The problem here is, that expensive doesn't mean quality.
Buying a cheap ikea piece and replacing it in a few years might still be a better choice than overpaying for an expensive piece, that's the same quality as ikea, but with a different tag on it (both 'brand tag' and 'price tag').
Sure, if you move them around a lot or leave them in the sun they will degrade, but just using them as normal they seem to last way longer than you’d think.
A photo fell off the wall and put a rather large hole in a Lack coffee table one time. We were pretty amazed that the photo frame won. It was a $25 table. I could buy many for the price of something nice.
Having small kids around, and seeing how they play, learn to use a fork, etc, I feel like we made the right choice buying cheaper. Plus what kid doesn't want to play at the table mom and dad let them sticker bomb?
Their expensive furniture is good mid-range stuff, the cheap stuff is cheap.
Such as Dwell.co.uk, coincidentally, completely unrelated afaict to OP. They make veneer-grade non-flat-pack furniture (and upholstered stuff) at a mid-high Ikea price. Made similar I think, or any number (including local showrooms) of suppliers of either drop shipped or wholesale manufactured oak+paint-grade, it seems quite common/popular. I have a couple of items from cotswoldco.com for example that have absolutely matching (but differently named) pieces available from an unrelated local independent shop, that I might otherwise assume had a small manufacturing operation too.
The particleboard connections aren't very sturdy.
Also the assembly for ikea stuff is usually perfect.. everything aligns to the last millimeter... which again, I can't say for much more expensive furniture pieces.
And most people can't differentiate between quality (nor should we expect them to!).
"Proper" furniture stores you find in malls and outlets are generally high margin crap. There's lots of soft scams out there.
There's a reason many people go back towards antiques and similar.
It's a few extra dollars and will make the pieces survive a move and just generally feel sturdier. It's not a replacement for "good" furniture but will make the cheap stuff much better.
What? How?
I’ve moved a lot in the last 15 years and always defaulting to ikea for convenience. “Fits together well” isn’t what I’d use to describe their furniture.
Probably because the ikea stuff you bought tend to be particleboard and the "expensive furniture pieces" are solid wood. Solid wood tend to wrap/deform more due to moisture than solid wood, which means even if they're drilled with millimeter precision at the factory they end up not aligning when it reaches your house. From personal experience the solid wood furniture I got ikea were definitely not aligned "to the last millimeter".
Not long ago you could be a good brand an rely on it being good. Now most of them are just charging for the brand and not providing higher quality.
I am in the UK, I have also inherited Sri Lankan furniture from my parents and grandparents and I have lived there as well. The decline in quality is the same in both those countries. I guess it is global.
It wasn't cheap. I believe the coffee table was close to $1,000.
You have to know enough to know who is actually building the good stuff, and who is building good-looking marketing.
The sofa I got had one in-store that was cut in half at all levels, so the construction and materials could all be seen. Any company doing that is probably going to be pretty solid, and if not, it should be obvious.
should but yet online sales of furniture is not a small market
Unfortunately some very comfortable furniture turns out to not be long lasting, as I discovered, even when moderately pricey. Steel frame sofas can bend and break under repeated use because the steel is so thin - if you can bend it by hand, it will fail eventually.
Durability of furniture is harder to measure even if you try it out.
Edit: re-reading almost reads if I'm still at my parent's house couch surfing. I'm not a zillenial. I'm in my place with that furniture from back then.
You can see that from the number of "small brand" insta-entrepreneurs. People will readily shell $80 for the latest trendy item they saw in a sponsored insta-ad, believing they're buying a branded product. In reality, it's the same $20-$30 item sold on TEMU, with a brand name slapped on it.
In furniture, you definitely get what you pay for...or not. I've found anything <$300 is going to be nothing but fake materials like manufactured woods (if not even just veneer covered cardboard) and horrible cushion/fabric.
Anything decent doesn't really start until ~$1k, and anything in the $3k range you mentioned starts to become heirloom quality. As with anything, these are YMMV, but serves as a fast basis for my experience