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> but when I was studying, I bought used IKEA furniture, moved it around several times to different apartments, and then sold it again when I moved from that city.

I think this is kind of like how some people complain that Apple USB cables are pieces of crap that are always fraying and breaking after 6 months, while other people use them for years with zero issue.

It really depends on how you use it, how you assemble it, how you disassemble it, is it constantly swaying/weakening a little or is it securely mounted to a wall, do you constantly slam the cubby door or drawer shut or are you gentle? I think the assumption should be that it won't last a move, but that you can get lucky through a combination of chance and care.

The fact that IKEA furniture is self-assembled is a big factor here. Lots of room for human error that has nothing to do with the design or materials.

Yep, in my experience I’ve had the biggest problems when I overtighten their bolts. You really need to be careful not to tighten past the point where it starts chewing up the wood. But under tightening can have issues too if it makes the structure wobbly, which will also chew up the wood.

I'm not that careful with my stuff, but I have some 15-year old Ikea desks that my wife and I have moved from the West Coast USA to the East Coast USA, then to an island in the Pacific, then back to the West Coast, then back to the island again. They are as solid as ever, and I don't foresee ever replacing them, honestly. I have no idea how people are so careless with their things, I have too many old cables so I have a problem where I never have the newest spec cable due to never having to buy new ones!

There is a vaaaast difference in quality across the Ikea range. I too had a bulletproof Ikea desk that lasted me over a decade and was still in excellent structural condition when I got rid of it. It was a single large slab of wood (not particle board) with steel legs that screwed into a steel frame with large steel screws. It cost $200 at the time but what with inflation and everything else would probably cost over $300 now.

I just looked it up and it was the Galant desk with T-frame legs, sadly discontinued in 2014.

I had this too. Quality piece of furniture.

In general I've had good experiences with the office furniture from IKEA. My current desk is a custom oiled wood butcher block slab with (adjustable) IKEA legs, and the legs are perfect - easy to install, don't slip, stable etc.

This is correct. Some of the apparently crappiest particle board Ikea shit I've bought still runs strong decades later (glue can help!), and some of the "solid wood" stuff is so flimsily connected that it died instantly. HEJNE? Great. Love it. Wooden rack mount, strong and wonderful. IVAN? Absolute shit, falls apart, cannot be made to work.

> IVAN

I suppose you mean IVAR, but then I'm surprised as I have practically the whole IVAR assortment, coming mostly from when we had a move at work and renewed furniture there. The wooden racks, wooden cupboards, metal cupboards, I have them all and I love them. They have followed me through multiple house moves as well. They replaced basic pine racks that I got from some hardware store, that were not much cheaper and much less sturdy even though... well I still use them anyway, so I guess they're not so bad.

At one time I turned one IVAR metal cupboard into a growbox for tropical plants (the hollow space at the bottom and the mobile rack inside were pretty handy for running wires, pipes and placing the equipment) and it held very well the humidity, that was about ten years ago, I turned it back into a normal cupboard now and it's still as new. I now use a MILSBO cabinet as my indoor greenhouse.

IVAR is the one where the shelves clip on to little pegs? that used to be metal but now everything is plastic? For me they never clipped strong enough, so a slight bump caused shelves to fly off the pegs, even with the backing straps to keep the whole thing from accordianing down.

Your mention of cubboards might be the thing - you need to build it out around the cupboard instead of trying to just use it for shelves.

Ha! They don't even sell 937.636.09 anymore, so maybe the problem was those damn corners. I ended up using https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/H-2455/Chrome-Wire-Shel... instead, and the thing was cheaper than the IVAR.

More power to you, wish I could have sent all the pieces to someone; as it was I burned them in rage.

Maybe it depends on the country? The shelves in metal IVAR cupboards still use metal clips here in France and Belgium. The shelves for the wooden racks are held by metal brackets and metal bars (I don't use the cupboards mounted to the wooden racks, they are just standing on the ground. I haven't used corner pieces either).

I would expect wire metal shelving to be much cheaper than what you can find at Ikea of course, but also quite flimsy.

Now I'm no Ikea salesman but I always fail to understand what I read on HN (or other US-centric social media sites, as far as I can tell?) when the topic of Ikea comes around.

