9 ms·

New $3k Couch Might Be Garbage in Three Years

46 points by sharkweek 3y ago

blueridge 3y ago
https://archive.is/GLIVY https://archive.is/GLIVY
- shagie 3y ago
  Share link: https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/couch-sofa-quality-furniture-repairs-17cfd724?st=fz0s3ryuepg34pt&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/couch-sofa-quality-furniture-r...
blakesterz 3y ago
https://archive.is/GLIVY https://archive.is/GLIVY I've been shopping for furniture lately and can confirm, it all feels like cheap junk unless it's VERY expensive. I wish I could find a mattress that lasts even more than a couch. I only sit on the couch a few times a week, so it doesn't matter as much as my bed!
- emeraldd 3y ago
  I've been surprisingly happy with a Big Fig mattress: https://www.bigfigmattress.com https://www.bigfigmattress.com Ours is a little on the firmer side, but that can be remedied with a topper.
- spondylosaurus 3y ago
  With mattresses it's really worth splurging if (1) you can afford it and (2) you actually like whatever you're splurging on. But it's hard to figure out the latter without physically trying the mattress ahead of time... I had to go be Goldilocks at a local mattress store for forty minutes before I found my match.
  - b112 3y ago
    The problem I find is, foam sucks. High density foam just sucks less, except at siphoning money from your wallet. I had a mattress with polyester pillow top. Lasted 20 years. New mattresses all seem to be foam, and turn junky super fast. Sucks.
    - alistairSH 3y ago
      Agreed. We tried a name brand foam mattress and it was awful. Tried an Ikea foam that had good reviews and it was awful. Third times a charm - went back to "springs and stuff" and it's a much better mattress. It was $5000 or more (don't recall), but it's been good for 5 years so far with no signs of sagging or wearing out. Worth noting, prior to my 40s, I really didn't care. Now that I'm deep into my 40s, every second of quality sleep counts and bad sleep means achey neck and back and stuff.
    - fmajid 3y ago
      What you want is latex.
      - cafard 3y ago
        Latex is I guess fine. I have no complaints from sleeping on it. But it is a bear to move. If you don't have a couple of stevedores in your household, good luck.
  - autoexecbat 3y ago
    > I had to go be Goldilocks at a local mattress store for forty minutes before I found my match. I do this too, I think it's the only reasonable way to pick something that you're going to spend 1/3 of your days laying on
  - andy99 3y ago
    I don't see how 40 min could be enough. I find with the wrong mattress my back starts to get sore after days or weeks, and I've bought "100 night guarantee" mattresses that started to sag at about the 101st night. It's very hard, at least for me, to make any kind of quick assessment. I'd happily pay a lot but I have no idea what to buy and no confidence that what I do buy will actually last.
- linuxftw 3y ago
  If you have one near you, I highly recommend The Original Mattress Factory. The big-name manufacturers all make 'individually wrapped coils' to make the mattresses 'conform to your body.' These coils are low gauge metal and wear out over time. The fact that they're individually wrapped means each coil is supporting weight on it's own rather than distributing the weight to coils that aren't directly under weight. OMF still offers 'real coil spring' mattresses where the coils are thicker and connected with wire to help distribute the load. The mattresses are also able to be flipped vertically. The best part is, the mattresses are typically hundreds or thousands cheaper than you'll pay for a 'name brand' mattress. What I like to do is buy a firm mattress and top with a separate pillow topper from amazon.
- HideousKojima 3y ago
  I have an inflatable mattress (basically like sleep number, but some other brand whose name I can't recall right now) and it's been fantastic for the last 4 years without any noticable wear and tear or degradation. We also have a 3 inch foam topper on top that has held up well, though that Will probably need replacement at some point. That said, one of the biggest gamechangers I've noticed for sleep regardless of mattress type is actually the box spring. Box springs suck, the bed frames that use arched wooden slats for support instead of a box spring feel way more comfortable and supportive, even with the same mattress.
- mustacheemperor 3y ago
  I'd highly recommend finding a local shop for furniture, if you can. You're right that the major brands cost a lot of money for quality, so even if a local place seems pricier than an "economy" couch at Ikea or West Elm, you're getting a much better piece of furniture. Unaffiliated plug, but there is a sofa shop in the Castro in SF (I think they also have a location in the East Bay) where we bought our new couch a couple years ago. The brothers who own the business were very patient about explaining the different kinds of cushion materials and how we could expect them to wear, let us take home several books of fabric swatches to compare within our own home (for days!), and told us if we didn't like the feet once it got to our place they would switch them out for free. Needless to say, that buying experience is completely different from a corporate store. It only wound up costing 10-20% more than the similar couches we were evaluating at retail shops and has been so much more comfortable and so much more durable than the furniture we ever bought from those places. They've got an outstanding warranty, so we know if we ever did experience unexpected wear and tear they would replace it immediately, and that if 5 or 10 years from now we want to refresh the cushion they can help us with that too. Just like that small software startup is beating the big guys at the same game...You may have a local furniture shop within your local area that can offer you a much better quality to price ratio and bring your money right back into the local economy instead of sending it to a distant conglomerate.
  - andy99 3y ago
    Most of my furniture (everything not upholstered, dining table, dressers, cabinets, coffee table, etc) is all from a second hand store that buys estate furniture and refurbishes it. It's all solid wood, mostly from the '40s or earlier, and was way cheaper than even crappy IKEA stuff.
- alistairSH 3y ago
  We bought a Joybird (or some other not-too-expensive online brand) and it's been fine in our living room (where it sees light-moderate usage). It's a 10 year sofa, at most, and that's without heavy use. The family room, which gets a lot more use, was from a local furniture store. It was double the price and probably 3-4x as "good". I expect it will last for 20 years.
