The Furniture Buying Mistakes I See Most Often, and How to Avoid Them

Almost nobody regrets spending money on furniture. They regret spending it on the wrong thing, and the reasons are surprisingly repetitive.

I see the same handful of mistakes over and over, and almost none of them are about money. People do not usually regret the amount they spent. They regret what they spent it on, and there is a pattern to it.

So this is the honest version, including the times I have told someone not to buy something, and the one thing people think is a mistake that really is not.

Buying the trend instead of the thing you like

This is the biggest one, by a distance, and it is the one that produces the most regret.

Think about what has come and gone just in the last decade or so. Rattan everywhere for a year. Then light woods. Then dark woods. The white tiled floor was enormous and then it very much was not. Every one of those was lovely at the time, and every one of them left people living with a room that had quietly become dated around them. Museums such as the Design Museum exist partly because taste moves, and it moves faster than furniture does.

The distinction I would make is not between trendy and safe. It is between things you are choosing because you love them and things you are choosing because you have seen them a lot recently. If rattan is having a moment and you genuinely, personally love rattan, buy the rattan. You will still love it when it stops being everywhere. If you are buying it because it is the hot thing, you will get bored, and furniture is a slow and expensive thing to get bored of.

Some trends are effectively evergreen, and they tend to be the ones drawn from the natural world. Greens, plums, terracottas, the earthy end of everything. They come round more strongly at some moments than others, but they never really leave, because they were not invented by anybody in the first place.

The costliest mistake: not measuring properly

If the trend mistake is the most common, this is the most expensive, because it is the one that ends with a piece that cannot go where it was bought for.

Showrooms distort scale, including ours. Somebody will look at a sofa here and say it does not seem that big, and of course it does not, because the space around it is enormous and open. Take the same sofa into a real room with doorways and radiators and a route to the kitchen, and it becomes a completely different object.

Renders have the same problem in the other direction. A floor plan or a CGI can be genuinely beautiful, and I understand why people trust them, but a two dimensional image is very different from standing in the room. On paper everything sits flat. In life you feel the hierarchy of a scheme, the way one piece rises above another and a third sits low, and a render simply cannot tell you whether that is working.

Which is why, when I can, I would rather come and measure the space with you than work from a plan. It is not that plans are useless. It is that they are a description of a room, and you are going to live in the room.

What people forget to measure

Here is the part that surprises people. The tape measure is the easy bit. What gets missed is not a dimension at all.

How the room is actually used. Furnishing is not filling. A great many schemes go wrong because somebody worked out what would fit rather than what the room is for and how people move through it.

Position, not just size. The same sofa in the same room can be right or wrong depending on where it faces and what it does to the route through the space.

How many people actually live there, and how you entertain. This is the one I would push hardest on. If you have people over often you need more seating, but more seating does not have to mean a bigger sofa. Two armchairs will frequently do a better job than another metre of sofa, and they give you flexibility a fixed piece never will.

Going too small is a mistake. Going too big is the more common one, and it is worse, because a room you cannot walk through comfortably is a room you quietly stop using.

Choosing pieces in isolation

People fall in love with a piece, on its own, in a photograph, and buy it without ever picturing it beside the other things it will have to live with.

Texture is where this bites hardest. Individually, a bouclé, a heavy weave and a deep velvet can each be gorgeous. Put all three in one room and it can read as heavy, or simply as a mess. The only reliable way to know is to lay the real samples next to each other, in your light, and look at them as a group rather than as a series of separate decisions. Artwork behaves the same way. Something can be extraordinary in a photograph and wrong on the wall it is going to hang on.

The other half of this is comfort. Some pieces genuinely are art objects, and I love them for it. The Manta chair by Arketipo is beautiful and properly architectural, and if that is what you want from it then that is a completely valid reason to buy. What you must not do is buy a sofa the same way. People choose a sofa on looks, get it home, and discover the back is very low and it is not comfortable to sit in for an evening. Looks are a reason. They are not the only reason, and on the piece you use every day they should not be the first one.

Buying the whole matching collection

I will be blunt about this one, because it is the mistake I feel most strongly about. Buying an entire matching set looks like you walked into a brand, closed your eyes, and said you would have that section.

It is worth knowing that this is a deliberate decision in our own showroom. When we were laying it out, the obvious approach was to group everything by brand, and some people do like that. I decided against it. Instead the floor is arranged as rooms, mixing Spanish and Italian pieces together, tied by colour, material and texture rather than by manufacturer. The sections are deliberately different sizes too, so one reads as a generous living room and another as a smaller apartment, because those are different problems.

The point of doing it that way is that I want people to walk in and be able to imagine themselves in it, rather than feeling like they are standing in a showroom. A home put together from one catalogue feels like a display. A home that mixes houses feels curated, and personal, and a bit playful, which is what a home is supposed to feel like.

Mixing across brands genuinely works, and it is easier than people think, because the thing holding a scheme together was never the manufacturer. It is the palette and the materials.

Rushing to play safe

When I am asked what people rush, the answer is not what anyone expects. It is not the expensive decisions. What people rush is the retreat to safety.

Somebody comes in, feels the size of the decision, and reaches for a neutral because a neutral cannot be wrong. It is a completely understandable instinct and it is often the wrong one, because the safe choice is not actually safe. It is just quiet, and quiet is very easy to be indifferent to for the next ten years.

