Ikea Furniture Stores

Shopping at an Ikea furniture store can be daunting. The multi-level shopping center usually has a confusing assortment of showrooms, circuitous pathways, and an interesting checkout process. To make things even more hectic, Ikea is usually full to the brim with people trying to find furniture, enjoying a free breakfast, or just killing time while dreaming of a new space.

Shopping at an Ikea Furniture Store

Ikea furniture stores generally begin with a 2 story atrium filled with shopping bags, maps, and little golf pencils with IKEA printed on them. At a minimum, bring the pencil and map along before you hop on the escalator. The enormous plastic shopping bag is about the size of a carpet bag and is useful for decor items, but those items are usually found toward the end of your shopping experience on the first floor.

If you're in the process of free flow Ikea furniture store shopping, you may want to forget the pencil and simply use a camera phone to take pictures of the items you are interested in. It's earth-friendly, super-convenient, and a lot less awkward than trying to find a flat surface to write on. This is especially important if you are in an Ikea furniture store on the weekend, as it will be packed with people. It's also a great way to remember what you originally saw when it becomes time to check out.

Ikea Furniture Store: First Stop, Second Floor

One of the first oddities you will notice at an Ikea furniture store is that you are immediately ushered onto an escalator that brings you to the second floor of the building. Unlike American furniture stores, which put the high-priority showcases on the ground floor and resign less important buys like recliners and closeout furniture to the second floor, Ikea furniture stores put all of their showrooms on the second floor.

At the end of your unusually long escalator ride, you'll usually find another greeter, and a winding path ahead of you. While Ikea isn't built the same everywhere, you'll generally find mock rooms on the outer edge of the walkway, and a general furniture floor like you would find at Staples or Office Depot on the inside edge. The second thing you may notice is that there is no stock in the showroom, meaning that these pieces of furniture are display only. Each piece of furniture has a large tag that displays price, options, and location. This is the most important information to keep, on your map or your camera phone, if you want to purchase Ikea furniture.

Getting Lost in the Ikea Furniture Store

Our first big tip is derived from the second oddity that you will experience at an Ikea furniture store: the confusing maps, hidden shortcuts, cluttered merchandising and loads of people will make you feel like you're being rushed. Many Ikea shoppers get a claustrophobic "herd" mentality and move with the people around them, subconsciously feeling like they might get lost inside the store with no point of reference.

If this happens to you, it is likely that you will walk past items you would have been very happy with because you simply didn't take the time to look. While this helps Ikea run people through their store at a fever pitch and capitalize on impulse buys, I'm sure they are more interested in having their customers take their time and make purchasing decisions that they'll be happy with for years to come. Wander through the store 2 to 3 times, and not always in the "forward" direction. Don't worry, there are no Ikea furniture store police to put you in jail for not following the arrows (I bet they'd call it ALKE TRAAZ in Ikea speak).

After your first or second round through the store, sit at the cafe and look at your list. If you're still having a hard time making a decision, revisit the display models one more time before heading downstairs.

Ikea Furniture Store: First Floor Home Decor

You may have noticed end caps on the second floor filled with decorative lamps, cutlery sets, place mats, wall art, and a bevy of other items ready for you to take home provided you remembered to bring a blue bag upstairs.

Descending to the first floor, you'll be greeted by an extensive selection of these home decor products, including some more offbeat items like tea lights, bathroom rugs, and more. The first floor of an Ikea Furniture Store is essentially a discount store of decor and accessories like you might find in a Bed Bath and Beyond. You'll also notice that shopping carts are available on the first floor, so don't hesitate to grab one. You'll find amazing values in kitchenware, pillows, softgoods, and even flooring.

Our second big tip: Don't Ikea shop alone if you can help it. Bringing along a buddy is not only a lot more fun, as you are likely to spend at least 90 minutes in an Ikea furniture store trip, but also useful. Often, the furniture selections upstairs need a flat cart, like the ones at Home Depot. Your decor purchases will go into a standard shopping cart, so having two people to power two carts is a good idea.

Ikea Furniture Store: Self Service

After decor shopping, you'll find yourself in an enormous warehouse space. This area contains the unassembled counterparts of the furniture you saw on the second floor. Each of the aisles is marked with a number, and each aisle also contains dozens of bins. Remember the numbers on the price tags upstairs? Those correspond to the aisle and bin numbers of the knocked-down furniture.

Have your Ikea furniture store shopping buddy help you load your flatbed cart with your furniture. Remember that some items come in two or more boxes, so be sure to read the bin tag thoroughly. Self service items are designed to be light enough for you to handle alone, so don't fret if you made the trip solo.

The really heavy items at an Ikea furniture store are called counter serve items. Counter serve items are represented by a tag or ticket that you will need to find an Ikea furniture store employee to buy. They'll be wearing yellow and blue, and waiting to help you. Let them know what you are interested in, and they will print out a special bar-code for you if it is still in stock. You will provide that bar-code to your cashier when checking out, and then be prompted to a desk that arranges loading or delivering said Ikea furniture.

Coming home from the Ikea Furniture Store

Remember that items that you buy at the Ikea furniture store are virtually always unassembled. This means that you'll likely invest an hour or more on large pieces to ensure that you have it assembled with eternal rigidity. While this European idea makes it easier to fit Ikea furniture in your car, it's still a good idea to bring a big-as-America pickup truck or SUV to take your furniture home. If that's not a possibility, be sure to bring a friend who has a car with lots of room in their trunk, or boot if you're truly getting into the European spirit of things.