- RajT88 3y ago
  We bought a house at the end of 2020, and then went couch shopping. In stores as well as thrift shops. > Buck at Rochester Institute of Technology says consumers could be better off spending a few thousand dollars to reupholster a thrift-store find or hand-me-down. “Most often the construction of vintage sofas will be superior to what’s made now,” Buck says. This was my conclusion as well, but we still bought a cheap one. We just bought it from some guy who was selling his whole living room for a grand, so I don't mind too much if they fall apart in a few years. Build quality is not there for the wooden parts (I did my handyman thing there), but the leather at least is claimed to be top grain.
- cush 3y ago
  I've got a 10 year old Tuft and Needle mattress that is as good as the day I got it. If you're down with foam, you should consider it.
  - tdhz77 3y ago
    Agreed, bought it in 2016 and still going strong.
noodlesUK 3y ago
Serious question: enshittification seems to be plaguing all parts of our consumer economy at the moment. How can we actually address this? Are there economic or regulatory steps that we can make to ensure that we aren't forced into an eternal race to the bottom where product quality just trends to zero permanently?
- supportengineer 3y ago
  Buy used instead of new.
  - noodlesUK 3y ago
    I get that buying used products might be a partial solution at a personal level, but that doesn't change the fact that we're producing ever more cheap, low-quality stuff. What the market is ideally supposed to do is optimise for the tuple (cheap, quality). It doesn't seem to be doing that, as it seems like things are being optimised for (cheap, perceived quality), and just straight up lying about their quality. When people are buying stuff online, it is even easier to just focus on the price. How do we fix this?
    - nescioquid 3y ago
      The first time I heard the old-money put-down about someone who had "bought their own furniture" my American newer-is-better head spun (and I'm not much of a "consumer" by American standards). Not only are we socially conditioned to prefer new, as you point out, this is further reinforced by the necessity imposed by disposable-quality products.
    - xmprt 3y ago
      I think the parent commenter's answer was pretty valid. You have to vote with your wallet. Buying used will signal to the market that people don't want the crap that's being produced. Or, especially, given the generous return policies these days, buy new and then don't hesitate to return something if you don't like it.
  - detourdog 3y ago
tengbretson 3y ago
No one can afford to buy a home they plan to grow old in and those that do make their way into the professional, upper middle class find themselves drifting from $MAJOR_US_CITY_A to $MAJOR_US_CITY_B every 5 years or so. How could someone possibly expect this not to happen to furniture?
- alistairSH 3y ago
  Wut? I bought a house outside DC. Unless I retire to the mountains, I'll grow old here. It's my second home, the other was a few miles away, I've been in this area since 2000. Pretty sure my middle-management position fits my squarely in "professional, upper-middle-class." Most of my friends are similar. Moved here after college, no plans to leave the area, almost all are home owners, and upper-middle-class.
  - teach 3y ago
    I'll wager you bought your home more than ten years ago. Home prices have, uh, changed a bit.
    - alistairSH 3y ago
      You’d be wrong.
      - teach 3y ago
        Ah, I missed that this was your second home. Was your first home purchase 10+ years ago?
  - orsorna 3y ago
    > Wut? Is what I should say to you. I should not have to inquire the specifics of your personal life to figure out your true income, who has maybe subsidized your living expenses over the years, and your total expenses, to determine how you were able to save for property in one of the most expensive areas of the nation. Although, you have already earmarked your comment with "upper-middle-class", which speaks to your ancedote-rooted perspective.
foobarian 3y ago
I think if we compared similar quality products by adjusting for inflation, the picture may be less alarming. The real change is the modern appearance of much more inexpensive manufacturing (with all the consequences that entails).
latchkey 3y ago
This is why I paid $40 on FB marketplace for a $500 Ikea couch that you can replace the entire cover on. Bonus, I didn't even have to replace the cover. =)
teeray 3y ago
Can’t wait to start paying subscriptions for all my furniture
- csours 3y ago
  This has been around for decades: rent to own stores
  - gavin_gee 3y ago
    also known as financing on credit cards.
    - csours 3y ago
      To my understanding Rent to Own was around significantly earlier than the popular usage of credit cards: "Development of the Rent-to-Own Concept: 1950s The roots of the rent-to-own business reach back to the 1950s when a number of people pioneered the concept. For instance, Charles Loudermilk, Sr., founder of Atlanta-based Aaron Rents, started out in 1955 by renting Army surplus chairs for ten cents a day. The founder of Rent-A-Center was J. Ernest Talley, widely acknowledged as the most influential figure in the development of the industry. In the 1950s he ran a retail appliance store with a cousin in Kansas. Because tightening bank credit prevented a number of customers from buying his merchandise, he hit on the idea of renting the items. If customers failed to meet the payments, he could always repossess the merchandise; if they reached the end of the rental agreement, they would own the merchandise and Talley would have made some extra cash in addition to increasing the sales volume of his appliance store. In 1963 he developed a rent-to-own chain called Mr. T’s, which by 1974 had grown to 14 stores. He sold the business, which became part of the Remco chain, and he turned his attention to commercial real estate in the Dallas area. When the Texas real estate market suffered a crash he returned to the rent-to-own concept in 1987, establishing Talley Leasing with his son Michael. The new company rented appliances to apartment complex owners." Source: https://www.encyclopedia.com/books/politics-and-business-magazines/rent-center-inc https://www.encyclopedia.com/books/politics-and-business-mag...
ListeningPie 3y ago
I’ve had my IKEA ektorp sofa for 8 years and it still works as a sofa. Do other sofas snap in the middle or are the leathers getting worn through?
bogota 3y ago
