Top 10 Furniture Shopping Mistakes
Lack of Preparation
People often go furniture shopping without any sense of what they like, their long-term goals, or even something so basic as the dimensions of the room. Before you visit your first store, draw up a floor plan of the space you’re shopping for, including all measurements. (You can also prepare a plan using an online room planner such as Better Homes and Gardens’ Arrange-a-Room or the Jordan's Furniture Room Planner .) Take some photographs of the room, and go through design magazines and tear out photos of homes or furniture pieces that appeal to you. Bring paint samples from the room, along with swatches of carpet and fabric from the other furnishings. If you don’t have a fabric swatch, remove the cover from a cushion and bring it with you. Pack these clippings in a file folder or portfolio and bring it with you when you shop.Think about your long-term plans for the room: Do you like it the way it is, or do you want to change it? If it’s the latter, what kind of look or feeling do you want the space to have? Buy for the way you want the room to be, not necessarily the way it is; that way, you’re not tossing out your furniture in three years when you finally get around to decorating it the way you want it.
Ignoring Scale
Stores can play tricks with your sense of proportion. A piece that looks perfect in a store that’s half the size of a football field and has 20-foot ceilings may appear humongous in an apartment with 8-foot ceilings. Carry a compact tape measure in your purse or car and measure everything before you buy. If you’re still in doubt, go home and map out the piece in newspaper on your floor, or make a mockup with cardboard boxes.Not Bringing Home a Fabric Sample
Fabric looks different under different lighting conditions. Before you buy a piece of upholstered furniture, ask for a fabric swatch and take it home. Then look at the material in the room where the piece will sit—preferably in the daytime and at night. Check how the color looks with other pieces of furniture in the room, and with the wall color.Not Testing the Furniture
Never buy seating without testing it out. (I can vouch for this from—ouch!—personal experience.) Sit on it. Lay on it. If it’s a sofa you plan to use for napping or reading, stretch out on it in the store (taking your shoes off first, of course)—you might even bring a book and read for a while.If the furniture store does not have the piece you want on its floor and they plan to custom-order it for you, ask if a wholesale showroom nearby carries the same item. Charles Vigil of Masins Furniture in Seattle says he often accompanies customers to the local design center, so they can test an item before they buy it from Masins. Likewise, if you’re planning to buy furniture online, try to find the same item at a bricks-and-mortar retailer and test it in advance.
How shop furnitures
Go to a Furniture Store
It's almost impossible to determine if you'll like a piece of furniture from a picture. You'll want to see it first-hand. If the store you visit doen't have the exact piece you've found on-line, at least you ean evaluate the quality of the line, see the different finishes available, and determine if the company makes things that have a look you like. If you're looking for a coffee table, you might be able to see a side table. You'll get an idea of how your piece will look and you'll feel more comfortable about ordering the piece at the store or on-line if you've seen it in person first.
Fine furniture stores use professional decorators to create fully-decorated rooms. In these settings, the merchandise is shown at its best. You can get an idea of how the piece you want will look in a real room. You might get ideas for other decorating, too. If the walls are painted an interesting shade of a warm mocha, you can ask the exact shade if you think it would look good in your home. It can be almost like going to a decorator showhouse, and you can buy anything you like.
Remember that furniture show spaces are spacious with high ceilings and no side walls. You have to keep the size and scale of your own rooms in mind. A piece that looks great in a cavernous showroom might be too large for your living room.
As you walk through the showroom, look around you. Do you see interesting accessories? Do you have some pieces at home that could be used in the same way? Is a picture placed in an unusual way that would add interest to your space? Does a mirror reflect a beautiful view or add depth to a space? Is the furniture arranged in a way you hadn't thought of? Without buying a thing, you can get lots of ideas to take home.
A furniture showroom will not have every piece that a particular company makes. If you don't see the item you want on the floor, inquire about placing a special order. Be sure that you feel comfortable with the sales person and get someone who is knowlegeable about your chosen company. Some stores have specialists for each line. Inquire about the availability of different wood finishes, sofa skirt options, or alternative arm styles.
Each company that builds upholstered furniture supplies their showrooms with fabric samples. You can choose from a full array of colors, patterns, and textures. If you're not sure about colors, ask to check out fabric samples or a matching pillow. You'll be ablet o live with the fabrics for a day or two and see the different choices in changing lights.
If the store doesn't have the piece you need, place a special order. In many cases, you will not be able to take advantage of special sale prices, and you might have to pay additional shipping charges. But it will be worth the price to get just the piece you want.
Some furniture stores will allow you to take a piece home "on approval," meaning that you can see how it will look in your home, but return it if you don't like it. After all, you're making a big purchase and should have a right to change your mind. Make sure that you can return even a special order piece if it is not right for your home. You might be asked to pay the charges the store incurred to get the piece from the factory to their store.
