Show HN: IKEA Complexity Index
ikea.greg.technology
ikea.greg.technology
They started by jockeying to see which one was going to be in charge, arguing about how to proceed, throwing shade, making claims of superiority. One guy wanted to follow the instructions, and the other guy just wanted to go on intuition. They couldn't agree and asked me which one should be in charge, and I said, I don't know just work together, follow the instructions, and get this stuff built.
The instructions guy assumed the lead, and then they settled into a rhythm. Three hours later, they couldn't stop gushing about each other, and a most beautiful bromance was born. They exchanged telephone numbers and made plans to hang out on the weekend.
Bonus points if the stuff you're doing is challenging.
BRIMNES storage bed + headboard, Queen $549 + 320 min labor = $709 (delta: +$160 / +29%)
HEMNES 8-drawer dresser $380 + 236 min labor = $498 (delta: +$118 / +31%)
STORKLINTA 6-drawer dresser $250 + 224 min labor = $362 (delta: +$112 / +45%)
SLÄKT storage bed, Twin $450 + 212 min labor = $556 (delta: +$106 / +24%)
BRIMNES 3-door wardrobe $250 + 189 min labor = $344.50 (delta: +$94.50 / +38%)
ALEX drawer unit: $95 + 96 min labor = $143 (delta: +$48 / +51%)
BRIMNES cabinet with doors: $99 + 75 min labor = $136.50 (delta: +$37.50 / +38%)
KALLAX 2x4 shelf unit: $65 + 39 min labor = $84.50 (delta: +$19.50 / +30%)
Formula: effective price = sticker price + (estimated assembly minutes / 60 * hourly value of time).
I was surprised by how similar the % diff is across the board.
Or purchasing them in their assembled state can require even more logistical transportation overhead such as specialized vehicle rentals.
Your point stands though that furniture has a higher cost than the sticker implies.
More like how you approach life.
Assembling furnitures is a very fun and zen thing to do IMO. I know a least one surgeon who would gladly bill more $$$ but there are simply hours when the hospital is closed: assembling a furniture with your kid after a day's work is a cool and relaxing thing to do.
Friends of mine, about a year ago, asked me to help with some technical stuff on the first day they moved their startup in their new office. When I arrived, the desks hadn't even been assembled yet (they were late on schedule).
I helped them assemble the desks: I find that highly relaxing, gratifying and relaxing to do.
Many moons ago I did that too in southern california: physically building the desks, unpacking the PCs and monitors, hooking up everything (back when there were still, btw, people plugging the VGA cable instead of the HDMI one for monitors that came with both), running the ethernet cables, configuring the PCs, configuring the Linux server.
Doing it all. Then configuring the Linux servers.
It's like painting a place you move in's walls: it's got nothing to do with "how you value time".
I lived in four countries. We'll certainly move to a fifth one one day. I'm excited at the idea of going to the hardware store, buying paint and screws and nuts and bolts and whatnots and preparing the place.
And assembling furnitures.
I bought and assembled a TUFFING Bunk Bed years ago, and even though the complexity of assembly is reported as 4644 on this web site (which is also suspiciously low), as far as I can tell the only way to disassemble it is to use an angle grinder.
I did not do sentiment analysis on the comments (to modify my fudge factor mentioned elsewhere - which is the bulk of my complexity rating computation), but that could be a good next step..!
I do use wood glue on all dowel pins, so most stuff is assembly once only. Unless the furniture provides metal inserts for machine screws, I do not consider it disassembly material. It's likely to exhibit the spontaneous disassembly on its right own otherwise (or squeak soon enough)
adding that column now, should be live in the next 10-20 mins cheers!
To be able to create them, you have to know how to assemble the product, BUT that also means you've been blessed by the curse of knowledge — now you have to perfectly serialize your knowledge into instructions WITHOUT omitting any implicit "obvious" steps that you may have taken due to already being familiar with the product.
Very few assembly manuals get this right. In the case of furniture, the orientation of items is often omitted, after all isn't it obvious that this side goes up? This is how I ended up with some exposed non-laminated wooden board parts in my bed. Sigh :)
QA testing is the key here — write the first draft, have someone try to assemble the thing as naively and true to instructions as possible, fix mistakes, repeat.
