Furniture shops?

Does anyone have any advice regarding places to look for furniture---namely sofas and a mattress/bed.

We've looked around town at some places that either weren't our style or way out of budget---Habitat, John Lewis, that sort of thing.

IKEA is a huge trek from Norwich so that's out of the picture and I haven't heard many good things about the quality of furniture from Argos--but we're certainly budget-minded, especially since we're not sure this move is permanent.

We'll be casing out some local "chain-y" type places tomorrow--DFS, Harvey's, Furniture Village...

Hi there,

You've pretty much covered most of the options already, but I was going to mention the local discounter type places, and Ebay.

Local Discounters - usually found in most large towns and cities, often advertise in the local paper as well. Pro's are that you can pop around to see them and have a look at the goods etc etc. Con's are limited choice and range as as soon as they're out of a range, they can't guarantee it'll come in again as they'll be buying from wholesalers or end of line discounted items etc.

Ebay - lots of choice here and plenty of bargains. Sometimes, you'll be astounded at what you can pick up, but usually you need to know quite a bit about the product and also to compare on the exact same thing as what you may find in Furniture village or John Lewis etc. For instance, about 18 months or so ago we had the need for a full kit out of furnishings etc. The bed was one end of line, in one of the big chains at like £1800 full retail (Super King size) and was obtained off ebay, delivered for around £550. Sofa, was around £699 from Argos I think and was delivered for £279. Cons are you often can't 'see' the goods - however some furniture Ebay sellers do have premises, so lookout for those guys.

hope this helps, Cheers, DtM! West London & Slough UK!

I don't have any answers, unfortunately, but am very interested in people's responses as well since I'm about to move.

One thing I will say is to keep in mind that the furniture in Homebase is the same that's available in Argos. I've only bought one piece of cheap furniture from Argos and it's okay, but I know it will need replacing far sooner than some of my IKEA stuff.

Furniture shopping has been a bit of a headache for us.  I'm sure 99% of it is just not knowing where to shop, but we haven't found a lot of middle ground between Ikea and unaffordable (and since we're in central London, it's heavy on the unaffordable).  In the end, we got a mattress from John Lewis and almost everything else in our apartment is from Ikea. 

I got most of my furniture from the local Gumtree site.

We'll be casing out some local "chain-y" type places tomorrow--DFS, Harvey's, Furniture Village...

We got our sofas from Furniture Village last year and are very happy with them. Initially, we went to DFS but I didn't think they had anything nice at all! It all seemed very garish and not our style in the least. Furniture Village was slightly more expensive (but still affordable) and much nicer.

Yes, I'd have loved to furnish our house from top to bottom at John Lewis but, sadly, that wasn't in the budget. 

We got a very nice semi-custom made sofa from Multi York. Don't know how their prices would compare now.

I used to love the Sofa Workshop, but they were too expensive and they went bust ages ago. We got some of our furniture from Next, but boycotted them as their delivery service was sh*te. We've always had problems finding furniture that we like. I seem to remember we sat on the floor in the living room for a year when we first moved back before buying something.

Yes, I'd have loved to furnish our house from top to bottom at John Lewis but, sadly, that wasn't in the budget. 

Same here. Lovely stuff, but we do not have enough money, I'm afraid. 

It would be so nice not to have hand-me-downs after 36 years of marriage 

We have several bookcases from Argos, and our bed.  I find the quality reasonably good for the price.  We've got some tables from IKEA as well, and I don't notice much difference in terms of quality. 

We find a bed this morning so now we've just got to settle on some sofas. To be honest, I wasn't impressed with any of the sofas we saw at DFS, Furniture Village or Harvey's. They seemed to be either junky, or look like something that fits into an huge American-style rec room (what happened to this idea that European furniture was "tiny" in comparison to US styles??), or too formal for our tastes. So we'll keep plotting along!

I did see a couple things I liked at Next, so I'm sad to hear of their delivery issues. Honestly, that trip down to Ikea is looking better and better.

Thanks for the advice 

I just browsed through the John Lewis website based on previous comments. I agree the prices seemed high. Maybe the online view doesn't do the pieces justice, but I didn't see sofas or dining sets that made my heart beat fast enough to start saving up.

I've used Ikea before. I like its simplicity and clean lines (assembly not so much); that and my daughter loves their Swedish meatballs. The only thing about Ikea furniture that I don't like, is that you can spot an Ikea piece the minute you see it. I'd prefer a little mystery in my furniture choices; just not super expensive mystery!

So if I end up trekking once again to Ikea, it means I'll be off to the hunt for little shops that sell the odd bits of pillows, throws, a one-off chair, an artsy light fixture. The goal is to change that, "just off the back of the truck," look into something personal and more interesting. I enjoy wandering around looking for these kind of shops. Well, except that it's time consuming, and way too easy to get side-tracked and go over budget. I always seem to think that spreading the buying out over time lessens the cost somehow.....

We bought a really great sofa at Harvey's last year for a REALLY good price! We'd been searching for a good one in our budget for ages, and I finally found *the one* when we took a trip to Harvey's. We had to get a 2-seater due to size restrictions, but the 3-seater was only about 400 pounds, and really nice.

Dwell is a great shop - I don't know really if they're located all over the UK but there are several in London.
http://www.dwell.com/
My honey has furnished almost all of his home from here - and although it isn't *entirely* my taste as it's a bit modern looking and I'm a fan of antique-y and plush - it's better than most other stores I've seen.
Lombok is reeeeally terrific, though a bit pricy!
http://www.lombok.co.uk/