I cant find anything of even half decent quality for a large sofa under 7k. Im not at all surprised i have been shopping around for months now with the hopes of finding something that will last in the 5k range but have yet to see it.
- Kon-Peki 3y ago
  https://www.roomandboard.com/catalog/living/sofas-and-loveseats https://www.roomandboard.com/catalog/living/sofas-and-lovese... Not the cheapest, but in your range. They don't skimp on the quality and will tell you exactly which shop built it (most of their sofas are from various shops in North Carolina).
ctoth 3y ago
> “People have to choose between the right aesthetic, quality and price. If they want all three, good luck.” Why though? What am I supposed to do as a working professional who wants nice things as my parents had when they made far less than me? Practically? It's just an overwhelming feeling that no matter how hard I work to keep up, even when I make it, the ground is pulled out from under me. Or I guess in this case, the couch.
- dymk 3y ago
  You sacrifice price, of course. "Fast, quality, cheap: pick two" has been an invariant in basically every industry since the beginning of... industry. And usually it's "pick one".
  - ctoth 3y ago
    You are treating me as if I don't understand a fundamental aspect of engineering (rude) when I am pointing out that previously such optimizations were far less tradeoffs, as evidenced by the case of earlier couches which didn't have this problem. Obviously you will always have to make tradeoffs, it's the core of life. Previously these tradeoffs were not so harsh, and the penalty for spending a bit less was not a couch that broke in a year.
    - dymk 3y ago
      > Previously these tradeoffs were not so harsh What makes you so sure of this?
- Night_Thastus 3y ago
  I think the implication is that you get a balance of the first two, within your budget. Set a budget, look at your options. Realize that perfection is not possible and get the best option to fit your needs within your budget. If you do research and ask around, you might be able to maximize your value for what you pay.
  - ctoth 3y ago
blueridge 3y ago
I share this list of furniture makers anytime a post about modern furniture comes up. I usually get dinged for posting luxury goods, and am told I must be detached from reality. I like nice things. Here it is anyway: If you want a sofa that will last a lifetime, buy one from Knoll and you can get it reupholstered 20 years from now: https://www.knoll.com/shop/living-room/sofas https://www.knoll.com/shop/living-room/sofas https://www.thayercoggin.com/milo-baughman-gallery https://www.thayercoggin.com/milo-baughman-gallery https://vicadesign.com https://vicadesign.com (made to order) http://www.hickorychair.com/ http://www.hickorychair.com/ If you're in the market for buy-it-for-life solid wood furniture: https://www.thejoinery.com https://www.thejoinery.com https://vermontwoodsstudios.com/ https://vermontwoodsstudios.com/ https://hedgehousefurniture.com https://hedgehousefurniture.com https://57stdesign.com https://57stdesign.com https://www.57thstreetbookcase.com/ https://www.57thstreetbookcase.com/ (all bookcases, some veneer and plywood) https://www.spekeklein.com/home https://www.spekeklein.com/home https://www.pompy.com/ https://www.pompy.com/ https://www.chiltons.com/ https://www.chiltons.com/ https://roomandboard.com https://roomandboard.com (mix of solid and veneer, some MDF) These makers are in a league of their own, very expensive, incredibly beautiful hand-made pieces: https://www.sammaloofwoodworker.com https://www.sammaloofwoodworker.com https://www.thosmoser.com https://www.thosmoser.com (highly recommended) https://nakashimawoodworkers.com https://nakashimawoodworkers.com (new commissions around $7K-$15K for a coffee table, $20K-40K for dining table, plus shipping; older Nakashima pieces are highly valued in the art world and sell anywhere between $15K-$300K) And as a reminder: your local woodworker can build all sorts of furniture, with and without upholstery. You can also find all sorts of antique and vintage pieces online (modern, unfinished, or restored) and at local second-hand furniture stores. If you're getting upholstered pieces (or need to custom order fabric) opt for natural materials, particularly linen and wool. Or quality leather! They'll last much longer synthetic blends: https://mclaurinandpiercy.com/ https://mclaurinandpiercy.com/ https://www.knoll.com/shop/knolltextiles/upholstery/all-upholstery https://www.knoll.com/shop/knolltextiles/upholstery/all-upho... https://www.hollyhunt.com/products/textiles/upholstery https://www.hollyhunt.com/products/textiles/upholstery https://www.maharam.com/products/upholstery/search https://www.maharam.com/products/upholstery/search https://www.spinneybeck.com/products/category/upholstery-leather/categories https://www.spinneybeck.com/products/category/upholstery-lea... https://www.edelmanleather.com/products/upholstery-leather/dream-cow https://www.edelmanleather.com/products/upholstery-leather/d...
munchler 3y ago
Survivorship bias in effect. Old furniture that lasts decades persists in our memories longer than crappy new furniture that we get rid of quickly. I suspect people who shopped 20, 50, or 100 years ago were also convinced that the quality of furniture was declining.
- HideousKojima 3y ago
  Furniture manufacturers 50-100 years ago didn't have the option to cheap out in as many ways as they do now. My grandpa was an electrician repairing dishwashers, dryers, and washing machines for most of his career. He started sometime after he left the army, so this was late 40's or early 50's since he was lucky and missed the Korean War, finally fully retired in the early 2000's. The internals on Maytag dishwashers were all metal back then, because plastic wasn't really an option. OEM replacement parts were also way cheaper and easier to obtain back then before a lot of companies realized they could make bank overcharging for parts. There's a massive difference in manufacturing quality and other features for modern furniture and appliances.
- kansface 3y ago
  100 years ago is harder for me to comment on, but in truth, furniture quality has continually declined. We moved from solid wood to veneered wood dust because it’s easier to manufacture - abstracted trees are perfectly homogeneous vs the real ones. That comes at the cost of being un-repairable. A scratch in solid wood is character (according to Nakashima) while a scratch through veneer breaks the illusion. A water stained veneer (as from a coffee cup) wrecks the entire piece by swelling and popping up the veneer. Even if a piece can be repaired, it’s typically more cost effective to replace. More or less all non-designer (herman miller/knoll) non-craft furniture has been outsourced to IKEA and China which both trade price for quality. The entire American industry was killed, and with it, we lost high quality mid-range furniture. Another way to look at this is that the sq ft per person has increased 50% in the US over the last 50 years. We choose to live in large, shit quality houses and in turn, fill them with loads of shit quality furniture.