The only time I’ve had a mistake building IKEA furniture was after opening both pieces of a combo shelf at once: there was a subtle but relevant distinction between the crossbars that was not obvious from the instructions, because ordinarily you wouldn’t have pieces from another shelf to confuse with each other.
Whoever made this, please make a "proportion" column somehow!
I would like to know which has the most complexity per total volume or weight (it's less surprising that huge items have high complexity).
3h of fun for a mere $140.
I've seen more expensive hobbies.
Same with shopping at IKEA. I know all the shortcuts in our local IKEA so that I can exit the store as quickly as possible.
Easily solved, but surprising considering how well we were otherwise able to act and interact, even in stressful and difficult circumstances.
Indeed, just need to get a wife now who would love building IKEA furniture now though :)
PDF for assembly is still up on the website: https://www.ikea.com/nl/nl/assembly_instructions/sultan-laxe...
Participants in Ikea speed-assembly competitions would like to know more.
[1]: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/trotten-cabinet-with-doors-whit...
Not a good idea on modern Ikea furniture that's basically engineered wood and cardboard. Way too easy to strip out the threads.
>Way too easy to strip out the threads.
An "assembly driver" or "installation driver" is meant to describe low-torque powered screwdrivers. They don't strip threads especially when used on the lowest torque settings that can barely turn a screw before the clutch-release mechanism clicks. On the other hand, the high-torque powered screwdrivers that can turn drywall and deck screws and the impact drivers that can spin the lugs on car wheels are a different beast.
The bigger risk with IKEA furniture is hammering in the metal dowel pins (that interlock with the rotating cams) at a perpendicular angle to the flat board. You have to gently tap them with a hammer because it's too easy to puncture through the particle board.
Actually, the majority of "screws" to turn in a lot of IKEA furniture (e.g. bookshelves) are the cams instead of typical threaded screws. The cams only rotate 180 degrees so there's no time savings in trying to use a powered screwdriver.
Are there many hammer-in versions around then? I've assembled a fair amount of IKEA bookcases, wardrobes, kitchen cupboards etc (in the UK), and those cam dowel pins have always been screw-in.
The problem is, unless it's an actual torque wrench these clutches are allll over the place. There's a reason they give only some arbitrary scale, and often enough they're so unreliable that the same electric screwdriver / drill will produce different torques for the same setting depending on the battery SoC, the power setting and the cleanliness of the thread in the wood.
I've found the most reliable way for IKEA furniture is to use an electric screwdriver for the bulk of the work and use a manual screwdriver for the final 1-2 turns. Everything else is just asking for trouble, especially the screw "overshooting" because the particle density at one hole is randomly (markedly) less than at the hole you calibrated the screwdriver with.
>depending on the battery SoC,
The clutch is mechanical, so it should not matter and for brushless motors, the battery charge (voltage) should not matter at low torque, either. Just to be clear - I'd not advise to copy someone else's drill clutch settings.
Worst case if you end up stripping the chipboard - fill with putty of epoxy and wood shavings, wait for 5-6mins, re-drill, so on. It's annoying if it happens but overall it's quite easy to recover from.
These days I wouldn't recommend Ikea to anybody with the prices and build quality, Jysk is a good and cheap alternative in germany.
Always remember the rule: a half-turn before breaking is how tight you want it to be
>a half-turn before breaking is how tight you want it to be
That feels super random, I would not think it allies to lots of fasteners - e.g. lug nuts, spark plugs, crank shaft bolts, or even deck screws (where another half turn would berry them too deep), or plastic self tapping screws. Perhaps some smaller ones like M4 bolts, or non-counter sunk wood screws?
Learning to use power tools (well any tools) should be considered desirable.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/TaskRabbit/comments/13dm7lu/comment...
I adjusted the formula by researching online what people reported as the time it took them to build some of the items. ie there’s a linear regression “fudge” factor - but it’s still an extremely simplified “model”, if you can call it that.
