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Comment by bob1029 | Hacker News Reader

This is a fantastic way to quantify just how bad a consumer experience this is. Flat pack furniture tends to be very awful compared to alternatives that are also often cheaper and without assembly requirements.

Everything that has come in box from a store like IKEA (or assembled in the back from a box and presented as non-flat-pack) has lasted me less than a decade. I've got a bedroom set that was built out of proper materials and it's almost a century old.

The thing that pushes consumers toward ikea is the consistency and convenience. Most things you can load and cart home by yourself same day. Moving around furniture built by the Amish is a serious logistical challenge by comparison. Maybe you could solo it with a hand truck and some experience, but it's genuinely dangerous to move some things without help. If you aren't moving frequently, the appeal of disposable furniture begins to fade quickly.

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It’s also practicality and ergonomics: old furniture is nice to look at but it’s often awkward to use (e.g., squeaky wooden drawer runners that require periodic waxing to keep them running smoothly and quietly, lack of sliding doors, dark corners at the back of wardrobes, etc.), and wastes lots of internal space.

Drawers with wheels and bearings and soft closers on their runners are simply a lot nicer to use on a day to day basis, particularly when they’re used frequently.

I do have quite a strong preference for older furniture from an aesthetic perspective, and we certainly have some older pieces as a result. But it’s often functionally deficient, and so we don’t tend to use older furniture more complex than a table where the functionality is frequently used. In particular, any kind of heavily accessed storage means ergonomics and usability win every time, tending to steer us toward modern options.

I don't love my Ikea dresser and my recollection was that it was a PITA to assemble. But it works pretty well and it would have been thousands of dollars more to get the equivalent new hardwood dresser. As you say, something from an antique store would almost certainly have been less satisfactory on a day to day basis and would have come with its own set of transportation etc. hassles.

In most places (certainly here in Europe) the alternatives to flat-pack furniture are not cheaper, quite the opposite. Unless we're talking second-hand, which is obviously the most sustainable option.

On quality, I have an apartment rented to students and the Ikea furniture in it is still going strong after years. I make sure to tighten the screws and bolts periodically, but otherwise it's as good as new. I would not have bought "disposable" furniture, no matter how cheap. Conversely, my experience of furniture (and lighting and other fittings) from department stores and hardware stores is that it's three times as expensive as Ikea, three times heavier, and yet obviously poorer quality.

My theory is that if you want quality you are better buying from Ikea. That's simply because any given product will have been bought by millions of other people. By definition, a lot of thought has gone into it and design flaws will likely have been eliminated long ago.

> Flat pack furniture tends to be very awful compared to alternatives that are also often cheaper and without assembly requirements.

I don't particularly like my ikea furniture. But one big reason why I bought this instead of alternatives that come fully assembled is the price: it's much cheaper.

Then again, I live in France, there aren't many Amish around AFAIK.

I did assemble some Ikea cube-type storage after a lot of my house interior was redone. It was a bit of a pain but it's now very satisfactory storage in a couple of closets. And it wasn't that expensive even with delivery. (The nearest Ikea is far enough it would have ended up being a full-day trip.)

Same here, in Germany.

Some categories are especially exaggerated: when needing a number of new wardrobes a few years ago, we struggled to find anything that was remotely similar in price or value to IKEA. The big retail park furniture stores were 2-4x the price for similarish quality (i.e. chipboard; modular construction). Smaller higher quality stores (e.g. plywood/real wood rather than cardboard or chipboard) were roughly 4-8x more expensive. And one really nice local option was roughly 10x more expensive. [0] (We didn't even explore bespoke/handcrafted for obvious reasons.)

Wardrobes, in particular, are begging for disruption - essentially a relatively modular approach, higher quality materials than IKEA, (much) lower cost than Moormann.

[0] https://www.moormann.de/de/schrankone.html

There's something wrong with their site, all their prices have an extra digit for some reason.

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