Cool! I had codex have a go at calculating "effective price" on a few items, that prices in the assembly labor, and then also calculates the delta between price and effective price. Obviously very depended on how you value your time, but here are some items at $30/hour:
BRIMNES storage bed + headboard, Queen
$549 + 320 min labor = $709 (delta: +$160 / +29%)
If an ALEX drawer unit takes them over an hour and a half to build, IMHO they're doing something wrong. Many others on that list seem suspiciously high (the BRIMNES comes to mind). Curious how it came up with those values.
(in my experience) if this table included other flat-pack vendors the difference would be stark. Wayfair and the like are far more complex to assemble.
I believe this table needs a column for the disassembly process as well.
I bought and assembled a TUFFING Bunk Bed years ago, and even though the complexity of assembly is reported as 4644 on this web site (which is also suspiciously low), as far as I can tell the only way to disassemble it is to use an angle grinder.
I do use wood glue on all dowel pins, so most stuff is assembly once only.
Unless the furniture provides metal inserts for machine screws, I do not consider it disassembly material. It's likely to exhibit the spontaneous disassembly on its right own otherwise (or squeak soon enough)
I had to disassemble some furniture as well recently. It had one and a half million screws and whatnots and since it was going to recycling center anyways I figured out sledgehammer was as good tool as any. Turns out it was better than _any_, ultrafast (take that claude!) and a ton of fun.
the comments on ikea's site seem to agree with you - lots of extremely negative ones about the assembly
I did not do sentiment analysis on the comments (to modify my fudge factor mentioned elsewhere - which is the bulk of my complexity rating computation), but that could be a good next step..!
I once bought a paper basket that was made out of two pieces and I managed to assemble it the wrong way. I guess I should multiply those estimates by pi.
(OP) thanks for this insight, truly - I took another look and ikea.com reviews actually include a whole dedicated "ease of assembly" value! some very easy-looking products do actually rate quite badly on the assembly
adding that column now, should be live in the next 10-20 mins cheers!
If you look at the item number and it begins with an s, it means it's a combination of multiple articles. If you click "what's included" you'll see what articles it consists of. The assembly documents will include the assembly documents for each child article. On the top pax, you can see it actually consists of 20 distinct child articles (some of which require no assembly).
A lot of these pdfs contain steps which are optional or only apply in certain situations. Does that decrease the complexity because there are less steps to do? Or does it increase.. the cyclomatic complexity!
IKEA was cool years ago. Unfortunately the quality reduced enormously and the price raised over it. Yesterday I saw an ad for a table and chairs for the balcony: 70€ (80$ after tax). I bought this model years ago and paid 15€ (17.60$ after tax) for the whole set.
IKEA beds are underestimated: these flimsy POS planks and their
insertion is entire artform that was likely engineered to cause pain.
The idea here is they are huge, finicky and depend on precise positioning
in multiple areas, there is no "easy shortcut" for their structural integrity,
everything has to be perfectly assembled.
Was having a lot of house stuff redone after a kitchen fire. Not Ikea, but had a mail order bedframe. Just had the contractor's people put it together.
Fun data sheet! I was curious about most steps per part and it seems to be TROTTEN[1] at 1.07 steps per part (excluding some other products like a toilet brush with 1 part but the steps are actually for a separate add-on to attach it to the wall).
It’s rather a very simple math formula based on the number of steps and parts.
I adjusted the formula by researching online what people reported as the time it took them to build some of the items. ie there’s a linear regression “fudge” factor - but it’s still an extremely simplified “model”, if you can call it that.
Very cool then, my personal experience and experience in general with assembling furniture could be different to what regular people who never did it before have, seen it with friends
An "assembly driver" or "installation driver" is meant to describe low-torque powered screwdrivers. They don't strip threads especially when used on the lowest torque settings that can barely turn a screw before the clutch-release mechanism clicks. On the other hand, the high-torque powered screwdrivers that can turn drywall and deck screws and the impact drivers that can spin the lugs on car wheels are a different beast.
The bigger risk with IKEA furniture is hammering in the metal dowel pins (that interlock with the rotating cams) at a perpendicular angle to the flat board. You have to gently tap them with a hammer because it's too easy to puncture through the particle board.
