Top Five Furniture Shopping Mistakes

For many, furniture shopping can be intimidating. It invokes memories of bad past experiences or draws parallels to your last used car shopping experience. However, furniture shopping should and can be a lot of fun. All you have to do is learn to avoid some common furniture shopping pitfalls. Here are five such mistakes that many shoppers make as outlined by an experience furniture sales person and showroom manager.

Not measuring or preparing to shop.

For furniture sales people, there is nothing more frustrating than trying desperately to help someone who is unprepared. For a furniture shopper, there is nothing more frustrating than finding something you like, only to discover it is not an option for you for any of a variety of reasons.

The first step in preparing to shop for furniture is to do a lot of measuring. Of course, you need to measure the size of the room, including the heights of ceilings. This will give you an idea of how much space a piece will take up in your room.

Secondly, you need to measure doorways, hallways, corners, and stairwells. Everyplace your furniture will go on its way to the final location should be measured out. Corners often cause trouble that homeowners never imagined. Additionally, make sure you measure how far it is between entry ways and any walls inside that entrance as well as the height of stairwells: not just the entry to the stairwell, but also the lowest point between the stairs and the ceiling. Often times a piece will go through the entry to the stairwell, but will become stuck as it goes on up (particularly mattresses and box springs).

Preparation for shopping should also include a little research. Before you go into the showroom, it is helpful to have at least some idea of what you are looking for. A common issue that furniture sales people run into is "the invented piece." People come into the store looking for a piece of furniture that they have basically invented in their head. Instead, jump online and look in your newspaper circulars to see what is out there. Then, when you walk into the showroom, you will have some feel for the style you like and the particular piece you are seeking.

More than anything else you can do, preparing to shop for the furniture will do the most to help you have a positive experience.

Buying Too Many Pieces for the Room or Not Paying Attention to Scale

First of all, know that it is not uncommon for people to overbuy for a room. Just because the set has a sofa, chair, loveseat, ottoman, and full set of tables does not mean you have to buy it all. For many spaces, a sofa and chair is enough. Sometimes, you may be able to accommodate a sofa and loveseat.

Secondly, even small furniture stores are large in most cases. The room in which you are looking at the furniture is larger than the one in which you will place it at home. In other words, consider the scale. When you get that sofa, chair, or even curio cabinet home, it is going to look much larger than it did when you were in the store.

With that said, once you have measured the room and the pathway, you need to figure out how much space you can afford to take up. A great way to do this is with newspaper. Since newspapers are cheap and easy to manipulate, take some old ones and cut them into various furniture dimensions. Lay them out in the room and this will give you an idea of how much space you will have once pieces of various size are put in the room.

Not Having or Prioritizing a Budget

When you walk into the furniture store, you should know how much you are looking to spend. Do some research online and in the paper to at least geta rough idea about your budget. This is just another way of preventing yourself from making unnecessary purchases in the store.

Aside from having a budget, it is a good idea to prioritize it. Once you know what you want to buy, decide which pieces are most important to you. For instance, when you are buying for a bedroom, decide that you are going to make the mattress the first priority, then the bed frame and then the dresser or something like that. This will allow you to make a splurge, but to do so in the right part of the room.

Having a budget and having it prioritized will allow you to keep yourself under control as well as know where in the store you should be shopping.

Not Checking Out a Fabric Sample or Throw Pillow to Check Color at Home

It is a phone call that goes to furniture customer service departments daily: a customer gets a piece delivered to his or her home and swears it is the wrong color. Odds are, it is not. Lighting in furniture showrooms is different than in your home. Additionally, the accent pieces and wall colors are different. When you get home, with new paint colors and different accents, you may find that a color that did look taupe now looks green, or that gray suddenly looks blue.

In order to solve that problem, talk to the salesperson at the furniture store about samples. Most furniture stores will let you take home either a fabric sample or throw pillow from the set. Some may charge you a deposit (pillows are, believe it or not, a pain for stores to replace), but if you are responsible, then it is certainly worthwhile. You can take it home and see what the color looks like in your home, with your walls and your lighting.

By checking out the look of the color at home, you can help give yourself a positive experience from purchase right through delivery.

Not Testing Furniture at the Store

No matter what anyone tells you, if a piece of furniture is doing something on the show-floor, it will likely do the same in your home sooner or later. That is why it is important to test out furniture.

Sit on the sofas, sit on the chairs, and test out any drawers or doors on pieces you are considering to see how they work. If you are considering a new mattress, lay down on it completely like you would your bed at home. Sitting on a mattress does not give you an idea of how it sleeps just like pushing on a chair with your hand will not tell you how it sits.

When you walk into a furniture show-room, find what you think may work for you and test it out. By testing, you will find out if the furniture is going to work for you, if it is going to last, and whether or not it is worth your hard earned dollar.

By avoiding these common pitfalls of furniture shoppers, you can help yourself to have a positive experience.