West Elm furniture

They discount like crazy. I bought a $50 planter from them 6 months ago and I get e-mail from them almost every day offering 20% off. The store is nice enough, but the shop assistants are cold and unhelpful, especially the gay men.

It's very average. Do you like their style? That's the only reason it would be worth buying. I had a pottery barn sofa that was awful & their customer service is even worse trying to get it fixed (took 4 months to get a reply).

The table you posted is just a Room & Board knockoff (who probably knocked it off somewhere else but that's as far as I go back with furniture history).

I like the table from afar, but then I zoom in and it looks cheap. Pottery Barn themselves have good furniture and then they have cheap MDF furniture, but you can tell when you zoom in because it looks too "clean". That table's lines seem too clean for it. With PB it depends on what you're looking at and when I guess. I've never gotten a sofa from PB though. I guess with a sofa you can't see how well it's made because it's hidden under a fabric cover usually (unless you get leather or something).

Oh, and one sign I also use - if the furniture requires mounting so it doesn't fall over, that means it's cheaply made IKEA shit and should be passed. It means the base isn't heavy enough to keep the furniture from tipping over without some sort of wall anchor, which is a sign of cheap materials and corner cutting.

I think if you have a good eye you can do very well there on a budget, especially if you're young and furnishing your first home.

I've bought similar pieces at the far more expensive Room and Board that haven't aged any better. Don't be a snob!

Overpriced. But nice. I use Letgo and find a ton of lightly used West Elm stuff in NYC for relatively cheap.

The people who work there are universally awful, almost every West Elm store has yelp reviews complaining about their rude and condescending staff.

West Elm is mostly cheaply made stuff.

C&B is half a step above them, and Room & Board is a step or two above C&B.

With C&B some of their stuff is well made, and some is crap that's glued together.

West Elm has decent smalls but I've bought a desk and a table from them and both were utter shit.

Their couches are cheaply made and are not comfortable, the fabrics do not wear well. Their stuff is only slightly better than IKEA.

I swear by Flea Market Montgomery

I ordered 2 side tables from them eons ago and I still haven’t gotten them.

West Elm is more about hype and appearance. Quality and function are secondary.

Imagine working there. It's a hateful atmosphere. The stuff is low-rent over-priced crap from hell. I don't recommend it.

[quote] the shop assistants are cold and unhelpful, especially the gay men.

How odd! Usually salesbottoms, especially those working in national chains, are so well known for their warmth and helpfulness!

My God R1 you're so right. Have you been to the Walt Whitman Mall on Long Island? Because that was the exact experience I had with the gay shop assistants there. My partner and I eventually left after being ignored and getting the run around.

Most of that it is all crap and if you shop at decent furniture stores you would know better. Try Mitchell Gold or Roche Bobois and you get a quality product that is worth the price.

I've never heard of those stores, r16, and I suspect they are too expensive for moi.

Mitchell Gold is CRAP sorry

The big scam is Restoration Hardware... the same crap is on Alibaba for pennies

What key words can you use to find RH stuff on Alibaba?!

Wait -- you mean Pottery Barn has a CHEAPER brand?

you might as well buy chinese furniture at Targé

FWI, quality antiques can be had for very good price, sometimes as low priced as catalog stuff. Right now it is a buyer's market.

West Elm is the Stacy Adams of home furnishings - by the short amount of time their furniture disintegrates, the look is over.

R18, please tell us why you think “Mitchell Gold” is crap? Their products are the best, plus I love their progressive company policies. I bought a sofa and two chairs about 13 years ago and they still look great.

Most of Mitchell Golds upholstery furniture is made in other countries and imported, (China).

Is there an East Elm?

the MG website claims all fabrics are US made. R26 are your facts correct or are you just being bitchy??

Many of the headboards were a ton of style for a few quid. They looked remotely Indonesian and Chinese in style, cut-outs, fretwork, etc. Once I saw a Moroccan style one at a charity shop for $35. If it is something whete the finish isn't challenged like a table, or chest of drawers, probably OK. I do not agree it is on par with C&B furniture collection. In the housewares dept. lesser furniture is sold a la IKEA, assembly required, Chinese quality, but the real stuff from the Furniture collection is decent value for money and great style. The sample sales used to be unreal. I purchased a small tray table for bedside use from Vienna, in mahogany for $99. The tray is actually light enough to serve brekkie in bed, unlike many costlier versions where the tray is just too bloody heavy to be practical. Though the tray is veneered, the legs, apron, and small drawer are all solid wood. The drawer is even dovetailed. The finish has mellowed in the sun to a light antique mahogany colour. West Elm is more style over substance.

Mrs. Grenville @ R29, please do keep your labia and food off the bed; we're trying to have butt fun.

I have bought a few things from west elm - it is style over quality.

You are grotty R30, and just another frau hater. I'm all male bitch, all 81/2". Suck it!

