High quality furniture

[Deleted]

All my furniture is old or from Craigslist. I'm ready to invest in new furniture and was wondering who sells/what stores or brands are considered to be good quality and long lasting.

[tarheels]

I actually think vintage or antique is some of the best made. As for new furniture, I kinda feel like it's not as easy anymore to say X brand is good because I feel like quality is slipping on many of them.

If I were you and really wanted new furniture, I'd go walk around the biggest furniture store you can find and just browse. Open drawers, look at info tags, get a feel for things and prices. Just browse, don't buy until you're more familiar! The salesman will try to tell you you have to buy right this minute, but that's ridiculous, they're always having another sale. And go into nicer furniture stores than you think you can afford - it'll help you learn and you'll be surprised by how affordable some items are.

[SusanBAnthony]

I feel like most new furniture is crap, unless you can afford the very high end stuff. Even pottery barn, for example, which is pricey, is not at all high quality.

I now get most of mine from either used furniture stores, antique stores, garage sales, etc. this has resulted in a very hodgepodge look, to say the least. But I got a solid maple hutch for 100$. I would spend 5-10x as much to buy new, and it would be crap. So.... I am ok with it looking like it was from the 60's. We got a solid cherrywood table for 150$ from a garage sale. It doesn't match the hutch. Oh well.

And if you are willing to spend a little more, you can definitely find old, high quality furniture that does match

[ktzmoh]

It totally depends on how you are going to use tge stuff. I can't afford top quality furniture, and my children are small- so I'm perfectly fine buying from west elm or macys equivalent . I can get a cohesive grown-up look without taking a second mortgage. I would agree old stuff and vintage is much better quality and cheaper but I don't have time to hunt for stuff. Plus, browsing/ shopping extensively with the kids is the suck. I'm lazy and impatient.

Handmade is obviously better- I grew up near Amish country and they are famous for quality furniture. there's a place here that does custom made pieces that are gorgeous. When my kids can eat a meal without practically gnawing on my table- I'll invest in a beautiful table and chairs set from them

[sillygoosegirl]

Dec 14, 2013 21:08:29 GMT -5 SusanBAnthony said:

I feel like most new furniture is crap, unless you can afford the very high end stuff. Even pottery barn, for example, which is pricey, is not at all high quality.

I now get most of mine from either used furniture stores, antique stores, garage sales, etc. this has resulted in a very hodgepodge look, to say the least. But I got a solid maple hutch for 100$. I would spend 5-10x as much to buy new, and it would be crap. So.... I am ok with it looking like it was from the 60's. We got a solid cherrywood table for 150$ from a garage sale. It doesn't match the hutch. Oh well.

And if you are willing to spend a little more, you can definitely find old, high quality furniture that does match

This is where I'm at too.  But over time, more and more matches (or at least coordinates) as we keep the stuff we love and "upgrade" the stuff we don't love when the perfect piece is available on craigslist or at a consignment shop. 

I have also done some restoration of old furniture, and I tend to talk about it.  This has led to my being gifted quite a bit of older furniture that friends/family don't want, because they know I have the ability and interest to restore it to it's former glory.  While most older furniture can look pretty worn around the edges, a lot of it was really well constructed in the first place and can be restored to much higher quality than we--or most people--could afford to buy new. 

[auntie]

For high end furniture, some of my best pieces are Statton, Hinkel Harris and Stickley. I also have some more middle of the road stuff from Ethan Allen and Thomasville. Most of my unpholstered pieces are from Calico Corners. They're expensive, but you can customize them in terms of the kind of materials and fabrics you want.

One downside to higher end case goods, is that they are going to be pretty traditional rather than "on trend".

I find local family owned furniture stores the best resource for higher end stuff. I often shop the end of year floor sample sale. I've also ordered directly from NC which was a mixed experience.

[Marmee]

I've been happy with all my Room & Board furniture. When we buy new, we buy almost exclusively R&B.

[TBM]

We replaced most of our furniture when we moved across the country last spring, but we wound up with a mix of old and new, to fit our style. I like that it looks collected over time, and not all bought at once, but that's just me.

Sit in everything and take your time looking and researching. If you like it in person, look for reviews online.

We sat in a lot of furniture before finding anything comfortable for both of us. We both liked Lee brand furniture, (we kept seeing it in magazines,(whenever we liked a sofa or chair in an article, it turned out to be Lee), but it was hard to find actual furniture to sit in locally, and the style we liked wasn't in the showroom so we took a leap of faith based on how the other pieces felt.

It was more expensive than DH expected, but then, all furniture was more expensive than he expected, and in every price range the quality varied wildly.

We have a couple of other pieces from American Leather that are nice (and not leather), and a modern Scandinavian recliner that is the most comfortable thing I have ever sat in, as well as not looking like a lazyboy. We got those from a local store, but American Leather is available at other furniture stores.

If we had not found the pieces we bought, we would have seriously looked at older pieces to have reupholstered. It is not inexpensive to reupholster, but a solidly built piece of furniture that will last makes it worth the expense.

[Susie]

I haven't bought a lot of nice pieces, but the ones I have, I've shopped at Ethan Allen, Stickley, and Kincaid.

There and other places, you look for the same things: solid wood construction, dovetail joints, no laminate or cheap veneer, etc.