Browse the 2017 IKEA Catalog Also available for iPhone, Follow IKEA USA on: /smart-living/How-Save-Money-Ikea-35593579 on this server. Your technical support key is: 3697-e0b7-1756-6707 If you are unable to fix the problem yourself, please contact and be sure to provide the technical support key shown above.12 Makeovers for the IKEA Dresser Everyone Owns Here's proof that you can have champagne on a beer budget. BEFORE: BORGSJO cabinetBEFORE: BORGSJO cabinetThis line of shelves allows you to mix and match cabinets to create different looks. After: Refined Office StorageAfter: Refined Office StorageLining a wall, a row of these cabinets seriously impresses. This blogger used glass doors on top and solid doors on the bottom, so there's space above for pretty things and plenty of hiding spots below.See more at Avery Street Design » 23 Crafty Ways to Repurpose Empty Wine Bottles You are here > Special Offers Product Offers – Members always get a better deal
We always save the best bits for family – and that means the best savings too! Here are the latest discounts that you can take advantage of as a member of IKEA FAMILY. Keep a lookout for the FAMILY price banner. And remember to use your IKEA FAMILY card to swipe your way to great savings! The unique IKEA FAMILY range Designed for Home Lovers on the go, the exclusive IKEA FAMILY range will keep you smart and safe at home and abroad. Aluminium, polyester powder coating and stainless steel.15kg. Aluminium, polyester powder coating and stainless steel.16kg. Aluminium, polyester powder coating and clear lacquer.Like most enthusiasts of design, we’re big fans of IKEA, both for their products and as a business. However, it’s near impossible to name a single direct peer to the Swedish giant. We’re here to offer some alternative stores like IKEA for great designs at accessible prices. Obviously, we’re going to list 10 online stores other than ourselves (although, if you’re here, we hope you’ve checked us out).
We’re also opting for stores where you can find products priced below the ranges of West Elm, Room & Board, and the likes. This massive online retailer is part of Wayfair. They consolidate a large assortment of modern products across all price ranges. Amazing customer service to boot. Although it may take some time to browse through their massive catalog, there are good deals here. Overstock sells more than furniture and decor, but they have a surprisingly strong selection of modern styles at great discounts if you dig deep enough. Most products on Fab are high-end designer items, but look for the newer products that are made by Fab. They’re always available (despite what the countdown timer may seem to suggest) and are very inexpensive for their look and quality.Since you’re buying direct from small business owners/makers, the prices can be fantastic and the aesthetics truly unique. However, sifting through all the products to find the one you love can take time.
As its name suggests, Scandinavian Designs has extremely similar style as IKEA. Though the prices are higher, the quality and aesthetics are also very nice. The younger, hipper, cheaper sister store of Crate & Barrel, CB2 carries a variety of modern, minimalist, and industrial furniture pieces. Be prepared to pay a premium, but there are a lot of great craftsmanship and design. Dwell, our favorite magazine covering all things modern architecture and design, have a little known store that offer fantastic high-end designs at surprisingly accessible prices. Though they aren’t as economical as IKEA, you can find many items near the CB2 range with a tremendous design appeal. The products on World Market are less modern, leaning towards a chic, industrial, worldly look. You can find some good items here at good price ranges. Pier 1, similar to World Market, doesn’t have the usual modern, Scandinavian aesthetics. Furniture and decor tend to have a contemporary look that attempts to fit in every home at price ranges that attract the masses.
Urban Outfitters is one of the best sources for contemporary, chic, bohemian products. Though better known for clothing and apparel, their home department actually carries highly unique products that you won’t find on any of the stores listed above. That wraps it up for today. Let us know if you have other suggestions. IKEA is quite remarkable in their sheer dominance in selling beautiful, modern, simple designs at such affordable price ranges. However, these 10 stores along with our own should more than satisfy your shopping needs. Hope our list is able to help you out!It depends on the price class, basically. The nice thing about IKEA is that you pretty much get what you pay for.IKEA will sell you a $25 bookcase, and they will sell you a $300 bookcase. These are not going to be equally durable.The most popular IKEA bookcase is probably the mid-range BILLY:A full-size BILLY is is $60 in white or $80 in wood veneer. It's made entirely of veneered particleboard. The backer used to be Masonite, but I believe they switched to MDF at some point.
These are not ideal materials for durability. Even the best quality particleboard is only pretty on the veneered outside. It is unsuitable for wet locations and damage can be hard to repair, though minor scratches take surprisingly well to a little stain in the right color (hardware stores sell stain in marker pens for this purpose). But given that the thing is made of veneered particleboard, the BILLY is about as good as it gets. The veneer, though thin, is always thick enough, and the finish is quite hard. I've seen particleboard bookcases from many other manufacturers, and none of them have betrayed as thorough an understanding of the nature of the material as the BILLY. IKEA never puts unreasonable expectations on the ability of inferior materials to hold fasteners directly and always uses fasteners that attach to each other or are specifically adapted for particleboard (e.g. Confirmat type screws). Structurally, these things are sound and can remain so for decades. They may get scratched up, but as for falling apart, that's not so easy.