Actually, the majority of "screws" to turn in a lot of IKEA furniture (e.g. bookshelves) are the cams instead of typical threaded screws. The cams only rotate 180 degrees so there's no time savings in trying to use a powered screwdriver.
> hammering in the metal dowel pins (that interlock with the rotating cams)
Are there many hammer-in versions around then? I've assembled a fair amount of IKEA bookcases, wardrobes, kitchen cupboards etc (in the UK), and those cam dowel pins have always been screw-in.
I feel like this shouldn’t be down-voted. I insist on grabbing The Gun for anything more than a few screws, but have definitely overtightened or cracked boards when I don’t keep the torque low.
Always remember the rule: a half-turn before breaking is how tight you want it to be
Any drill nowadays would have a clutch. Use it, so it limits the torque. It applies for pretty much any kind of work (e.g. including mounting intake manifold on a lawn-mower, but then it's likely to use a torque wrench too)
> Any drill nowadays would have a clutch. Use it, so it limits the torque.
The problem is, unless it's an actual torque wrench these clutches are allll over the place. There's a reason they give only some arbitrary scale, and often enough they're so unreliable that the same electric screwdriver / drill will produce different torques for the same setting depending on the battery SoC, the power setting and the cleanliness of the thread in the wood.
I've found the most reliable way for IKEA furniture is to use an electric screwdriver for the bulk of the work and use a manual screwdriver for the final 1-2 turns. Everything else is just asking for trouble, especially the screw "overshooting" because the particle density at one hole is randomly (markedly) less than at the hole you calibrated the screwdriver with.
Very true, I do it with regular screwdrivers but I watched people in the past ruthlessly overscrew and hammer stuff in, its not supposed to be done with force. My furniture so far survived 2 moves and 14 years with full disassembly and assembly in between..
These days I wouldn't recommend Ikea to anybody with the prices and build quality, Jysk is a good and cheap alternative in germany.
Apparently there used to be a built in estimator in the checkout process [1]. I member having seen that somewhere as well, but it's been ages since I ordered online from Ikea, I always go in person to stuff myself full of hotdogs and meatballs LOL
Just for reference IKEA tend NOT to include wall fasteners (or anything alike, e.g. nylon inserts) that alone is a way more involved process (incl. leveling that I mentioned in a top post) than connecting a mdf-board plate (parts) with dowel pins (many parts) and metal screw(s) (even more parts).
Sorry to hear! The products are from the US site, and I’m hiding products where the extraction pipeline couldn’t get all of the information (steps, parts count) reliably.
IKEA in general is piss easy to assemble except for leveling stuff where you'd need a laser and often times another person. Some of provided tools (the famous L 6mm hex key made of cheese) and hardware (nails) tend to be very poor... and sometimes it'd need a visit to buy extra hardware - e.g. low-profile head, non-counter sunk screws to attach to the wall.
Repairing furniture or addressing mistakes tend to be fixable by a mix of wood shavings/dust and epoxy in most cases.
So the assembly would depend on previous experience, available tools, and free space.
Sure, it’s not hard, but if there are a lot of steps it’s still going to take longer.
A fully specced up pax double wardrobe with drawers, sliding doors, and lighting is made up of hundreds of parts, so does take a good amount of time to put together even though it’s not difficult per se.
It’s also made up of many different SKUs so you get dozens of boxes turn up and it takes a little while to figure out what everything is and get organised. Again, it’s not difficult, but it takes a little time.
The Pax with sliding doors took me a really long time to put together. Long enough that when my brother in law (who doesn’t like assembling stuff) asked if I recommend them, it was a solid No.
Yeah, we ordered a double width pax with sliding doors, drawers, shelves and lighting, plus another half wardrobe with a mirror door, shelves, and lighting.
I’m fairly handy and quite enjoy putting things together so it never crossed my mind to use IKEA’s assembly service, but I did notice they were offering it for £300, which I took as a signal that it would take a while.
In the end it took 12+ hours over the course of a weekend. I reckon I’d be faster if I did it again, and maybe if I did it enough times I’d be able to half that, but the problem is, how many fully spec Ed pax wardrobes + ancillaries are you really going to assemble in your life?
With bigger orders, depending on how you value your time and want to spend it, maybe paying for assembly makes sense. I reckon 2 people would have had it done in a morning if I’d paid.