Hinges need more time in general as well.
What are the missing products?
IKEA in general is piss easy to assemble except for leveling stuff where you'd need a laser and often times another person. Some of provided tools (the famous L 6mm hex key made of cheese) and hardware (nails) tend to be very poor... and sometimes it'd need a visit to buy extra hardware - e.g. low-profile head, non-counter sunk screws to attach to the wall.
Repairing furniture or addressing mistakes tend to be fixable by a mix of wood shavings/dust and epoxy in most cases.
So the assembly would depend on previous experience, available tools, and free space.
Sure, it’s not hard, but if there are a lot of steps it’s still going to take longer.
A fully specced up pax double wardrobe with drawers, sliding doors, and lighting is made up of hundreds of parts, so does take a good amount of time to put together even though it’s not difficult per se.
It’s also made up of many different SKUs so you get dozens of boxes turn up and it takes a little while to figure out what everything is and get organised. Again, it’s not difficult, but it takes a little time.
I never said otherwise, and the rest of my post tells it could be time consuming. The criticism is to the random time quote based off solely on parts count.
I’m fairly handy and quite enjoy putting things together so it never crossed my mind to use IKEA’s assembly service, but I did notice they were offering it for £300, which I took as a signal that it would take a while.
In the end it took 12+ hours over the course of a weekend. I reckon I’d be faster if I did it again, and maybe if I did it enough times I’d be able to half that, but the problem is, how many fully spec Ed pax wardrobes + ancillaries are you really going to assemble in your life?
With bigger orders, depending on how you value your time and want to spend it, maybe paying for assembly makes sense. I reckon 2 people would have had it done in a morning if I’d paid.
Everything that has come in box from a store like IKEA (or assembled in the back from a box and presented as non-flat-pack) has lasted me less than a decade. I've got a bedroom set that was built out of proper materials and it's almost a century old.
The thing that pushes consumers toward ikea is the consistency and convenience. Most things you can load and cart home by yourself same day. Moving around furniture built by the Amish is a serious logistical challenge by comparison. Maybe you could solo it with a hand truck and some experience, but it's genuinely dangerous to move some things without help. If you aren't moving frequently, the appeal of disposable furniture begins to fade quickly.
I don't particularly like my ikea furniture. But one big reason why I bought this instead of alternatives that come fully assembled is the price: it's much cheaper.
Then again, I live in France, there aren't many Amish around AFAIK.
Some categories are especially exaggerated: when needing a number of new wardrobes a few years ago, we struggled to find anything that was remotely similar in price or value to IKEA. The big retail park furniture stores were 2-4x the price for similarish quality (i.e. chipboard; modular construction). Smaller higher quality stores (e.g. plywood/real wood rather than cardboard or chipboard) were roughly 4-8x more expensive. And one really nice local option was roughly 10x more expensive. [0] (We didn't even explore bespoke/handcrafted for obvious reasons.)
Wardrobes, in particular, are begging for disruption - essentially a relatively modular approach, higher quality materials than IKEA, (much) lower cost than Moormann.
Drawers with wheels and bearings and soft closers on their runners are simply a lot nicer to use on a day to day basis, particularly when they’re used frequently.
I do have quite a strong preference for older furniture from an aesthetic perspective, and we certainly have some older pieces as a result. But it’s often functionally deficient, and so we don’t tend to use older furniture more complex than a table where the functionality is frequently used. In particular, any kind of heavily accessed storage means ergonomics and usability win every time, tending to steer us toward modern options.
On quality, I have an apartment rented to students and the Ikea furniture in it is still going strong after years. I make sure to tighten the screws and bolts periodically, but otherwise it's as good as new. I would not have bought "disposable" furniture, no matter how cheap. Conversely, my experience of furniture (and lighting and other fittings) from department stores and hardware stores is that it's three times as expensive as Ikea, three times heavier, and yet obviously poorer quality.
My theory is that if you want quality you are better buying from Ikea. That's simply because any given product will have been bought by millions of other people. By definition, a lot of thought has gone into it and design flaws will likely have been eliminated long ago.