- natural_intel 3y ago
  Quality furniture lasts for generations.
contemporary343 3y ago
We've been pretty satisfied with Room and Board furniture, which is typically made in the US. While a bit more expensive it's not really that different from the $3K garbage price point and seems to last (so far).
gavin_gee 3y ago
so much furniture is absolute junk. plastic veneers on cheap plywood. The cost of hardwood is just too expensive plus labor and shipping and sales overhead. as far as I can tell in the US, you need to get to crate and barrel price points for it to last and be comfortable.
onyxringer 3y ago
3 years? My kids will wreck it in a year. EZ. While there's lot of valid complains about longevity of certain modern products, people often forget the other - more valid and rational - side of a story. Modern life is different. Things are more dynamic, people have less time to take care of things, move more often. I specifically buy IKEA furnitures because I don't care about then and don't want to worry about them. When kids get older, or new one shows up and we need to re-arrange how we live to accommodate, I want to be able to throw away what no longer fits without worrying about how expensive it is. And when the kids wreck something, I just shrug and can afford a replacement. Passing some heirloom over generations is not on my mind.
pseingatl 3y ago
McKinsey wasn't mentioned. Their consultants advise companies to cut costs, either by outsourcing or trading quality for substandard.
hprotagonist 3y ago
I can vouch for cococohome for USA readers. https://cococohome.com/ https://cococohome.com/ made in north carolina. Ours has held up great for many years now.
sydbarrett74 3y ago
How does the peanut gallery feel about Sleep Number beds? What about Purple and others of its ilk? I have never tried any of these, but I am evaluating new mattresses and don't want to spend money on something massively overpriced.
- cooperadymas 3y ago
  Things like a bed and pillow are so specific to a person that, IMO, reading reviews from other people is largely an aimless pursuit. It's a bit like asking, _will that shirt look good on me?_ and taking someone's answer of _it looks good on me_ as a confirmation. About the Purple mattress I will say: it is very heavy and difficult to move. And that grid stuff will last roughly forever. The only other non-personalized advice I would give about it is to feel an actual mattress, not a sample and not a pillow. The effect of the grid feels different when it's mattress-sized and with all the other layers, so the effect might not be what you're expecting if your only experience is a pillow or sample.
FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
Cheap leather furniture looks nice initially, but the leather will be an unrepairable cracked or flaky mess in about five years. It's disposable on that timescale. But good leather furniture is so expensive that the yearly amortized cost of the cheap stuff may still be lower. You're probably better off avoiding leather entirely, unless money is no object.
maxglute 3y ago
Managed to snatch in a sofa before Canada imposed a up to 300% taffic on upholstered furniture from Vietnam and PRC. Suppose to help Canadian manufacturers, meanwhile Canadian sofas still suck. Got an popular IKEA model, thank god it had after market covers that can be replaced over time because IKEA discontinued it the same year and pulled all the replacable covers. I'm surprised someone hasn't hacked the system yet. Like sell bed frame, padding, uphostery seperately.
kart23 3y ago
why do couch cushions sag so much? Is there a certain type of cushion that holds up better or something we can do? So many couches just look horrible because the cushions have lost all their shape after a year.
hakunin 3y ago
Been using Ikea Kivik sofa for >12 years across 2 moves. We bought it with white cover. Recently we needed to get a bigger one, and realized we can just add 2 chaises on the sides. Bought them, and all new upholstery - now it's like a brand new bigger couch of different color. Happy side effect is that those chaises came with metal brackets that reinforced the whole thing. Here's to another 12 years. Ikea is underrated.
jemmyw 3y ago
I bought a large corner sofa in the US in 2013 for 4k from a store in Santa Rosa. Still using it, have moved it to Europe and then New Zealand and it has put up with 3 kids and a multitude of cats. At some point we'll get it re-upholstered. It seems better made than anything I could afford or even find now.
moribvndvs 3y ago
The $800 couches we’ve bought online (wayfair, etc.) is absolute shit that only lasts 2-3 years. The $1500 couch we got from a local, well established store is about 10 years old and perfectly fine. The other furniture we’ve gotten from them has also held up well. Obliviously any store, online or otherwise, can have overpriced rubbish, and a good furniture store is probably more expensive and slower, but I’d rather go with an established shop where I can go in and throat chop the guy who sold me a particle board piece of shit than buy one more thing from IKEA or an online store.
natural_intel 3y ago
We bought a Stickley, and it is worth every penny.
oliwarner 3y ago
Last year we bought a suite from DFS, a major UK furniture retailer. It's falling to bits. We'll put in warranty claims but we can already see how it'll fail in other ways. We have another sofa from IKEA that's done 11 years service, going strong. IKEA gets a lot of crap for disposable furniture but they really understand their materials in a way that other manufacturers do not, or at least do don't care about. DIY is something we're doing more of since a flat pack sideboard spontaneously disassembled itself a few years ago. It takes time but you can deliberately not cut corners and you still get cheaper furniture. And a hobby.
- helij 3y ago
  In UK if you want cheap and decent and sometimes even good quality go for Polish furniture. There's a Polish couch warehouse in Edgware where you can take a look if you fancy anything. We bought a Polish couch for £1.2k. It's amazing. It converts to a bed, it has nice head rests that are movable, etc. They come and assemble.

