Flat pack furniture is meant to be quick and easy to assemble, and make buying easier. The concept of flat-pack is often derided, especially in design aficionado circles. Viewed as cheap and short-term, flat-pack evokes memories of frustrating hours spent assembling complicated pieces of MDF, “assisted” by unintelligible instruction sheets.
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People move a lot more now. There are more divorces. So if you get kicked out in the morning, you can reassemble your table in the afternoon. Despite that, high-end flat-pack furniture options typically remove the stress of assembly and are worthy design investments. With high-end flat-pack furniture designs, there is a clear emphasis placed on quality, aesthetic, flexibility, functionality, price and sustainability.
Flat pack furniture- Your living room shipped in a box and assembled in minutes with no tools.
It’s generally affordable, you can buy it immediately, assemble and dissemble it at will, and you can furniture shop without leaving your couch (or floor, as the case may be). IKEA led the way, we’ll give it that. But other companies have taken flat-pack furniture and made it better: sturdier, sleeker, customizable, and able to survive multiple moves. Lately, these new flat-pack purveyors been coming out of the woodwork. Here are our top of Flat Pack Furniture Companies that Helps You to Upgrade Your Living Room! Enjoy!
Tylko
When it comes to customized online furniture, Tylko takes the cake. Launched last year and backed by startup champ Yves Behar, the Polish furniture company has its own app that allows consumers to tweak the designs of a basic selection of products. Using your smartphone camera, you can test out what the design looks like in your home, all while seeing in real time how the changes affect the price. The selection is limited–all furniture is wooden, and the offerings are basically tables and shelves–but you’ll have a hand in the creation.
Greycork
The Providence-based flat pack purveyor Greycork with an Indiegogo campaign and has been on the up and up ever since. This month, it launched a new site and a complete living room collection . It’s basically a fresher, more stylish, better-quality version of IKEA. It’s also the closest in price to the Swedish behemoth–you can get the entire living room set for $1,700, about half the price of a DWR sofa–but it is made to last five to ten years, with “two to three moves in between.”
Floyd
The Detroit-based furniture company Floyd launched in 2013 with the Floyd Leg, a simple clamp-on metal leg that could transform any slab of wood into a table. Since then, the company has grown to include full-fledged tables, a handy bed, and a shelving unit, but has retained its dedication to simplicity and those clever metal frameworks. Floyd’s products are exciting for their endless potential for reincarnation–with the metal legs and handsome hardware, it’s easy to switch out wood at your whim.
Campaign
Campaign is one of a few startups who want to do for furniture what Warby Parker did for eyeglasses. Leave it to an ex-Apple engineer to rethink not only furniture, but also the system by which it gets to you. Brad Sewell’s e-retailer Campaign was designed to pack flat and fit back into its original cardboard packaging to be shipped via Fedex or UPS for your next move (or slid into your trunk). So instead of shipping your books and kitchen equipment and leaving the furniture for the curb, you can also ship your couch. Right now, the company only offers an armchair and two sofas–and due to overwhelming demand, they’ve sold out until August. But you can still reserve them now.
Hem
This Stockholm-based, predominantly online firm is only two years old but has already won an international following. Hem works with a number of designers and its stock includes plenty of ready-to-assemble marvels.
Price-wise, it’s a far cry from IKEA–sofas top out at about $1,800; coffee tables are around $315–but it’s still a steal compared to DWR, where sofas start at around $3,000.
Both models are robust and practical.
Normann Copenhagen
The company’s new line aimed at the luxury market, the Ace collection by Hans Hornemann, is reasonably priced, and you’d never know that the dining chairs (£349.90), sofas (from £899.90) and footstools (£199.90) were self-assembled. These are sinuously curved and sophisticated pieces, and if you’re looking for an investment piece, this range is the one for you.
Hay
This Danish company has been attracting style-conscious customers since 2002. Its aesthetic is rooted in mid-century Danish design, but Hay isn’t afraid to experiment with new materials and cutting-edge technology – and a touch of quirk. The Woody column shelving system costs from £269, and French designers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec have just created a luxury flatpack sofa and armchair (£1,019) called Can (as in yes, you can DIY if you can afford it).
Ikea
The ritual of assembling Ikea furniture is set to become a thing of the past as the Swedish behemoth introduces products that snap together “like a jigsaw puzzle.”
They start with their Swedish designers finding out how to produce the most functional, beautiful and durable home furnishing imaginable, at the lowest price possible. They don’t design flat packs to sell more but to save more. Flat packs mean optimized loads and fewer transports, which reduces emissions. Their use of recyclable packaging requiring minimal raw material helps, too. That’s how they get even lower prices for you year after year.
Check the instructions before you start! As you start assembly, make sure everything is aligned correctly and placed in the right spot as stated on the instructions. Use a spirit level from the beginning if appropriate to ensure the final product is put together accurately. If, for example, you have four screws or bolts to tighten, do them two at a time and diagonally to ensure the correct tension is achieved and the item remains aligned correctly.
If you get frustrated, take a break! Flatpack assembly can be time-consuming so make sure you (and your assistants) start early in the day, you are also well rested and mentally fresh. Allow several hours and be realistic about how long it can take. As a rule of thumb, allow four to six hours for a wardrobe, which will not only need to be built but also usually secured to the wall. Even a relatively straightforward chest of drawers can take the entire afternoon, especially if you are a flat pack novice. Place the packaging on the floor and use it as cushioning; this will protect the flooring and the furniture from scratches or any other damage. Enjoy!