When someone will let me, I would rather slow that decision down and start layering. Colour and texture, not necessarily anything wild, but built up in relationship to each other. People are very often surprised at how much they like the result, and it feels like theirs in a way that the base level neutral never quite does.

And if you do go neutral, which is a perfectly good decision, then the cushions become the place you get to play. Which brings me to the mistake underneath the mistake: treating accessories as an afterthought. They are not the thing you deal with at the end once the real decisions are made. They are part of the scheme, and on a neutral scheme they are doing most of the work.

The times I have told someone not to buy something

It has happened a few times, and it is nearly always the same situation.

Somebody is about to buy an ex display piece because the price is better, and I can see they do not actually love it. They are buying the discount. So I will say so, and suggest we look at a different brand instead and find something they do love, and more often than not they end up with a house they would never have found otherwise.

I understand price coming first. It is completely fair and it is most people’s reality. But here is the thing I have learned about why people choose furniture. The reason you like something is usually a feeling it gives you rather than a set of features, and a feeling can nearly always be found again somewhere else at a different price. If you love a piece and not the price, that is not the end of the conversation. It is the beginning of a better one, because now I know what we are looking for.

The same applies to sets. Somebody will be about to buy something as a package, and it is usually possible to do it better and often for similar money by combining pieces instead. If you want the detail on how the money actually works, that is a whole subject of its own and I have written about what luxury furniture really costs separately.

And the thing that is not a mistake: disagreeing with me

I want to be careful here, because everything above is advice and none of it is a rule.

There are plenty of decisions clients make that I would not make myself, and that is completely fine, because it is not my house. It is theirs. The temptation as anybody creative is tunnel vision, to keep steering until the room matches the version in your own head, and I think that is the actual mistake in this trade rather than any of the ones above.

I am working with a client at the moment whose wallpaper choice I did not agree with at all. Then a cushion came in that I wanted to use, and it tied the whole thing together, and standing in that room I was more excited by it than I had been by my own proposal. Listening got a better result than being right would have.

So take all of this as what it is. Patterns I have noticed, offered so you can avoid the expensive ones. Your taste is not a mistake.

A short checklist before you commit

• Am I choosing this because I love it, or because I have seen it a lot recently?
• Have I measured the room, and thought about how it is used and how people move through it?
• Have I seen the actual samples, together, in my own light?
• Is this piece comfortable, as well as beautiful, given how often I will use it?
• Does this scheme come from more than one place, or does it read as a catalogue?
• Am I choosing the quiet option because I want it, or because I am nervous?
• Have I planned the accessories, or am I leaving them until the end?

If you are working with an interior designer, most of this is what you are paying them to hold in their head. We are a Platinum partner of the British Institute of Interior Design, one of only six, and a good deal of that relationship is exactly this kind of groundwork, and it is worth understanding how designers actually buy furniture before you start. Our trade service covers that side.

Come and sit on it

Nearly every mistake on this list is prevented by the same thing, which is being in a room with the actual object rather than an image of it.

The showroom is in High Barnet, easy from anywhere in North London or Hertfordshire, by appointment seven days a week, and the fabric and finish libraries for Flexform, whose Italian factory alone runs to hundreds of cloths, Bontempi, Meridiani, Porada and the rest are all here to be handled rather than described. Bring your measurements, and a photograph of your floor.

Sit on things for longer than feels polite. That is what it is there for.

Frequently asked questions

What is the most common furniture buying mistake?

Following a trend rather than buying what you actually like. Rattan, light woods, dark woods and white tiled floors have all had their moment and then dated. If you genuinely love something that happens to be fashionable, buy it. If you are buying it because it is everywhere, you will get bored, and furniture is a slow and expensive thing to get bored of.

What is the most expensive furniture mistake?

Not measuring properly, or measuring the room without thinking about how it is used. Showrooms make pieces look smaller than they are because the space around them is so open, and renders flatten a scheme so you cannot feel the hierarchy of it. The result is a piece that does not work where it was bought to go.

Should I buy a matching furniture collection?

I would not. A full matching set reads as a showroom display rather than a home. Mixing pieces from different houses, held together by colour, material and texture, looks curated and personal instead. The thing that unifies a room was never the manufacturer, it is the palette and the materials.

How do I know if a sofa is too big for my room?

Measure, then think about movement rather than fit. A sofa that technically fits but blocks the route through the room will make you use the room less. If you need more seating for guests, two armchairs will often work better than another metre of sofa and give you far more flexibility.

Can I trust a render or a mood board?

Use them, but do not decide from them alone. A render is a two dimensional description of a three dimensional room, and it cannot convey scale in the body or the hierarchy between pieces. Always see the real samples together, in the light of the room they are going into.

Is it a mistake to choose a piece purely because it looks beautiful?

Not always. Some pieces genuinely are art objects and buying one for that reason is entirely valid. The problem is applying it to something you use every day. A sofa chosen only on looks can turn out to have a back too low to sit against comfortably for an evening, and no amount of beauty fixes that.

What if I love a piece but not the price?

Say so. What draws you to a piece is usually a feeling rather than a specification, and that feeling can nearly always be found again in another house at a different price. Buying something you do not love because it happens to be discounted is the version of this that people actually regret.