It largely depends on when you bought them. Like this article portrays, they're figuring out ways to make the "same" product cheaper and cheaper.

The wire shelving linked is "kitchen/factory" grade and rated for 650 lbs a shelf, I'd have no issues climbing to the top and jumping up and down on it. I'd be scared to death to do that on a 83" piece of Ikea furniture.

There was a period of time when IVAR's peg-holding bits were made of gray plastic.

Prior to that, and now again, they are metal.

Still have my Galant T-frame since 2011, survived a cross country move and several in-house relocations, and I use it every day. Still perfectly solid.

I have 3 Gerton desks that will probably last my whole life. Solid beech.

They have also discontinued it. Probably related to this article since they were made with solid wood.

Yeah, one of the better things they've ever had, but ultimately it's just edge joined 2x2s, so depending on where you live you're likely to get some cupping/warping over time.

They probably still have similar wood countertops you can buy and use for the same purpose, though.

Nope. At least in the US, all the countertops are particleboard, laminate or quartz. There's a butcher block themed particleboard but that's the closest you'll get now.

To be clear it’s a top layer of solid on top of particleboard.

Not just particleboard.

I'm still finishing up an IKEA kitchen, but the last I checked there were no solid wood options any longer. Used to be for SEKTION (and the Euro equivalent) they even carried solid ash doors and drawer fronts, those were discontinued a couple years ago. There are solid bamboo fronts (but no doors).

The closest you'll get now are particleboard tops with "thick" veneer. VRENA and MÖLLEKULLA use "thick" oak veneer; KARLBY, BARKABODA, and PINNARP use a "thick" walnut veneer. Veneer being IKEA's choice of words, not mine. These have traditional laminate on the underside.

SKOGSÅ uses "thick" veneer on all sides but is still a particleboard core.

SÄLJAN and EKBACKEN are laminate.

TOLKEN is solid bamboo (this must be new).

Bamboo as a countertop material would have me more anxious than granite.

Why?

Currently leaning on my scuffed up Galant desk, this thing is like 20 years old at this point

I still have my JERKER desk that is now around 25 years old. There is a clear degradation in quality (structural and cosmetic) over time for IKEA furniture and for me personally I am no longer buying many different furniture types from there. The better beds used to be good value for money, but it looks like that’s also about to end.

I've had my current Ikea Jerker desk for >15 years. Nice metal frame, and large, durable work surface. Also discontinued a long time ago.

I purchased an Ikea Pax cupboard and joined it to its twin (same model) which Id been given by a neighbor. The old one was solid wood whereas the new one was not.

> I think this is kind of like how some people complain that Apple USB cables are pieces of crap that are always fraying and breaking after 6 months, while other people use them for years with zero issue.

Then they're very inconsistent, because I've had multiple Apple USB and power cables that were secured to a desk in cable runs and connectors, and sat on a desk with a cable organizer, and still managed to fray while being moved no more than a few inches to plug/unplug in their life.

I think there's a lot of variation within Ikea products, and it tends to be reflected pretty clearly on the price. In a lot of Ikea's furniture lines they now offer a pretty significant range of price points and there is a corresponding range of quality and durability, with the lower end being trash and the upper end pretty impressive for flatpack.

This is what's happening. There are definite tiers of quality with IKEA.

> This keeps getting repeated.. but when I was studying, I bought used IKEA furniture, moved it around several times to different apartments, and then sold it again when I moved from that city.

> I've also renovated my house recently which involved disassembling and reassembling some IKEA furniture. They're still fine.

Indeed, I still have all of my original IKEA furniture after 7+ moves - none have "fallen apart". They just require partial disassembly to move. My IKEA desk and Billy bookcases are >20 years old and in great condition.

I'm not quite sure how people manage to be so destructive when moving.

When I've moved in the past, the thing the moving companies won't assemble for you at the other end is "any IKEA furniture."

That tells you enough about the rate of success overall

In the last 10 years I moved 9 times. Only 3 times of which were local moves and 2 were transatlantic.

The movers would disassemble and reassemble whatever I paid them to move. Your movers are weird.

No, it's pretty common. Because movers are responsible for replacing your items if they damage them.

They won't dissassemble/reassemble IKEA furniture because it's too likely to fail and then they'd be on the hook for replacement cost, through no fault of their own.