I never said otherwise, and the rest of my post tells it could be time consuming. The criticism is to the random time quote based off solely on parts count.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.)
The real lesson here is how unbelievably inept the hacker news audience seems to be with any practical task.
The idea someone would spend hours assembling any piece of Ikea furniture is absurd.
Anything on this list can be build in minutes.
I did so even as an inexperienced teenager myself with no help.
If it takes you 10 hours to assemble a wardrobe you should have a disability badge.
Cool! I had codex have a go at calculating "effective price" on a few items, that prices in the assembly labor, and then also calculates the delta between price and effective price. Obviously very depended on how you value your time, but here are some items at $30/hour:
BRIMNES storage bed + headboard, Queen $549 + 320 min labor = $709 (delta: +$160 / +29%)
HEMNES 8-drawer dresser $380 + 236 min labor = $498 (delta: +$118 / +31%)
STORKLINTA 6-drawer dresser $250 + 224 min labor = $362 (delta: +$112 / +45%)
SLÄKT storage bed, Twin $450 + 212 min labor = $556 (delta: +$106 / +24%)
BRIMNES 3-door wardrobe $250 + 189 min labor = $344.50 (delta: +$94.50 / +38%)
ALEX drawer unit: $95 + 96 min labor = $143 (delta: +$48 / +51%)
BRIMNES cabinet with doors: $99 + 75 min labor = $136.50 (delta: +$37.50 / +38%)
KALLAX 2x4 shelf unit: $65 + 39 min labor = $84.50 (delta: +$19.50 / +30%)
Formula: effective price = sticker price + (estimated assembly minutes / 60 * hourly value of time).
I was surprised by how similar the % diff is across the board.
If an ALEX drawer unit takes them over an hour and a half to build, IMHO they're doing something wrong. Many others on that list seem suspiciously high (the BRIMNES comes to mind). Curious how it came up with those values.
(in my experience) if this table included other flat-pack vendors the difference would be stark. Wayfair and the like are far more complex to assemble.
I believe this table needs a column for the disassembly process as well.
I bought and assembled a TUFFING Bunk Bed years ago, and even though the complexity of assembly is reported as 4644 on this web site (which is also suspiciously low), as far as I can tell the only way to disassemble it is to use an angle grinder.
> use an angle grinder.
I do use wood glue on all dowel pins, so most stuff is assembly once only. Unless the furniture provides metal inserts for machine screws, I do not consider it disassembly material. It's likely to exhibit the spontaneous disassembly on its right own otherwise (or squeak soon enough)
I had to disassemble some furniture as well recently. It had one and a half million screws and whatnots and since it was going to recycling center anyways I figured out sledgehammer was as good tool as any. Turns out it was better than _any_, ultrafast (take that claude!) and a ton of fun.
I’ve used a reciprocating saw on a couch before.
JD? That you?
Tuffing is “tough guy”, somewhat appropriate
the comments on ikea's site seem to agree with you - lots of extremely negative ones about the assembly
I did not do sentiment analysis on the comments (to modify my fudge factor mentioned elsewhere - which is the bulk of my complexity rating computation), but that could be a good next step..!
I once bought a paper basket that was made out of two pieces and I managed to assemble it the wrong way. I guess I should multiply those estimates by pi.
(OP) thanks for this insight, truly - I took another look and ikea.com reviews actually include a whole dedicated "ease of assembly" value! some very easy-looking products do actually rate quite badly on the assembly
adding that column now, should be live in the next 10-20 mins cheers!
Same for me. It's not linear. Instructions may be more likely to be ignored when the product appears to be very simple.
If you look at the item number and it begins with an s, it means it's a combination of multiple articles. If you click "what's included" you'll see what articles it consists of. The assembly documents will include the assembly documents for each child article. On the top pax, you can see it actually consists of 20 distinct child articles (some of which require no assembly).
A lot of these pdfs contain steps which are optional or only apply in certain situations. Does that decrease the complexity because there are less steps to do? Or does it increase.. the cyclomatic complexity!
My parser is unfortunately not fancy enough to detect optional steps - but it's a great point!
IKEA was cool years ago. Unfortunately the quality reduced enormously and the price raised over it. Yesterday I saw an ad for a table and chairs for the balcony: 70€ (80$ after tax). I bought this model years ago and paid 15€ (17.60$ after tax) for the whole set.
