IKEA

Flat-pack furniture is still IKEA’s basic trick, and the company has built a whole world of sofas, storage, kitchens and small household bits around that one idea. By our assessment, the strength is obvious: the range is huge, the prices are usually kept in the approachable end of the market, and the store layout makes home furnishing feel like a sequence of choices instead of a custom project. The price of that model is assembly, spare parts and the occasional awkward instruction sheet, because the convenience sits in the warehouse logic rather than in fully finished furniture. In practice IKEA is a day out with a cart, a pencil and a warehouse maze, followed by boxes, Allen keys and a bit of patience at home. Compared with design-led furniture shops it is less individual, and compared with cheap no-name furniture it is generally more coherent and better supported. IKEA works best for people furnishing a room or a whole flat on a budget, and the Sweden catalogue note suits a company that turned self-assembly into everyday furniture shopping.