46 points by sharkweek 3y ago

blueridge 3y ago

https://archive.is/GLIVY https://archive.is/GLIVY

shagie 3y ago
Share link: https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/couch-sofa-quality-furniture-repairs-17cfd724?st=fz0s3ryuepg34pt&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/couch-sofa-quality-furniture-r...

blakesterz 3y ago

https://archive.is/GLIVY https://archive.is/GLIVY I've been shopping for furniture lately and can confirm, it all feels like cheap junk unless it's VERY expensive. I wish I could find a mattress that lasts even more than a couch. I only sit on the couch a few times a week, so it doesn't matter as much as my bed!

emeraldd 3y ago
I've been surprisingly happy with a Big Fig mattress: https://www.bigfigmattress.com https://www.bigfigmattress.com Ours is a little on the firmer side, but that can be remedied with a topper.
spondylosaurus 3y ago
With mattresses it's really worth splurging if (1) you can afford it and (2) you actually like whatever you're splurging on. But it's hard to figure out the latter without physically trying the mattress ahead of time... I had to go be Goldilocks at a local mattress store for forty minutes before I found my match.
- b112 3y ago
  The problem I find is, foam sucks. High density foam just sucks less, except at siphoning money from your wallet. I had a mattress with polyester pillow top. Lasted 20 years. New mattresses all seem to be foam, and turn junky super fast. Sucks.
  - alistairSH 3y ago
    Agreed. We tried a name brand foam mattress and it was awful. Tried an Ikea foam that had good reviews and it was awful. Third times a charm - went back to "springs and stuff" and it's a much better mattress. It was $5000 or more (don't recall), but it's been good for 5 years so far with no signs of sagging or wearing out. Worth noting, prior to my 40s, I really didn't care. Now that I'm deep into my 40s, every second of quality sleep counts and bad sleep means achey neck and back and stuff.
  - fmajid 3y ago
    What you want is latex.
    - cafard 3y ago
      Latex is I guess fine. I have no complaints from sleeping on it. But it is a bear to move. If you don't have a couple of stevedores in your household, good luck.
- autoexecbat 3y ago
  > I had to go be Goldilocks at a local mattress store for forty minutes before I found my match. I do this too, I think it's the only reasonable way to pick something that you're going to spend 1/3 of your days laying on
- andy99 3y ago
  I don't see how 40 min could be enough. I find with the wrong mattress my back starts to get sore after days or weeks, and I've bought "100 night guarantee" mattresses that started to sag at about the 101st night. It's very hard, at least for me, to make any kind of quick assessment. I'd happily pay a lot but I have no idea what to buy and no confidence that what I do buy will actually last.
linuxftw 3y ago
If you have one near you, I highly recommend The Original Mattress Factory. The big-name manufacturers all make 'individually wrapped coils' to make the mattresses 'conform to your body.' These coils are low gauge metal and wear out over time. The fact that they're individually wrapped means each coil is supporting weight on it's own rather than distributing the weight to coils that aren't directly under weight. OMF still offers 'real coil spring' mattresses where the coils are thicker and connected with wire to help distribute the load. The mattresses are also able to be flipped vertically. The best part is, the mattresses are typically hundreds or thousands cheaper than you'll pay for a 'name brand' mattress. What I like to do is buy a firm mattress and top with a separate pillow topper from amazon.
HideousKojima 3y ago
I have an inflatable mattress (basically like sleep number, but some other brand whose name I can't recall right now) and it's been fantastic for the last 4 years without any noticable wear and tear or degradation. We also have a 3 inch foam topper on top that has held up well, though that Will probably need replacement at some point. That said, one of the biggest gamechangers I've noticed for sleep regardless of mattress type is actually the box spring. Box springs suck, the bed frames that use arched wooden slats for support instead of a box spring feel way more comfortable and supportive, even with the same mattress.
mustacheemperor 3y ago
I'd highly recommend finding a local shop for furniture, if you can. You're right that the major brands cost a lot of money for quality, so even if a local place seems pricier than an "economy" couch at Ikea or West Elm, you're getting a much better piece of furniture. Unaffiliated plug, but there is a sofa shop in the Castro in SF (I think they also have a location in the East Bay) where we bought our new couch a couple years ago. The brothers who own the business were very patient about explaining the different kinds of cushion materials and how we could expect them to wear, let us take home several books of fabric swatches to compare within our own home (for days!), and told us if we didn't like the feet once it got to our place they would switch them out for free. Needless to say, that buying experience is completely different from a corporate store. It only wound up costing 10-20% more than the similar couches we were evaluating at retail shops and has been so much more comfortable and so much more durable than the furniture we ever bought from those places. They've got an outstanding warranty, so we know if we ever did experience unexpected wear and tear they would replace it immediately, and that if 5 or 10 years from now we want to refresh the cushion they can help us with that too. Just like that small software startup is beating the big guys at the same game...You may have a local furniture shop within your local area that can offer you a much better quality to price ratio and bring your money right back into the local economy instead of sending it to a distant conglomerate.
- andy99 3y ago
  Most of my furniture (everything not upholstered, dining table, dressers, cabinets, coffee table, etc) is all from a second hand store that buys estate furniture and refurbishes it. It's all solid wood, mostly from the '40s or earlier, and was way cheaper than even crappy IKEA stuff.
alistairSH 3y ago
We bought a Joybird (or some other not-too-expensive online brand) and it's been fine in our living room (where it sees light-moderate usage). It's a 10 year sofa, at most, and that's without heavy use. The family room, which gets a lot more use, was from a local furniture store. It was double the price and probably 3-4x as "good". I expect it will last for 20 years.
RajT88 3y ago
We bought a house at the end of 2020, and then went couch shopping. In stores as well as thrift shops. > Buck at Rochester Institute of Technology says consumers could be better off spending a few thousand dollars to reupholster a thrift-store find or hand-me-down. “Most often the construction of vintage sofas will be superior to what’s made now,” Buck says. This was my conclusion as well, but we still bought a cheap one. We just bought it from some guy who was selling his whole living room for a grand, so I don't mind too much if they fall apart in a few years. Build quality is not there for the wooden parts (I did my handyman thing there), but the leather at least is claimed to be top grain.
cush 3y ago
I've got a 10 year old Tuft and Needle mattress that is as good as the day I got it. If you're down with foam, you should consider it.
- tdhz77 3y ago
  Agreed, bought it in 2016 and still going strong.

