I love Ikea. Honestly, I love wandering around the store, and I love the ultra cheap prices. My husband and I have purchased a great deal of furniture from Ikea, as well as other things such as decorations and kitchen ware. There is one thing that I would absolutely caution against buying from Ikea… a coffee table. My husband and I have purchased two coffee tables from Ikea and then decided never to buy a coffee table there ever again. Here is why:
1. Poor quality!
Even if you do not think your coffee table will be getting a lot of usage, there is still a good chance that any coffee table you buy from Ikea will not last very long. They are just really poor quality. There is a reason that they are so incredibly cheap. Unless it sits in a corner of a room, and you never put stuff on it or touch it, it will most likely break within a few months. I think that the designers of the Ikea coffee tables think that they are just for decoration, because it certainly cannot withstand any actual use. My husband and I barely used our coffee table, except for occasionally setting a drink on while we were watching television, but it broke in just a few months.
2. The ones that are made of wood stain terribly easy.
The first coffee table we purchased from Ikea was a middle of the line (not the cheapest, not the most expensive) wooden coffee table. It had stains on it by the third or fourth week we owned it, and they were not from drinks either. We always used coasters on it, and the stains were not the round condensation stains from drinks. They were little gray smudges. We couldn’t figure out where they came from. Our only guess was maybe from the ink on a mailer or some paper we may have set on the table. The point is, no cleaning product was able to get it off. We were forced to cover the spots with decorative candles placed in strange positions. It looked weird, but was better than letting the very obvious stains show.
3. The ones that are made of glass and metal are not sturdy at all.
The second coffee table we bought from Ikea was one made of glass and metal. Again, it was not the cheapest one, but was more expensive than the wood one we had purchased before it. We thought we would have better luck with glass, since at least glass can usually be cleaned with Windex. Unfortunately, this coffee table presented a completely different problem. No matter what we tried, we could not keep the legs screwed on tightly enough. They can only be screwed in with one of those special tiny little wrenches that they give you when you buy it, but you just cannot get it tight enough. I mean, it stays tight for a couple of days, but then it just seems to magically loosen so that the legs are terribly wobbly. We were afraid to set anything heavier than an aluminum can, for fear of the table falling over.
4. They require a ridiculous amount of assembly, and it is not at all easy.
They give you the idea that assembling these coffee tables is a piece of cake, but it is not true. They give you directions that have no words, just diagrams, and all of the hardware looks so much alike that it is hard to tell which pieces to use.
5. If you do not live in the same city as an Ikea, it will cost you either gas money or shipping money to get it home.
These coffee tables are so cheap and poorly made, that it is just not worth it to pay the money to drive out to Ikea to pick it up, and it is certainly not worth what it would cost to have it shipped.
6. Ikea coffee tables look cheap and you can spot them from a mile away
Not all of the furniture from Ikea screams “cheap,” but the coffee tables certainly do. My husband and I have purchased lots of things from Ikea, including a dresser and nightstand set that we really love. We have gotten many compliments on the dresser. Considering the prices of dressers at other furniture stores, it was relatively inexpensive, yet no one would be able to tell from the looks of it. The coffee tables we had from Ikea were another story. We are not prideful people, although we do enjoy having our home look nice and put together. Brands and prices do not mean a lot to us; still it is somewhat embarrassing for someone to think that your coffee table is just the cheapest thing around and certainly looks like it too. That is what you get with an Ikea coffee table.
7. Boring!
I am of the idea that all furniture adds some sort of style or personality to a room. Ikea coffee tables almost all have straight edges, no decorative cuts on the wood, and no designs really of any kind. They are just plain boring, and I think that is what they say about the personality of the room they are in- boring!
8. Most are impractical.
A coffee table is one of the most practical pieces of furniture in any house. Hence the name, coffee table, it is supposed to be used for things such as setting a cup of coffee on, but more than that it is often the focal point of a living room. It is usually in the center of a room. Ikea coffee tables don’t really serve the purpose of practicality. Either they are so small that they should almost be a side table, or they are so large that you would need to have giant couches to have it fit nicely in the center of them. Plus, this may sound like a silly problem, but I often like to sit on the ground, at the edge of the coffee table to eat a meal while watching television, or just to pay bills, etc. This is not possible with many of the Ikea tables, because they have a shelf in between the table top and the floor. This shelf falls just low enough that you can’t get your legs under it, so it is like sitting next to a box. It may not be the biggest deal, but it certainly was not convenient.
9. They have virtually no resale value.
Now, I know the first thing that you think about when buying furniture is not selling it, but it is worth thinking about. If you have to move far away and need to sell your furniture, or if you decide to spend the money to get a better living room set at some point, you may want to have a yard sale and sell something like a coffee table. Or you could try to sell it on a site like eBay or Craig’s List. If you are trying to sell an Ikea coffee table, good luck getting $5 for it. Because of the previously mentioned fact that people can spot an Ikea coffee table from miles away, and most people know how cheap they are to buy new, no one is going to give you money to buy a used Ikea coffee table. They could spend the money to buy something used that would last a lot longer and have more personality, or for just a few dollars more they could buy that Ikea coffee table new, so why should they buy it used? When we decided to buy new furniture, we ended up throwing our Ikea coffee table in the dumpster.
10. Ikea is not the only place to buy a cheap coffee table.
After our first Ikea coffee table got stained and then fell apart (literally, the legs fell off) within a few months of purchase, we should have taken this as a hint. We decided to give it another try and bought a second Ikea coffee table, only to be hit with the same problems. Finally, after suffering through a wobbly table for months, we got the money to buy a new table and vowed to buy it somewhere other than Ikea. With a little bit of research, we found that we could purchase a nice coffee table second hand for relatively cheap, or we could also try other stores. Stores such as Cost Plus World Market, or even Wal-mart, have coffee tables that are around the same price range but look much nicer. We ended up buying a great coffee table and end table set for just a couple hundred dollars from Cost Plus World Market. It has personality, it is incredibly sturdy, and it gets tons of compliments!
