>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 ...

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

>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.)

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.

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.

> 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.