noodlesUK 3y ago

Serious question: enshittification seems to be plaguing all parts of our consumer economy at the moment. How can we actually address this? Are there economic or regulatory steps that we can make to ensure that we aren't forced into an eternal race to the bottom where product quality just trends to zero permanently?

supportengineer 3y ago
Buy used instead of new.
- noodlesUK 3y ago
  I get that buying used products might be a partial solution at a personal level, but that doesn't change the fact that we're producing ever more cheap, low-quality stuff. What the market is ideally supposed to do is optimise for the tuple (cheap, quality). It doesn't seem to be doing that, as it seems like things are being optimised for (cheap, perceived quality), and just straight up lying about their quality. When people are buying stuff online, it is even easier to just focus on the price. How do we fix this?
  - nescioquid 3y ago
    The first time I heard the old-money put-down about someone who had "bought their own furniture" my American newer-is-better head spun (and I'm not much of a "consumer" by American standards). Not only are we socially conditioned to prefer new, as you point out, this is further reinforced by the necessity imposed by disposable-quality products.
  - xmprt 3y ago
    I think the parent commenter's answer was pretty valid. You have to vote with your wallet. Buying used will signal to the market that people don't want the crap that's being produced. Or, especially, given the generous return policies these days, buy new and then don't hesitate to return something if you don't like it.
- detourdog 3y ago

tengbretson 3y ago

No one can afford to buy a home they plan to grow old in and those that do make their way into the professional, upper middle class find themselves drifting from $MAJOR_US_CITY_A to $MAJOR_US_CITY_B every 5 years or so. How could someone possibly expect this not to happen to furniture?

alistairSH 3y ago
Wut? I bought a house outside DC. Unless I retire to the mountains, I'll grow old here. It's my second home, the other was a few miles away, I've been in this area since 2000. Pretty sure my middle-management position fits my squarely in "professional, upper-middle-class." Most of my friends are similar. Moved here after college, no plans to leave the area, almost all are home owners, and upper-middle-class.
- teach 3y ago
  I'll wager you bought your home more than ten years ago. Home prices have, uh, changed a bit.
  - alistairSH 3y ago
    You’d be wrong.
    - teach 3y ago
      Ah, I missed that this was your second home. Was your first home purchase 10+ years ago?
- orsorna 3y ago
  > Wut? Is what I should say to you. I should not have to inquire the specifics of your personal life to figure out your true income, who has maybe subsidized your living expenses over the years, and your total expenses, to determine how you were able to save for property in one of the most expensive areas of the nation. Although, you have already earmarked your comment with "upper-middle-class", which speaks to your ancedote-rooted perspective.

foobarian 3y ago

I think if we compared similar quality products by adjusting for inflation, the picture may be less alarming. The real change is the modern appearance of much more inexpensive manufacturing (with all the consequences that entails).

latchkey 3y ago

This is why I paid $40 on FB marketplace for a $500 Ikea couch that you can replace the entire cover on. Bonus, I didn't even have to replace the cover. =)

teeray 3y ago

Can’t wait to start paying subscriptions for all my furniture

csours 3y ago
This has been around for decades: rent to own stores
- gavin_gee 3y ago
  also known as financing on credit cards.
  - csours 3y ago
    To my understanding Rent to Own was around significantly earlier than the popular usage of credit cards: "Development of the Rent-to-Own Concept: 1950s The roots of the rent-to-own business reach back to the 1950s when a number of people pioneered the concept. For instance, Charles Loudermilk, Sr., founder of Atlanta-based Aaron Rents, started out in 1955 by renting Army surplus chairs for ten cents a day. The founder of Rent-A-Center was J. Ernest Talley, widely acknowledged as the most influential figure in the development of the industry. In the 1950s he ran a retail appliance store with a cousin in Kansas. Because tightening bank credit prevented a number of customers from buying his merchandise, he hit on the idea of renting the items. If customers failed to meet the payments, he could always repossess the merchandise; if they reached the end of the rental agreement, they would own the merchandise and Talley would have made some extra cash in addition to increasing the sales volume of his appliance store. In 1963 he developed a rent-to-own chain called Mr. T’s, which by 1974 had grown to 14 stores. He sold the business, which became part of the Remco chain, and he turned his attention to commercial real estate in the Dallas area. When the Texas real estate market suffered a crash he returned to the rent-to-own concept in 1987, establishing Talley Leasing with his son Michael. The new company rented appliances to apartment complex owners." Source: https://www.encyclopedia.com/books/politics-and-business-magazines/rent-center-inc https://www.encyclopedia.com/books/politics-and-business-mag...

ListeningPie 3y ago

I’ve had my IKEA ektorp sofa for 8 years and it still works as a sofa. Do other sofas snap in the middle or are the leathers getting worn through?

bogota 3y ago

I cant find anything of even half decent quality for a large sofa under 7k. Im not at all surprised i have been shopping around for months now with the hopes of finding something that will last in the 5k range but have yet to see it.

