Are you overdue for a trip to one of the furniture stores in your area? Even if you own the most beautiful home in the country, if your furniture is outdated or in bad shape, your entire home loses the “Wow” factor that it has the potential for. However, since the bill you’ll pay at a modern furniture gallery is a little more than the bill you pay at your local coffee shop, it’s important that you research the furniture stores you anticipate shopping at, so that your investment stands the test of time. To help you out, we’ve put together a list of common mistakes people make while shopping at furniture stores for an interior redesign.
Four Ways to Regret Your Furniture Shopping Experience
- Assuming the staff of all furniture stores are interior designers.
The best furniture stores hire professionally trained interior designers to provide their clients with professional interior design advice while shopping for new furniture. However, as you can imagine, a professional interior designer costs more to have on staff than a salesman without a degree in design. A cut-rate furniture store doesn’t want to fork over this extra expense.
Yes, all furniture store employees might be eager to provide their input, because their paycheck likely depends on you swiping your credit card before you leave the store. But that doesn’t mean they know what they’re talking about. When you enter the furniture store, your first question should be to ask for a consultation with their interior designer. If they don’t have a professional interior designer, you might want to make your exit then and there. - Choosing your furniture based on price.
Money is tight for all of us. We know you probably want to get your wallet through the shopping experience as unscathed as possible. However, like the saying goes, you get what you pay for. If you go to a low-end furniture store and buy cheap furniture, it will look cheap when it’s in your home. And, cheap furniture is made with cheap materials that do not stand the test of time. Why spend 30% less for uglier furniture, that you have to replace twice as fast anyways?We’ll throw this in for free: Be skeptical about furniture stores that claim to have close-out prices or discounts that seem to be too good to be true. If a furniture store sells sofas at 70% below MSRP, it’s likely because that’s all the furniture is worth. If it was actually a good deal, they wouldn’t stay in business long with those prices.
- Not reviewing the return policy before you walk out of the store.
Let’s say you purchase a set of seemingly nice leather sofas. If they’re real leather, they might cost your a four-digit number. When the delivery guy drops them off, you notice there are stitches missing in seat. It’s not a huge cosmetic issue, but you know the missing stitches will weaken the seams and could lead to holes. For the price you’re paying, you deserve a flawless couch.
Even reputable furniture stores might have a minute flaw in their product every once in a while. The distinction is, a good furniture store will replace their product immediately, because having a reputation for good quality matters to them. A low-end furniture store is not motivated to eat the cost of the flawed couch just for your satisfaction. Make sure you understand the policy the furniture store has if their product has a slight flaw or if you just don’t love it, before you sign the dotted line. - Blowing off bad client reviews.
Before making an investment in new furniture, thoroughly read up on what past customers saying about their experience. There are about a hundred and fifty online review sites that you can check out for this purpose. Keep in mind that some customers might be hard to please, but if you see the same complaint about the furniture store’s negative customer service, poor quality product, disorganization, or so on, it should be a red flag. After all, you’ll regret a bad experience with you furniture purchase a lot longer than you’ll regret your bad coffee shop experience.
Have you ever regretted your furniture purchase? Please share with us in the comment section below!