IKEA beds are underestimated: these flimsy POS planks and their insertion is entire artform that was likely engineered to cause pain. The idea here is they are huge, finicky and depend on precise positioning in multiple areas, there is no "easy shortcut" for their structural integrity, everything has to be perfectly assembled.
LÖNSET Slatted bed base King 302.787.13
3h of fun for a mere $140.
I've seen more expensive hobbies.
I have nightmares of these, I’ll gladly pay someone else to do it next time
Was having a lot of house stuff redone after a kitchen fire. Not Ikea, but had a mail order bedframe. Just had the contractor's people put it together.
I hate building IKEA furniture, my wife loves building IKEA furniture. Problem solved :).
Same with shopping at IKEA. I know all the shortcuts in our local IKEA so that I can exit the store as quickly as possible.
This is the new version, the old one is called sultan laxeby. Easily 1.5x the amount of time.
PDF for assembly is still up on the website: https://www.ikea.com/nl/nl/assembly_instructions/sultan-laxe...
Love this.
Whoever made this, please make a "proportion" column somehow!
I would like to know which has the most complexity per total volume or weight (it's less surprising that huge items have high complexity).
Fun data sheet! I was curious about most steps per part and it seems to be TROTTEN[1] at 1.07 steps per part (excluding some other products like a toilet brush with 1 part but the steps are actually for a separate add-on to attach it to the wall).
[1]: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/trotten-cabinet-with-doors-whit...
Good idea. Wish I had this before I made a few purchases!
Time estimate is way off for the Smastad loft bed, that thing was such a pain.
Where did you pull this data from?
I think its AI sentiment generated data, no way someone needs 6.5h for a bed frame. I needed at best 2h...
It’s rather a very simple math formula based on the number of steps and parts.
I adjusted the formula by researching online what people reported as the time it took them to build some of the items. ie there’s a linear regression “fudge” factor - but it’s still an extremely simplified “model”, if you can call it that.
Very cool then, my personal experience and experience in general with assembling furniture could be different to what regular people who never did it before have, seen it with friends
The time it takes to assemble Ikea furniture is very dependent on your experience with it, and if you're using an assembly driver or not.
> and if you're using an assembly driver or not
Not a good idea on modern Ikea furniture that's basically engineered wood and cardboard. Way too easy to strip out the threads.
>assembly driver
>Way too easy to strip out the threads.
An "assembly driver" or "installation driver" is meant to describe low-torque powered screwdrivers. They don't strip threads especially when used on the lowest torque settings that can barely turn a screw before the clutch-release mechanism clicks. On the other hand, the high-torque powered screwdrivers that can turn drywall and deck screws and the impact drivers that can spin the lugs on car wheels are a different beast.
The bigger risk with IKEA furniture is hammering in the metal dowel pins (that interlock with the rotating cams) at a perpendicular angle to the flat board. You have to gently tap them with a hammer because it's too easy to puncture through the particle board.
Actually, the majority of "screws" to turn in a lot of IKEA furniture (e.g. bookshelves) are the cams instead of typical threaded screws. The cams only rotate 180 degrees so there's no time savings in trying to use a powered screwdriver.
> hammering in the metal dowel pins (that interlock with the rotating cams)
Are there many hammer-in versions around then? I've assembled a fair amount of IKEA bookcases, wardrobes, kitchen cupboards etc (in the UK), and those cam dowel pins have always been screw-in.
I feel like this shouldn’t be down-voted. I insist on grabbing The Gun for anything more than a few screws, but have definitely overtightened or cracked boards when I don’t keep the torque low.
Always remember the rule: a half-turn before breaking is how tight you want it to be
Any drill nowadays would have a clutch. Use it, so it limits the torque. It applies for pretty much any kind of work (e.g. including mounting intake manifold on a lawn-mower, but then it's likely to use a torque wrench too)
> Any drill nowadays would have a clutch. Use it, so it limits the torque.
The problem is, unless it's an actual torque wrench these clutches are allll over the place. There's a reason they give only some arbitrary scale, and often enough they're so unreliable that the same electric screwdriver / drill will produce different torques for the same setting depending on the battery SoC, the power setting and the cleanliness of the thread in the wood.
