA because the quality is one of the lowest you can buy in the US.

    **BUT** most people think it is okay for the price since it is cheap. The style is pretty good. Lots of selection and colors. Perfect for a student or young couple since children destroy everything anyway.

    Some people get really frustrated building the pieces.

    We know it is low-quality, but we still love it.

15. Gonna go a little deeper on this response than the others and explain how furniture works in America.

    I’m dealing with replacing almost all of our home furniture right now due to a house fire.

    Previously we had an assortment of ikea furniture, some pieces from furniture stores like Raymour & Flanigan, and hand-me-downs from friends and relatives. The hand-me-downs were of generally high quality because they were sturdy enough to have survived several years of use. So now we have to replace all of that based on a value calculated for us by the insurance company, all at once.

    For wood furniture, there’s a few ways they are made. There’s low end, which is made of engineered wood. Engineered wood can be plywood but in the furniture world it often means particleboard or medium density fiberboard (MDF) which consists of small wood particles held together by a binder and shaped into a piece by a machine, then completed by gluing a veneer (another very thin piece of wood) on the outside surfaces to give it visual appeal. It’s a fast, cheap, environmentally friendly way of creating complex wood shapes in a factory, but it’s not durable and won’t last. Most Ikea furniture falls into this category, which lends itself to diy assembly and flat packing.

    There’s mid range which is a combination of solid wood, solid wood with veneers, and plywood with veneers. Even though it is mid range it is 4x-6x as expensive as Ikea. Often the outer surfaces are veneered and things like drawers and posts – load bearing components – are solid wood with strong joints like glued dovetails instead of butt-jointed camlocks and screws like IKEA joints. This is why it takes a long time for people to upgrade from ikea to midrange or more. And ikea has a select few pieces – the Hemnes line for instance – that are solid pine (a softwood) with stain or paint with acrylic lacquer that last longer, and aren’t they much more expensive, but are a minority of offered products. Pottery Barn, Crate & Barrel, Raymour, Ashley – these fall into this category. Although Pottery Barn is at the higher end of price if not necessarily quality.

    Then there’s high end semi-custom or custom furniture which is almost always solid wood throughout, with many offerings for types of hardwood (oak, cherry, maple, quarter sawn oak, mahogany), stains, solid joinery (biscuits, dovetails etc), grain matching – assembled by craftsmen with lead times from weeks to months. Amish furniture is in this category. This is another 4x-6x as expensive as midrange.

    For midrange and high end, they’ll deliver and assemble the piece on site, usually for a small fee or for free. Hours of your time saved.

    Couple of examples.

    A Hemnes entertainment center from Ikea will cost you about $600-$800. An entertainment center from a high end furniture store will cost you between $5,000 and $12,000.

    A Hemnes bookshelf is probably $250 or something at this point (they were $180 when I last bought one). Bookshelves from high end furniture stores are going for between $1,200 to $3,000.

    This is why Ikea is popular. Until people have the disposable income to afford non Ikea, they’re stuck with it.

16. I think it’s well received. A lot of people I know go to IKEA for basic stuff like wall mounts, shelves, simple tables etc. Honestly I’ve been a few times to just walk around and get ideas.

    When ever they revamp the model kitchens my sister and I like to play a game called “Find the Dishwasher” where we each take a turn guessing which cabinet is actually the dishwasher. It’s pretty amusing

17. We simultaneously love it and make fun of it because it’s so cheap. I have friends come into town that get excited when they learn I have an IKEA store nearby. But there is definitely a point in many Americans lives when it’s time to get rid of some IKEA furniture and get grown-up furniture.

18. Cheap plywood furniture. I’ve never been to one though so I have no idea what the stores are like.

19. I have no problem buying IKEA furniture. I hate assembling, but the price makes it worth it.

    Walking through an IKEA is a nightmare for me. I feel like I spend hours looking at stuff I wasn’t looking for when I just wanted a coffee table

20. The place where you have to put your furniture together with a million pieces.

21. Drive to the parking lot and check it out.

22. One thing not mentioned yet is that ikea is designed really well for young kids. Stair railings at their height, a nice play area, and furniture they’re allowed to climb on as they go through the store, step-stools in the bathroom for the sinks, and more. Some people complain about the store layout, but kids love routines, and going to the store establishes a routine as you go through the different sections and have meatballs for lunch in the middle.

23. It’s cheap furniture that a lot of Americans rely on because it’s cheap and available almost everywhere.

    Years ago I switched to buying used furniture from a variety of sources – from local Goodwills and the ReStore – to Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace. I learned that people get rid of good, expensive furniture all the time, usually when moving. Defeated the purpose of IKEA for my family.

24. IKEA’s entire philosophy as a company is based on socialism – bulk production and bulk processes designed to lower costs for everyone. It’s why if you order online shipping is often more expensive than same-day delivery from the store. Which is different from “cheap” furniture but as a marketing play, it’s complicated and not an extremely compelling selling point for Americans.

    The quality of IKEA furniture has also improved a lot in the past 20 years, but the higher end stuff doesn’t end up costing *that* much less than other furniture stores (and you don’t have to put those together yourself).