The problem is the “real” furniture with a decent design aesthetic and quality is 10x the cost.

The rest of “real” furniture shopping involves sifting though large volumes of future which are nearly as bad as ikea’s worst quality for some multiple of the price, or of decent quality with a “grandma’s house” look or cheap suburban look.

Reasonably priced, reasonably designed, furniture of reasonable quality is very hard to find.

Expensive furniture would own me, as in the value lost through worry about damage, time spent finding, or moving hassle outweighs the value gained with aesthetics, durability, and other quality.

Ikea furniture is often of questionable quality, but frequently of acceptable design and price such that i can’t find anything of middling price that i actually want. In other words, I want a $300 couch or a $3000 couch but can’t find or am not willing to spend any more time looking for something in between.

It really depends on the category.

If you're going to IKEA for a sofa, mattress, or coffee table -- yeah, it's going to be super-cheap stuff that doesn't last.

But IKEA's phenomenal at a whole range of other stuff that's just as high quality but far cheaper than elsewhere. Lighting/lamps, storage boxes, kitchenware, a lot of their chairs/stools, bathroom, and so on.

They're also really good for a lot of "basic" apartment pieces like bookshelves, dressers, storage cubes. A lot of people shop for those things at IKEA not for the price, but simply for the aesthetics.

People with a lot of money and good taste still often wind up buying a bunch of stuff at IKEA because it works well. Not for a nice wooden coffee table mind you, but a nice white media stand for sure.

People who buy $100 couch are not the ones who's going to buy $3000 couch anyway, even if IKEA doesn't exist. They --- including me --- are not going to buy, period.

I just personally don't see a piece of furniture worthy of that much money.

Well someone's buying the more expensive stuff or Ikea would stop bothering.