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Bad design: Ikea furniture - saving on everything to get record profits
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  • actually it's way better than chipboard...this doesn't curve and it's lighter...all the doors are made like this..

  • @sebolla

    But it is much worse than normal wood.

    No, not all doors are made like this. Some of my doors have solid wood inside. And all else are just solid oak wood.

  • sorry but i worked as a carpenter for 20 years...all the furniture nowdays are made of chipboards inside apart some made by artisans on request and not on industrial scale....normal wood would curve as the time pass...antique furniture were made of wood and they are fantastic but pricey

  • IKEA has many options for solid wood and birch. Ivar, for example, is solid pine. It's a fully modular system, you can break it down if you move a reassemble it in a different pattern fitting your new place. The honeycomb structures use less raw materials. But, if you don't like it, you can get solid wood. The solid pine dressers are very nice. We have IKEA stuff that is 50 years old and looks new. The $5 dollar garlic press is an excellent deal, and I also recommend the stainless steel pans. You can get their version of the Le Creuset iron pans and pots for next to nothing and they are basically the same.

    Since they deliver now, I loaded up on 12 volt lights and Ladda batteries, the batteries are super. They also make a very solid and very short plug strip which is great for video gigs, super cheap. There's lots of stuff from Ikea that I would never buy, of course, and we get the solid wood stuff.

  • @sebolla

    all the furniture nowdays are made of chipboards inside apart some made by artisans on request and not on industrial scale.

    I think EU and US factories need this to keep margins. Especially since last year due to price hikes on wood. Here it was no problem to get local solid wood stuff, including doors. I can even call to lot of small individuals who make stuff out of wood for cheap, cheaper than IKEA shit.

    @DrDave

    We have no IKEA now, remember. This guys left in a hurry.

  • yes,wood price is getting higher here,but chipboard with melaminic coating or painted has been used from long time and it has some advantages,it can be covered with any texture or painted,it doesn't move over time while wood does,easy to clean ...there are some application like kitchen cases where it's useless to use wood,it's better to have the case made by chipboard with melaminc coating and have the door made by wood..i only want to say that there are applications for every material,of course i prefer wood over chipboard but not for everything..

  • I agree with what you say @Vitaliy_Kiselev, over the years Ikea furniture quality dropped and the prices raised!

  • It used to be that if you wanted something like particle board shelves (I have wood) or engineered flooring (I have wood, also) that IKEA was one of the few places in America where you could get stuff with reasonable low VOCs.
    However, there's more regulation on formaldehyde and other stuff now. But if I was going to get the synthetic stuff, laminate, etc., I probably would still get IKEA. We have Kraftmaid (horrible name) cabinets, solid, dovetailed wood and Blum drawer slides, looks and works like new after 25 years. Blum makes the best drawer hardware. It was not that expensive back then....
    IKEA quality: the stuff we just ordered, Ivar shelving, was even better quality than what we got ten hears ago. The wood is very finely planed, almost like a steel wool type finish, does not even need sanding. I'm sure some of the stuff is not as good but overall it's a good deal.