The 10 Best Furniture Catalogs
Pottery Barn
Sure, you can scoff at the way it has saturated America with a steady stream of "safe" good taste, but it's hard to refute the fact that Pottery Barn has made good design accessible and affordable for millions of people. Their products are almost always well designed, their prices are reasonable, the service is generally good, and the furniture catalog is fun to flip through--which is a good thing, because sometimes it feels like there's a new one every week. I have heard criticisms about the quality of their upholstered pieces, but have never had a problem with the (non-upholstered) items I've purchased from them.West Elm
Pottery Barn's little brother, West Elm is designed to appeal to a younger, hipper and less affluent audience, with affordable modern design that--to paraphrase Henry Ford--comes in any color you want, as long as it's brown. Actually, they offer other colors, too ... but not a lot. (I've always considered West Elm's ubiquitous brown wood the furniture world's equivalent of "mystery meat"--you don't quite know what it's made of, but the taste is good.) This isn't heirloom-quality stuff you'll be handing down to your grandchildren, but it's fun, it's fast, and it should tide you over until you're ready to graduate to Pottery Barn or the company's upscale brand, Williams Sonoma Home.Crate and Barrel
Comparable to Pottery Barn in its selection, styling and ubiquity, Crate and Barrel has a slight edge on quality, and the prices reflect that. Crate and Barrel's furniture catalog is a bit more fashion forward, too. The company has been around for more than 40 years, so when you purchase a product from them, you can be assured that it will be well-made and smartly designed, with a clean, contemporary look and nice choices of materials. I purchased a pair of armchairs from them a decade ago, and they look great and sit comfortably.CB2
Crate and Barrel also has a little brother, called CB2. The vibe is youthful, contemporary and fairly monochromatic--full of good foundation pieces awaiting your personal touches. The prices are higher than its Pottery Barn counterpart, West Elm, but the aesthetic is a little more sophisticated, too.Room and Board
With the demise of Storehouse, Room and Board has the middle-American field to itself. I don't mean that disparagingly; this is a great source for attractive, well-made furnishings at moderate prices. There's nothing here to scare Great Aunt Esther, but nothing dowdy or dated, either. It's a good place to shop when you want to build a foundation of classic, timeless pieces.Ballard Designs
I've always liked this furniture catalog, despite the fact that some of their merchandise is a bit on the twee side. (Anyone for decorative lighthouses or bunny sculptures?) The catalogs are attractive and the merchandise is fun, with a decidedly feminine slant. (This is the furniture catalog equivalent of a chick flick.) And some of the prices are so good you might find yourself doing a doubletake. Definitely not for modernists, but a good choice for homes with a traditional, country or cottagey flair.
Design Within Reach
The name says it all: DWR takes classic contemporary design out of the realm of the über-rich and makes it accessible to anyone who wants it--without the snobbery that sometimes comes with modernist furniture. All of design's greatest stars are here--from Aalto and Eames to Le Corbusier and Starck--at prices that are a tad steep, but often less than what these pieces have commanded in the past. The company also has dozens of bricks-and-mortar stores--excuse me, studios--where you can test-drive the merchandise but not walk out of the store with it (you still need to place an order).
Restoration Hardware
I discovered this company many years ago when I stumbled into one of their stores on a vacation and returned a short time later to buy a sofa table.I still have the table, and still enjoy visiting the store and perusing their catalog. While it's easy to confuse this chain with Pottery Barn (especially when their stores are next to each other, as they are in my city), Restoration Hardware plays into nostalgia a bit more, with lots of reproductions and pieces inspired by the past. The quality is good, the design top-notch, and the prices nestle somewhere between Crate and Barrel and Pottery Barn.
IKEA
This one's a bit of a cheat, because IKEA doesn't really offer traditional mail order. But for those lucky enough to live near one of their stores, the arrival of the annual catalog is a momentous event, and you can purchase most of the catalog merchandise by phone order. There are some great things to buy at IKEA (the name is an acronym), and the prices cannot be beat--especially on lighting, accessories, storage, window treatments and the like. The design can look a little dated and pieces are often scaled a little small, but I can't think of another furniture catalog that I keep--and refer to--throughout the entire year.
Horchow
Last and--if not least, then perhaps not in the ranks with some of the ones above--is this furniture catalog owned by Neiman Marcus. I can't say I peruse this one as often as the others (for one thing, they charge for the catalog), but I like the mix of traditional styling and glam looks. Horchow's flavor is definitely Old World, with a strong European influence and a bracing celebration of ornament that's overlooked by most other merchants. Although much of the stuff isn't my taste, and the prices can be a bit daunting, I never fail to find something I love here--and that I haven't seen anywhere else. Plus every so often they surprise you with a great deal. Check it out and see if you agree. (And if you don't want to pay for the catalog, you'll find a link on their Web site that'll get you one free.)
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