Furniture Shopping Tips
Shopping for furniture can be fun and exhilarating. But there are many ways it can go wrong---you choose the wrong color or style, the item you select is not comfortable, the quality is not what you expected. The key to avoiding these and other problems is planning. When you know what you want to buy, how much you want to spend and where you want to buy it, you are more likely to make a successful purchase.
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Basic Decisions
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Before you do any shopping, it's best to make some basic decisions. Be clear on what you need: one item or an entire room of furniture, a sofa or a sofa bed, a coffee table or a long ottoman with a tray. Keep in mind the function of the room where your furniture will go; many rooms today multitask so your piece might have to serve two functions. For example, a sofa might have to be both sofa and guest bed. Decide the style you prefer---for instance, country cottage, sleek and modern, traditional, Moroccan---then the color, whether it be a plain neutral, a bright color or a muted print. Ask yourself whether you want your new furniture to coordinate with or complement your existing furniture; a room with different style pieces that complement each other is called eclectic. For instance, you might mix traditional with a few ethnic pieces or modern designer pieces with some striking antiques.
Measure
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You'll need a metal retractable measuring tape. If you have a small space, measure down to a quarter of an inch. Decide where you want to place your furniture, and with your tape, measure the length, width and height of the available space. Note the dimensions of your desired furniture and make sure it will fit in your space. This is absolutely necessary. When dimensions are not written on a website or store tag, ask for them. If dimensions are not available, go on to another item; otherwise you might be faced with returning a too big or too small piece at a cost of up to hundreds of dollars.
It might help you to outline the length and width of an intended purchase on a roll of Kraft paper, then cut out this shape and place it on the floor. Move it around on the floor to see where it works best.
Budget
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Set a ballpark budget, one that's realistic, and be clear on how you'll pay for your furniture purchase. It is always smart to look for the best possible deal on such big-ticket items as furniture. Paying cash is best, but you can also avoid paying interest by taking advantage of same-as-cash financing deals, which offer zero interest for six months to a year. Surf furniture websites for sales, which are more common than ever in the current economy, or wait for end-of-season sales, for instance, the end of summer and after Christmas. Your Sunday newspaper will have ads for furniture sales, and your local department store will send you coupons for sale days, particularly if you have a credit card account with them.
Websites and Stores
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Begin your shopping on the Internet. Here, you can learn what's on the market, who is offering the best prices and who has the best shipping deals. You may decide to buy from a website or use the information you glean from websites to help you make a purchase from a store. Every major furniture store or chain and department store has a website. Smaller specialty shops, such as antiques stores or lighting purveyors, may not have a web presence.
Look through the websites of your favorite stores and be open to new stores in your area; for instance, one that specializes in Scandinavian design. Zero in on a few sites, say 10 or so, that can fulfill your wish list for design, color, quality, size and price. Comparison-shop favorite items, looking for manufacturer, model name and model number to compare the same item from different sellers. Durability should be an important concern, so look for sturdy fabrics in colors that not too light, especially if you have children. Designers say that beige, unless it's leather, can look blotchy and dirty within three to four months. A word about leather: Look for 100 percent leather, which spot-cleans easily; not bonded leather, which is an artificial fabrication; mainly of leather scraps and adhesive, which scratch easily and is not so healthy.
You have a couple of basic choices when it comes down to actually making your purchase: order directly from a website, or go to a store and order there.
Websites will save you travel time, and you won't have to fight the crowds you'd find in a store. But ordering online requires a leap of faith, because you will only be reading descriptions and seeing pictures of items. It is essential in this case to read customers' comments. If some seem too slick, they may have been written by the site or store itself, and you can probably write these off. Look for the ones that are short and to the point, particularly the negative ones. If an item's rating is low and there are many negative comments, you might want to steer clear. Look for sites with zero or low shipping. And be sure to search for coupons or rebates to buy furniture on a given site. Just type the site name and the word "coupons" in the search bar, and relevant coupon sites will appear. You can save up to 20 percent or 25 percent this way, especially at the end of a season. Coupons sometimes apply to already reduced sale prices, so the savings can be up to 40 percent or 50 percent.
Going in person to stores is the safer way to shop for furniture. This will give you the opportunity to touch the fabric or wood, sit on upholstered pieces and judge how comfortable they are, check out the frame and other construction to make sure the item isn't supported by cardboard (it happens!), and see the color and style of a piece up close. You may want to shop in furniture-chain stores, in department store furniture departments (some, like Bloomingdale's, are national style setters), in smaller specialty stores, in warehouse stores like Costco where you can find surprisingly high-quality goods, in the outlet stores of large chains or in all of these. In large furniture stores, check out the closeout or slightly damaged goods---sometimes defects are undetectable and the prices have been slashed. If you know how to paint or apply wood stain, pay a visit to your local unfinished furniture store, where you can find decent, simple wood pieces at prices that can be hundreds of dollars less than finished furniture (for an additional for $100 to $200, such places usually offer to do the painting or finishing for you). When shopping anywhere in person, be prepared to haggle; furniture markups are enormous, and salespeople have plenty of leeway to negotiate a better price or offer incentives such as free shipping.
If you are looking for the best deal of all, free furniture, go to websites like Freecycle.org, with 7 million members globally who give items away to anyone who wants them. These are not trading or swap sites.
Shipping
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Shipping furniture, which is heavy, can be a big chunk of your purchase price, unless you find a way to save the bulk of this cost. If you know where to look, you can deals ranging from free shipping to low-cost, flat-rate shipping from companies eager for your business. Free shipping for furniture is often available o-line; try no-frills website Overstock.com, which offers shipping for free, for $1 or for $2.95, depending on the day and your total. Or you can avoid shipping costs by picking up your items yourself---an option that's particularly popular at IKEA, where there are parking bays for personal pickup. Large furniture chains often have low-cost shipping deals; Crate&Barrel, for instance, has lowered its charges for C&B furniture collections pieces: $59 for orders up to $450 and $79 for unlimited furniture items.
Know the return policy. Stores and websites give you from about seven to 30 days to notify them of a return. Whether you just don't like an item once you see it in your house or it is damaged upon arrival, you usually have to shell out the cash for return shipping, which can run to hundreds of dollars for really heavy items. This makes planning your purchase all the more important---planning diminishes the chances of making a bad purchase.
Warranties
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Most furniture, at least big-ticket items, come with warranties sufficient to cover you for the life of the furniture. You can forget fabric protector warranties and extended warranties. Upholstered furniture usually comes from the factory with stain-repellent already applied; if not, buy a can of it and spray it on yourself. As for extended warranties, they are just not worth the price you pay for them.
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