Kon-Peki 3y ago
https://www.roomandboard.com/catalog/living/sofas-and-loveseats https://www.roomandboard.com/catalog/living/sofas-and-lovese... Not the cheapest, but in your range. They don't skimp on the quality and will tell you exactly which shop built it (most of their sofas are from various shops in North Carolina).

ctoth 3y ago

> “People have to choose between the right aesthetic, quality and price. If they want all three, good luck.” Why though? What am I supposed to do as a working professional who wants nice things as my parents had when they made far less than me? Practically? It's just an overwhelming feeling that no matter how hard I work to keep up, even when I make it, the ground is pulled out from under me. Or I guess in this case, the couch.

dymk 3y ago
You sacrifice price, of course. "Fast, quality, cheap: pick two" has been an invariant in basically every industry since the beginning of... industry. And usually it's "pick one".
- ctoth 3y ago
  You are treating me as if I don't understand a fundamental aspect of engineering (rude) when I am pointing out that previously such optimizations were far less tradeoffs, as evidenced by the case of earlier couches which didn't have this problem. Obviously you will always have to make tradeoffs, it's the core of life. Previously these tradeoffs were not so harsh, and the penalty for spending a bit less was not a couch that broke in a year.
  - dymk 3y ago
    > Previously these tradeoffs were not so harsh What makes you so sure of this?
Night_Thastus 3y ago
I think the implication is that you get a balance of the first two, within your budget. Set a budget, look at your options. Realize that perfection is not possible and get the best option to fit your needs within your budget. If you do research and ask around, you might be able to maximize your value for what you pay.
- ctoth 3y ago

blueridge 3y ago

I share this list of furniture makers anytime a post about modern furniture comes up. I usually get dinged for posting luxury goods, and am told I must be detached from reality. I like nice things. Here it is anyway: If you want a sofa that will last a lifetime, buy one from Knoll and you can get it reupholstered 20 years from now: https://www.knoll.com/shop/living-room/sofas https://www.knoll.com/shop/living-room/sofas https://www.thayercoggin.com/milo-baughman-gallery https://www.thayercoggin.com/milo-baughman-gallery https://vicadesign.com https://vicadesign.com (made to order) http://www.hickorychair.com/ http://www.hickorychair.com/ If you're in the market for buy-it-for-life solid wood furniture: https://www.thejoinery.com https://www.thejoinery.com https://vermontwoodsstudios.com/ https://vermontwoodsstudios.com/ https://hedgehousefurniture.com https://hedgehousefurniture.com https://57stdesign.com https://57stdesign.com https://www.57thstreetbookcase.com/ https://www.57thstreetbookcase.com/ (all bookcases, some veneer and plywood) https://www.spekeklein.com/home https://www.spekeklein.com/home https://www.pompy.com/ https://www.pompy.com/ https://www.chiltons.com/ https://www.chiltons.com/ https://roomandboard.com https://roomandboard.com (mix of solid and veneer, some MDF) These makers are in a league of their own, very expensive, incredibly beautiful hand-made pieces: https://www.sammaloofwoodworker.com https://www.sammaloofwoodworker.com https://www.thosmoser.com https://www.thosmoser.com (highly recommended) https://nakashimawoodworkers.com https://nakashimawoodworkers.com (new commissions around $7K-$15K for a coffee table, $20K-40K for dining table, plus shipping; older Nakashima pieces are highly valued in the art world and sell anywhere between $15K-$300K) And as a reminder: your local woodworker can build all sorts of furniture, with and without upholstery. You can also find all sorts of antique and vintage pieces online (modern, unfinished, or restored) and at local second-hand furniture stores. If you're getting upholstered pieces (or need to custom order fabric) opt for natural materials, particularly linen and wool. Or quality leather! They'll last much longer synthetic blends: https://mclaurinandpiercy.com/ https://mclaurinandpiercy.com/ https://www.knoll.com/shop/knolltextiles/upholstery/all-upholstery https://www.knoll.com/shop/knolltextiles/upholstery/all-upho... https://www.hollyhunt.com/products/textiles/upholstery https://www.hollyhunt.com/products/textiles/upholstery https://www.maharam.com/products/upholstery/search https://www.maharam.com/products/upholstery/search https://www.spinneybeck.com/products/category/upholstery-leather/categories https://www.spinneybeck.com/products/category/upholstery-lea... https://www.edelmanleather.com/products/upholstery-leather/dream-cow https://www.edelmanleather.com/products/upholstery-leather/d...

munchler 3y ago

Survivorship bias in effect. Old furniture that lasts decades persists in our memories longer than crappy new furniture that we get rid of quickly. I suspect people who shopped 20, 50, or 100 years ago were also convinced that the quality of furniture was declining.

HideousKojima 3y ago
Furniture manufacturers 50-100 years ago didn't have the option to cheap out in as many ways as they do now. My grandpa was an electrician repairing dishwashers, dryers, and washing machines for most of his career. He started sometime after he left the army, so this was late 40's or early 50's since he was lucky and missed the Korean War, finally fully retired in the early 2000's. The internals on Maytag dishwashers were all metal back then, because plastic wasn't really an option. OEM replacement parts were also way cheaper and easier to obtain back then before a lot of companies realized they could make bank overcharging for parts. There's a massive difference in manufacturing quality and other features for modern furniture and appliances.
kansface 3y ago
100 years ago is harder for me to comment on, but in truth, furniture quality has continually declined. We moved from solid wood to veneered wood dust because it’s easier to manufacture - abstracted trees are perfectly homogeneous vs the real ones. That comes at the cost of being un-repairable. A scratch in solid wood is character (according to Nakashima) while a scratch through veneer breaks the illusion. A water stained veneer (as from a coffee cup) wrecks the entire piece by swelling and popping up the veneer. Even if a piece can be repaired, it’s typically more cost effective to replace. More or less all non-designer (herman miller/knoll) non-craft furniture has been outsourced to IKEA and China which both trade price for quality. The entire American industry was killed, and with it, we lost high quality mid-range furniture. Another way to look at this is that the sq ft per person has increased 50% in the US over the last 50 years. We choose to live in large, shit quality houses and in turn, fill them with loads of shit quality furniture.
natural_intel 3y ago
Quality furniture lasts for generations.

