Bedroom furniture - 'real wood' or cheaper option?

JustAnotherSaver

Right now we have zero furniture for our bedroom. I like oak furniture & light-oak to be specific, not that painted stuff. So we went looking at a local oak store & saw some real nice stuff.
It can be afforded but regardless i have taken out a credit card offering 0% on purchases for 19 months & i'm tight enough to not go spend silly so that we can't afford to pay it back.

However today i was in Homebase (other stores apply i'm quite sure) and we saw some furniture that was really nice. Ok it wasn't oak but it was wood-effect & it was light enough (i'm not keen on dark wood).

The rear of the wardrobe felt like wafer thin board unlike the oak wardrobes but i don't think i'll be putting my boot through the back of one any time soon anyway.


So now we're a little stuck. They both look nice but one is obviously a fraction of the cost of the other.

What's your take on the cheaper stuff? If it's still likely to be up to par in 10-15-20+ years time then i guess it's perhaps the better option.

2x bedside tables
1x wardrobe
1x dressing table
2x 2-over-4 chest-of-drawers.

Your opinions very welcome as we're a little stuck after today.

woodworm001

I still have some cheapo MFI wardrobes I bought 20 years ago and aside from looking a little dated they are fine. It's fair to say that they aren't designed to be taken apart and put back together which these have with a few house moves (they now wobble!).

I don't think bedroom furniture (other than the bed ) get a lot of heavy use - you will probably only open the doors / drawers once or twice a day so if you like the look of the cheaper stuff then I'm sure it will be fine.

passion_flower

For my money you can't get better than Ikea, some of our wardrobes are 20 years old and survived to house moves. Cheap, good looking and definitely sturdy. With the added bonus that you can organise everything inside from socks to scarfs there s a solution to utilise every single inch.

marlot

After a lot of searching, we went with Hereford Furniture. Had them about 4 months now, and delighted with the quality. Paid extra for 'easy close' drawers on the larger units - glad we did.

Be warned though, the furniture is very heavy. We had trouble carrying it upstairs.

JustAnotherSaver

Yeah i was quite impressed with some of the drawers/doors on items. A bit sexist but i called it anti-wife Who knows, the guy in your relationship may be the door slammer, but in mine it's certainly my wife Great things, close nice & quiet.

I'm thinking of having them fitted on room doors next lol

IKEA would be good, except the nearest one is quite a long drive away & i guess you really need to see this stuff in person.

Nice to know that others have no problems with the 'cheaper' stuff after a number of years though. I expect them to last a few but beyond that is where i was wondering.

notanewuser

woodworm001 wrote: »

I still have some cheapo MFI wardrobes I bought 20 years ago and aside from looking a little dated they are fine. It's fair to say that they aren't designed to be taken apart and put back together which these have with a few house moves (they now wobble!).

I don't think bedroom furniture (other than the bed ) get a lot of heavy use - you will probably only open the doors / drawers once or twice a day so if you like the look of the cheaper stuff then I'm sure it will be fine.

Snap. They'll be got rid of by the end of the year, which I am gutted about, but we need them gone.

ironmonkey

We have a mix of the solid oak and the cheaper stuff. Whilst both will last, one major difference that I've noticed is the bottom of the chest of drawers are almost always paper thin, so prone to collapse if you put a lot of things in there or it may weaken over time. This is not an issue with the solid oak or pine furniture!

suse*

Have you looked in charity shops, ebay, gumtree, house clearance etc? You might be able to find someone selling the real wood version you'd like, but without the new purchase mark up.

bouicca21

When I moved recently the removers had it written into the contract that they didn't guarantee being able to dismantle and reassemble flat pack furniture. This was borne of years of problems with mfi and ikea stuff. So if you are planning on moving in the foreseeable future bear that in mind. And as a previous poster pointed out flat pack tends not to take a lot of weight. I'd add that hinges and drawer runners tend to be flimsy too. Mind you the advantage of flat pack is that when it is dated you can get rid of it with few or even no qualms.

Personally I like solid wood - but look at the construction carefully. Are the joints dovetailed or just rebated? Is it really solid oak or just oak veneer? Make sure you really are getting value for money. I've just splashed out on some oak bedroom furniture and the well made stuff was only fractionally more expensive than solid but thrown together.

JustAnotherSaver

Well it turns out that through my wifes calculations we have wasted a bit of time on this

She calculated the oak stuff was coming in around £3k +/- but the non oak stuff we liked was half that.

So up this morning & she looked at IKEA. While i liked some of their stuff she wasn't impressed, so at least that saved me an hours drive.

Get to Homebase, look out some of their stuff that we thought looked really nice (which came in their 'fitted kitchen range') & was around £1600.

Get back to the house where all our measurements & prices of the oak stuff was .......... £1650 :mad::mad::mad::rotfl::T

She'd plucked the £3k from pricing the more expensive oak range we looked at as well as throwing in the bed price too whereas the £1650 was the oak range we were considering buying which i think was on offer.

For £50, no contest.

ironmonkey wrote: »

one major difference that I've noticed is the bottom of the chest of drawers are almost always paper thin,

This was an annoying feature i found. I was tapping the base of the drawers & thought i was almost putting my hand through them.

With that said, some of the pine stuff in the oak place was quite poor for that. Costly units which looked lovely, but the base of the drawers looked like they were made from that cladding stuff & that if i pressed hard enough i'd put it through.