Ah, Restoration Hardware with their joyless greige steampunk aesthetic. That place gives me the CREEPS. All the furniture is MASSIVE too. If you don't have a 7000 square foot McMansion don't even bother. A lot of their "distressed" leather looks old, worn out, and ready for the curb. But it is intentional - so I don't feel that bad about my 12 year old leather sofa that looks old and worn out - but naturally so.

What about Bo Concept? It's popular in Europe.

Williams Sonoma (parent company) just announced excellent quarterly earnings.

Keep buying that shit.

They're getting into the hotel business. Crazy.

Hotels are in an interesting collection of cities: Portland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Savannah, Oakland, Minneapolis.

There's something "off" about their aesthetic. It's like the Line Hotel in LA: just kind of ... something's missing or skewed... There's a lot of negative space in their designs that makes things feel sparse and cheap.

R33 I like some of Restoration Hardware's furniture. Mostly their metal and reclaimed wood tables. Pretty well made. Expensive, but they have sales all the time.

West Elm seems to have a lot of Mid Century Modern pieces - their stuff is pretty tasteful and not too expensive. (Helps that the husband works for William Sonoma).

I bought chairs from Structube and they fell apart.

It's solid design and decent construction for its price point. All you people complaining about the quality should go to a higher end store if you want top quality. You'll just have to pay 3 or 4 times the cost. I'm not able to afford a $5000-10,000 sofa but I can afford $1500-2000 which you can get at West Elm. Most of their designs are inspired or knocked off from original designs by very high end furniture designers. It's the same thing as "bridge" collections with fashion. Not everyone can afford Giorgio Armani but might be able to afford Emporio Armani and for the really desperate, Armani xchange.

Peggy is a cunt.

West Elm is cheap and cheerful -- but lots of their stuff is Chinese-made and not especially sturdy. C&B and Room & Board both offer about the equivalent (good) quality at a very fair price; I think they even use some of the same U.S. manufacturers. Mitchell Gold is also solid (they make stuff in the USA and even used to manufacture C&B furniture) but I think their markups are high. Resto H'ware has quality all over the map (they have lots of Chinese-made stuff), their markup is sky-high, and they seem to design furniture for huge rooms no one will ever use. PB has a range of quality (some US made stuff, but lots of Chinese as well) and their prices are mostly decent if you don't mind looking like you live in '90s California. WS Home has very good quality stuff (I think they use the same manufacturer as some of the best C&B things), and their standard fabrics are all of the highest end stuff -- but their markup is huge.

C&b has a lot of their stuff that is made in China. Room & Board is better quality than Crate but it's also more expensive. Crate and Pottery Barn are on par. CB2 and West Elm are their trendier slightly less expensive "diffusion" lines.

Why not stick to Eileen Gray and Le Corbusier?

CB2 is much better.

R44 I like the industrial / reclaimed wood look, that's not the 90s part. West Elm seems to have more MDF stuff than PB but I agree they all have a range of products and you have to read the info panels. PB has a line called PB Apartment that is all cheap IKEA stuff that's focused on storage and smaller footprints and seems to be mostly West Elm quality.

I have an Ethan Allen sofa and cushioned chair, that have held up nicely for 15 years. The sofa gets the most use (a lot, even sleep on it sometimes), and it's very comfortable and still looks good. I don't like their lamps, though. I had three of their lamps, and each one had a problem.. loose fittings, a floor lamp has to have a piece of cardboard under the base to keep it level, and overall bad quality. The furniture is nice, and I think it's USA made.

Ethan Allen furniture is soaked in dangerous flame retardant, VOC's, PFC's, Formaldehyde, and hundred of other chemicals R49. I'm sure you sleep great on it.

West elm is the best looking for the price, but there are a lot of stories like the above Peggy sofa, or "marble" peeling off side tables. Target has some nice-looking things every season that are probably the same quality. IKEA is just ugly.

Don't most furniture places use the same Chinese factories anyway?

Most of the furniture stores just resell lamps from some bigger wholesaler. They might customize bits for their lines. Each piece can have its own story.

The two gay dudes who work in the West Elm store at Walt Whitman Mall on Long Island, a black one and a white one, made sure I'd never go back into one of their stores by keeping us waiting and ignoring us. I drove a good 45 mins to get there because i saw two pieces that I like on their website. So I got my partner to go with me to look. The pieces I wanted to look at were not in the store. I asked the black one about one of the pieces and he cut me off before I could finish by hollering that he was busy with another customer. The white one acted as if no one was in the store, steered clear of us and never acknowledged us. The furniture seems to made with crap materials and doesn't seem like it's long lasting. Eventually after a 30-45 minute wait, and being completely ignored, never approached by either, we left. I'll never go back. Complete waste of time.

Get made in the USA and locally made wooden furniture if you can find it and afford it.