The BILLY is not, however, the cheapest IKEA bookcase. That honor goes to the GERSBY:At $25, available in white only, the GERSBY looks like a great deal, but at this point, we are really talking disposable furniture. It would be foolish to put particularly heavy books on these shelves and expect them not to sag. Mind you, I'm not upset that IKEA has these. Sometimes, you just want the best shelves $25 can buy, and frankly, these probably are the best shelves $25 can buy (if you insist on buying new, anyway). I suppose that IKEA might have wanted to stay out of the $25 bookcase market for fear of damaging their reputation, but they have apparently decided their customers are smart enough not to hold it against them that their bottom-of-the-range product is, well, shitty, in absolute terms, since it is actually excellent for the price.AssemblyIt's important if you don't want your IKEA furniture to fall apart that you assemble it properly. A lot of this stuff is designed just so and it's structurally sound only if no parts are missing.
The thin Masonite backer on a MALM dresser, for instance, is crucial to its structural integrity, and you really do need to hammer in those 50 or so little nails, or else the cabinet won't take racking forces and the fasteners on the corners will over time start damaging the soft particleboard.Start by unpacking and sorting everything and throwing out the packing material so it doesn't clutter up the area. Grab some bowls or tupperware containers or some such and sort the hardware. The little Allen keys in particular are no good and will scrape your knuckles; a full set of surprisingly nice T-handled metric Allen wrenches at Harbor Freight will set you back all of $10. If you have a cordless drill with a clutch, it can be very helpful; just make sure to set the clutch to a relatively low torque so you don't overdrive fasteners in soft materials. Or use a cheap battery-powered screwdriver that simply doesn't have enough torque to damage anything. You definitely don't want to go using an impact driver for most of this stuff;
remember it's all designed so the average IKEA customer can drive the screws by hand, so if it requires real power, you're doing something wrong.Gradual improvementsHaving assembled lots of IKEA furniture over the years, including on many occasions different model years of the same pieces, I've been impressed with the continuous improvements. For the longest time, one consistent complaint I had about IKEA dressers is that the drawer bottoms fell out. Made of thin MDF or Masonite, the bottoms were actually surprisingly strong when properly fitted in a frame, but racking or bulging of the drawer would cause it to pull away and the weight of the contents would push it down. I assembled a MALM dresser recently and found to my delight that they had added a center support bracket to support the weight of the drawer contents and keep the front and back straight and parallel.American wallsI could not finish this answer without mentioning my one big pet peeve about IKEA furniture: if it's designed to mount to a wall, it's designed for walls that take screws anywhere.
I imagine those must be common in Sweden; they definitely are in The Netherlands. Nothing that IKEA makes, except possibly their kitchen cabinets, appears to be made for mounting on a studs-and-drywall hollow wall. Even when the spacing between mounting points is arbitrary, it never coincides with standard US stud spacings. To mount a series of bathroom cabinets, for instance, I had to notch out space for a support rail, screw the support rail to the wall, and attach the cabinets to the support rail. The most charitable interpretation I have of this is that they figure that bathroom cabinets are lightweight and you should be able to hang them with toggle bolts or some other sort of drywall anchor. I suppose you probably can hang them on toggle bolts, but this hardly seems like a design anybody would have come up with if they were familiar with the pains of hanging cabinets on hollow walls. The design of towel bars and the like can be similarly obnoxious. You have to deal with these design flaws, and if you don't, your stuff won't necessarily fall apart, but it just might fall off.
When I say I have a house full of the stuff, I am speaking literally. In a three bedroom house I have only six items not from Ikea. A couch from Dillards, a rocking chair from Cracker Barrel, a metal filing cabinet, a lightweight vintage modern nightstand of indeterminate origin, Tempurpedic mattresss and box springs, and a child’s rocking chair.Aside from those pieces, all of my furniture for a family of four is from Ikea. Additionally, due to work, college, and other reasons, my family and I have moved an average of once per year for the last 25 years. No, not an exaggeration, a tiring and seemingly inevitable fact of my life.So how easily does Ikea furniture fall apart?It depends entirely on the quality of the assembly.How do you maximize the life of your Ikea furniture?Follow the instructions carefully. It helps to identify every piece and fastener ahead of time. It also helps if you have decent quality tools instead of relying on the throw aways that Ikea includes in the box.Assemble in an area with plenty of room to spread everything out.