Everybody has my phone and my AirPods, or a model close to them, and that’s fine. I don’t need my AirPods to have a monogamous relationship with me.
Whereas most people don’t even consider attempting to personalise their couch or their car, so the desire for personalisation is satisfied by having a wide variety of options and colours prior to purchase. And also by having styles rapidly evolve so that many “trendy” and “anti-trendy” options are available at the time of purchase.
I wonder how many are like me.
And even in your example people spend a lot of time picking out cases or decorations for those items.
it's called personal style
Monotony and monoculture is not beautiful in some people's opinions. It seems that part of the definition of beauty is exception.
I think most of America’s options are the big warehouse furniture places or an ikea if it near by, they do delivery well.
I couldn’t justify the cost of the furniture I really want. So off to IKEA I go!
And if you have a bit of skill at choosing and assembling IKEA furniture, then you can customise things on the cheap so at least it can look the way you want.
Some do it with grace, some of us with a bit of duct tape. Others, not at all.
The big wardrobes? They are the worst combination of impossibly heavy, awkward to disassemble and expensive to repurchase - best bet is to sell to the next occupant. On the other hand I have a solid table and chairs and they flat pack and reassemble perfectly. Same with bed frames. Shelving units go straight in the van. I wish the office desktops had metal threaded inserts for the legs instead of nylon, but otherwise also have moved several times and no real issue.
Applying care and some wood glue during construction will yield a very solid product for years to come. And you have to have a little bit of taste and discretion when buying, as Ikea indeed has a wide range of quality among their items. Any item that has real wood will definitely last.
I don't think that the good stuff is popular, though, and it certainly isn't highlighted. When a durable (often secretly classic) design slips in, it doesn't last more than a few years. The price is usually too high and it's usually too heavy (for their audience, not for me.)
I've still got some really elementally designed and sturdy mounted shelves from them that I've carried from place to place, and installed and removed many times, for the past 30 years. They were probably discontinued 28 years ago; I couldn't find them in back catalogs and AI couldn't even help. I would have started to doubt that I got them from IKEA except that I have one set of components that is still in the packaging. It's simple steel and simple wood, and the wood (IKEA pretending like a plain flat wooden board is a product) is easily replaceable.
I have to be honest, I don't really value furniture that is heavy for the sake of it. I like hippy-futons, simple wooden tables with drawers and removable legs, transformer chairs*, etc. Being able to be disassembled and easily moved or stored is something I value, and being able to be flattened against a wall so the room can be temporarily reconfigured (a requirement for colonial US furniture) is ideal (double drop-leaf tables are wonderful.) Wood and steel are durable, and simple designs with standard hardware are easily reparable.
[*] https://www.core77.com/posts/58815/Different-Design-Approach...
But then I noticed they had a much better series called the Hemnes made with actual solid wood shelves and legs so you can route power cords and clean under them. Nice.
So instead of a bunch of Billy's for $70 each I ended up with a bunch of Hemnes' for $350 each. We'll see if it's worth it when they get delivered tomorrow.
Sadly, I don't know if it's worth trying to keep them at this point, because they replaced the previously decently durable wood veneer surfaces with glued on wood-pattern paper wraps (https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/ikea-furniture-inflation...). It's lead to me having a mix of old ones that still look like the day I put them together and new ones where all the corners are already visibly raveling from the wear of a single move.