I've found the most reliable way for IKEA furniture is to use an electric screwdriver for the bulk of the work and use a manual screwdriver for the final 1-2 turns. Everything else is just asking for trouble, especially the screw "overshooting" because the particle density at one hole is randomly (markedly) less than at the hole you calibrated the screwdriver with.
Very true, I do it with regular screwdrivers but I watched people in the past ruthlessly overscrew and hammer stuff in, its not supposed to be done with force. My furniture so far survived 2 moves and 14 years with full disassembly and assembly in between..
These days I wouldn't recommend Ikea to anybody with the prices and build quality, Jysk is a good and cheap alternative in germany.
Yes but this website seems to assume that one will need to Google what a screwdriver is for an hour before they start assembling anything.
..and space, try to assemble bulky bed in small bedroom
I needed 45 min. Should it be 45 mins then?
Apparently there used to be a built in estimator in the checkout process [1]. I member having seen that somewhere as well, but it's been ages since I ordered online from Ikea, I always go in person to stuff myself full of hotdogs and meatballs LOL
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/TaskRabbit/comments/13dm7lu/comment...
I’ve paid for putting twin PAXes with doors together. Two pros came in at 9 am and I was wrapping up vacuuming by 10:30. Best money spent ever
I don't believe this. The sundvik series feels way more complex than brimnes but wardrobes have the same complexity score.
Feel free to give me some real assembly time values - happy to adjust my very simple formula of steps x number of parts x fudge factor :)
Just for reference IKEA tend NOT to include wall fasteners (or anything alike, e.g. nylon inserts) that alone is a way more involved process (incl. leveling that I mentioned in a top post) than connecting a mdf-board plate (parts) with dowel pins (many parts) and metal screw(s) (even more parts).
Hinges need more time in general as well.
Tried 4 different items and none are listed.
Sorry to hear! The products are from the US site, and I’m hiding products where the extraction pipeline couldn’t get all of the information (steps, parts count) reliably.
What are the missing products?
MCP where? /s
What's the assembly time based on?
IKEA in general is piss easy to assemble except for leveling stuff where you'd need a laser and often times another person. Some of provided tools (the famous L 6mm hex key made of cheese) and hardware (nails) tend to be very poor... and sometimes it'd need a visit to buy extra hardware - e.g. low-profile head, non-counter sunk screws to attach to the wall.
Repairing furniture or addressing mistakes tend to be fixable by a mix of wood shavings/dust and epoxy in most cases.
So the assembly would depend on previous experience, available tools, and free space.
> piss easy to assemble
Sure, it’s not hard, but if there are a lot of steps it’s still going to take longer.
A fully specced up pax double wardrobe with drawers, sliding doors, and lighting is made up of hundreds of parts, so does take a good amount of time to put together even though it’s not difficult per se.
It’s also made up of many different SKUs so you get dozens of boxes turn up and it takes a little while to figure out what everything is and get organised. Again, it’s not difficult, but it takes a little time.
The Pax with sliding doors took me a really long time to put together. Long enough that when my brother in law (who doesn’t like assembling stuff) asked if I recommend them, it was a solid No.
Yeah, we ordered a double width pax with sliding doors, drawers, shelves and lighting, plus another half wardrobe with a mirror door, shelves, and lighting.
I’m fairly handy and quite enjoy putting things together so it never crossed my mind to use IKEA’s assembly service, but I did notice they were offering it for £300, which I took as a signal that it would take a while.
In the end it took 12+ hours over the course of a weekend. I reckon I’d be faster if I did it again, and maybe if I did it enough times I’d be able to half that, but the problem is, how many fully spec Ed pax wardrobes + ancillaries are you really going to assemble in your life?
With bigger orders, depending on how you value your time and want to spend it, maybe paying for assembly makes sense. I reckon 2 people would have had it done in a morning if I’d paid.
> it’s still going to take longer.
I never said otherwise, and the rest of my post tells it could be time consuming. The criticism is to the random time quote based off solely on parts count.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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
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.)
The real lesson here is how unbelievably inept the hacker news audience seems to be with any practical task. The idea someone would spend hours assembling any piece of Ikea furniture is absurd. Anything on this list can be build in minutes. I did so even as an inexperienced teenager myself with no help. If it takes you 10 hours to assemble a wardrobe you should have a disability badge.