Literally the first Google result for "will movers reassemble ikea furniture" states:

> "Though individual policies vary, most movers will not disassemble and reassemble IKEA furniture, and some even require their customers to sign waivers against damage."

Even if you sign a waiver, they still won't do it because of customer dissatisfaction -- bad reviews with "they ruined my furniture and wouldn't replace it" etc.

Why would one pay someone to assemble an IKEA furniture anyway? These things are so simple to assemble and rarely require more than a screwdriver and allen wrench. A six year old could put together pretty much anything in their catalog.

Our furniture is almost exclusively IKEA.

While it's not the cheap stuff and movers never actually had to disassemble anything more than the bed frame, I have never seen "we don't move IKEA furniture" or any kinds of furniture related wavers.

They're willing to assemble other furniture? In my experience, IKEA furniture is some of the best-designed self-assembled furniture. Other companies don't seem to give any thought to making it easy to assemble at all. Some of the assembly "manuals" are hilariously bad.

IKEA stuff is generally great at assembly -- once.

If the back of the cabinet is nailed on, it's never going to survive removal and re-assembly. It might not survive normal wear-and-tear if you use it a lot.

If the process involves wood screws that bear weight, those joints won't survive disassembly.

IKEA owns TaskRabbit, and yes, they will assemble other brands' furniture.

+1 never had anything break.

> I bought used IKEA furniture, moved it around several times to different apartments, and then sold it again when I moved from that city

IKEA furniture can mean lots of different things.

The Billy bookcase specifically (which this article is primarily about) is not super great at surviving moves. Infact I had to reinforce mine just to hold lots of hard-cover books.

I'm ok with that because the price was so low it still was cheaper that getting stronger bookcases, and because they look good.

Selling furniture on Craigslist is a nightmare in most places and hardly worth doing unless you're really desperate for cash. Buyers will nickel-and-dime you, ask for free delivery, flake on scheduled meetings, show up without enough cash, maybe even try to rob you.

I've sold hundreds of euros worth of furniture on Facebook Marketplace.

1. Buyers will nickel-and-dime you - just ignore them.

2. Ask for free delivery - sucks to be them.

3. Flake on scheduled meetings - schedule them when you're working from home or during weekends, make it clear that if they're late the deal is off.

4. Show up without enough cash - sucks to be them.

5. Maybe even try to rob you - small furniture - don't meet in your home. Bigger items - have other people at home when they come.

It is still my time and attention that is far more valuable for me than whatever I would get back for reselling Billy bookshelves and the likes.

It works for you, you have headspace and you are mentally well composed to deal with that crap.

I’m not, so much rather dump furniture on the curb/trash of course after checking with family and friends in case they would need or want to take it for free. If they take it and sell it off good for them.

It’s not that I don’t understand the impulse, but I generally make the effort to pass stuff on to others simply so I don’t have to dump it.

That’s extra effort for me, but it makes me feel a lot better.

My wife sells a lot of stuff used and has good luck dealing with the flakey-nickel-dimers (the same people are typically both) by giving them a price concession of $N if they show up in M hours, where N is typically 5-10 and M is 1-3

Even giving away furniture is difficult.

I've learned that giving things away is much harder than selling them for a small price. If I want to give something away, I get a lot of interest, but nobody really shows up, nobody is committed. It's a lot of wasteful communication. If I sell it for 5€, it's a much nicer experience and it still goes to the target audience (people who couldn't afford to pay the full price).

On my last visit to the States I bought some Ikea furniture (Galant desk, a chair, a bed etc) and after 1.5 months tried to sell all that. Used furniture store turned me down. Craiglist banned my account for reasons unknown. Goodwill refused to send a truck to collect items for free. As a last resort, I arranged the items nicely in the garbage room in hope someone picks them up, but the garbage room manager sternly requested I break them up and put into garbage bins. Americans are too rich and wasteful.

Yes, I have moved with IKEA furniture. I would like to point out though that their older stuff was sturdier, and the newer stuff is essentially cardboard.

I had a billy book case and poang chair for almost 30 years. I moved it from my childhood homes to my apartments across multiple states.

It really depends on the series. Pax can be assembled and disassembled multiple time. Billy not so much.