Anyone moving into a new home or refreshing a room faces the same question: buy a ready-made set from a shop, or have furniture made to measure? Both routes have their supporters, and both are right in certain situations. The decision should rest on the real conditions of the room, the household and the timeline rather than habit or advertising.
Where ready-made furniture is strong
The biggest advantage of ready-made furniture is speed. If an item is in stock, it can be delivered within days. In addition:
- You can see the piece in person before buying, sit on it and open the drawers.
- In rooms of standard size, with straight walls and an ordinary ceiling height, a ready-made set fits without trouble.
- For a rented flat or a short stay, furniture that can easily be replaced makes more sense.
- Freestanding items — chairs, coffee tables, armchairs — usually offer more choice ready-made.
The limits of ready-made furniture
Problems begin when the room departs from the standard. A ready-made wardrobe stops short of the ceiling, leaving a gap that gathers dust. The wall length does not match the sum of two modules, and an unusable strip is left at the end. A window sill, radiator, column or out-of-true wall makes a set hard to fit.
On top of that, the materials and hardware of ready-made furniture have been chosen by the manufacturer. In a shop it is not always possible to find out which board the carcass is made from or which brand the hinges are, and colour options are limited to a few.
When made-to-order furniture pays off
Furniture made to individual measurements comes into its own in cases such as:
- Wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling wardrobes, media walls and bookcase systems, where every centimetre of space counts.
- Kitchens: appliance sizes, water and power points and the window position differ in every home.
- Rooms with attic slopes, niches, columns or non-standard corners.
- Children's rooms, where a platform, bed, desk and storage need to be planned as one system.
- Special household needs: many pairs of shoes, sports equipment, musical instruments, work equipment.
With made-to-order furniture, carcass and front materials, decor, hardware and interior layout can each be chosen separately. That also means more control over quality.
Time and planning
The main cost of ordering is time. Measuring, agreeing the design, production and installation take longer than buying something off the shelf. If renovation is under way, this is hardly a problem: measurements can be taken once the walls are ready, with the furniture arriving as the renovation finishes. If the moving date is close, the order can be split into stages — kitchen and wardrobes first, other rooms later.
Ready-made furniture has hidden time costs too: searching the shops, finding a model that fits, and sometimes waiting for delivery from another city or country.
The chance of moving house matters too. A wardrobe or kitchen built to fit a particular wall or niche often will not go into a new home in the same form; it has to be dismantled, shortened or reconfigured. Freestanding ready-made furniture simply moves with you. If a move is planned within a few years, that is a serious argument. In a home you intend to live in for a long time, the advantage of furniture fitted exactly to the space outweighs this concern.
Practical questions for the decision
Before choosing, answer these questions:
- Is the room a standard size, or does it have niches, a sloping ceiling or columns?
- How many years will the furniture be used in this home?
- Is making the most of the space important, or is a little leftover gap acceptable?
- Must the furniture line up precisely with other items, appliances, windows and doors?
- How much time is available?
A mixed approach
In many homes the most balanced result comes from combining the two. Furniture that is fixed to walls and depends on dimensions — kitchen, wardrobes, media wall, children's room system — is made to order. Freestanding items — chairs, armchairs, occasional tables — are bought ready-made. In that case the decor of the made-to-order furniture is coordinated in advance with the colours of the ready-made pieces.
Zaferoglu Mebel produces made-to-measure furniture for kitchens, bedrooms, living rooms, nurseries and wardrobes. It is best to decide which pieces to have made and which to buy ready-made after the room has been measured.