contemporary343 3y ago

We've been pretty satisfied with Room and Board furniture, which is typically made in the US. While a bit more expensive it's not really that different from the $3K garbage price point and seems to last (so far).

gavin_gee 3y ago

so much furniture is absolute junk. plastic veneers on cheap plywood. The cost of hardwood is just too expensive plus labor and shipping and sales overhead. as far as I can tell in the US, you need to get to crate and barrel price points for it to last and be comfortable.

onyxringer 3y ago

3 years? My kids will wreck it in a year. EZ. While there's lot of valid complains about longevity of certain modern products, people often forget the other - more valid and rational - side of a story. Modern life is different. Things are more dynamic, people have less time to take care of things, move more often. I specifically buy IKEA furnitures because I don't care about then and don't want to worry about them. When kids get older, or new one shows up and we need to re-arrange how we live to accommodate, I want to be able to throw away what no longer fits without worrying about how expensive it is. And when the kids wreck something, I just shrug and can afford a replacement. Passing some heirloom over generations is not on my mind.

pseingatl 3y ago

McKinsey wasn't mentioned. Their consultants advise companies to cut costs, either by outsourcing or trading quality for substandard.

hprotagonist 3y ago

I can vouch for cococohome for USA readers. https://cococohome.com/ https://cococohome.com/ made in north carolina. Ours has held up great for many years now.

sydbarrett74 3y ago

How does the peanut gallery feel about Sleep Number beds? What about Purple and others of its ilk? I have never tried any of these, but I am evaluating new mattresses and don't want to spend money on something massively overpriced.

cooperadymas 3y ago
Things like a bed and pillow are so specific to a person that, IMO, reading reviews from other people is largely an aimless pursuit. It's a bit like asking, _will that shirt look good on me?_ and taking someone's answer of _it looks good on me_ as a confirmation. About the Purple mattress I will say: it is very heavy and difficult to move. And that grid stuff will last roughly forever. The only other non-personalized advice I would give about it is to feel an actual mattress, not a sample and not a pillow. The effect of the grid feels different when it's mattress-sized and with all the other layers, so the effect might not be what you're expecting if your only experience is a pillow or sample.

FooBarBizBazz 3y ago

Cheap leather furniture looks nice initially, but the leather will be an unrepairable cracked or flaky mess in about five years. It's disposable on that timescale. But good leather furniture is so expensive that the yearly amortized cost of the cheap stuff may still be lower. You're probably better off avoiding leather entirely, unless money is no object.

maxglute 3y ago

Managed to snatch in a sofa before Canada imposed a up to 300% taffic on upholstered furniture from Vietnam and PRC. Suppose to help Canadian manufacturers, meanwhile Canadian sofas still suck. Got an popular IKEA model, thank god it had after market covers that can be replaced over time because IKEA discontinued it the same year and pulled all the replacable covers. I'm surprised someone hasn't hacked the system yet. Like sell bed frame, padding, uphostery seperately.

kart23 3y ago

why do couch cushions sag so much? Is there a certain type of cushion that holds up better or something we can do? So many couches just look horrible because the cushions have lost all their shape after a year.

hakunin 3y ago

Been using Ikea Kivik sofa for >12 years across 2 moves. We bought it with white cover. Recently we needed to get a bigger one, and realized we can just add 2 chaises on the sides. Bought them, and all new upholstery - now it's like a brand new bigger couch of different color. Happy side effect is that those chaises came with metal brackets that reinforced the whole thing. Here's to another 12 years. Ikea is underrated.

jemmyw 3y ago

I bought a large corner sofa in the US in 2013 for 4k from a store in Santa Rosa. Still using it, have moved it to Europe and then New Zealand and it has put up with 3 kids and a multitude of cats. At some point we'll get it re-upholstered. It seems better made than anything I could afford or even find now.

moribvndvs 3y ago

The $800 couches we’ve bought online (wayfair, etc.) is absolute shit that only lasts 2-3 years. The $1500 couch we got from a local, well established store is about 10 years old and perfectly fine. The other furniture we’ve gotten from them has also held up well. Obliviously any store, online or otherwise, can have overpriced rubbish, and a good furniture store is probably more expensive and slower, but I’d rather go with an established shop where I can go in and throat chop the guy who sold me a particle board piece of shit than buy one more thing from IKEA or an online store.

natural_intel 3y ago

We bought a Stickley, and it is worth every penny.

oliwarner 3y ago

Last year we bought a suite from DFS, a major UK furniture retailer. It's falling to bits. We'll put in warranty claims but we can already see how it'll fail in other ways. We have another sofa from IKEA that's done 11 years service, going strong. IKEA gets a lot of crap for disposable furniture but they really understand their materials in a way that other manufacturers do not, or at least do don't care about. DIY is something we're doing more of since a flat pack sideboard spontaneously disassembled itself a few years ago. It takes time but you can deliberately not cut corners and you still get cheaper furniture. And a hobby.

helij 3y ago
In UK if you want cheap and decent and sometimes even good quality go for Polish furniture. There's a Polish couch warehouse in Edgware where you can take a look if you fancy anything. We bought a Polish couch for £1.2k. It's amazing. It converts to a bed, it has nice head rests that are movable, etc. They come and assemble.