Fully Furnished

Sofas, beds, mattresses, dining tables, rugs and dressers carry real prices read at the shop that sells them, with the date on every row. Every other category is still sample data.

Where does a furniture budget go that the price tags don't show?

Summary

Mostly into getting furniture into the room and, when something does not work out, getting it back out. The totals on this site's cost page are shelf prices only, before delivery, assembly and tax. Having IKEA carry a table inside and assemble it adds at least $121 before the table itself, and returning a Burrow sofa costs 10% of what you paid, or 20% without the box.

Delivery is its own line

IKEA prices delivery by how far the furniture comes into your home:

  • To the front door or lobby: from $29, depending on distance from the store ($19 for IKEA Family members).
  • Into the room, on a scheduled day: from $69 ($59 for members).
  • Assembly through Taskrabbit: from $52, including anchoring to the wall when the instructions call for it.

Delivery needs a $35 subtotal after discounts, and someone 18 or older has to be home for large items.

Best Choice Products ships free anywhere in the contiguous US, usually in 2 to 5 business days. Two tables with the same price tag can land in your apartment $29 to $69 apart before anyone picks up a screwdriver.

Keep the boxes

Burrow takes returns within 30 days and deducts a return fee of 10% of what you paid, 20% if the original packaging is gone, capped at $250 per item. On a $1,500 sofa that is $150 with the box and $250 without it. Mattresses sit outside that rule with a 100-day trial.

Best Choice Products gives you 60 days, but may refuse a return that comes back without the box, manuals or parts, or that arrives more than 14 days after the return was approved. Article allows returns within 30 days and charges a return shipping fee inside its standard delivery area; its pages do not give the amount.

Flattening the cartons for recycling the day the sofa arrives is how a 10% fee becomes a 20% one.

What you can get back later

IKEA's Buy back & resell program, offered at more than 50 US stores, pays for used IKEA furniture in store credit on an IKEA Refund Card. The piece has to be assembled, fully working and unmodified, and you need a free IKEA Family membership. Sofas and other upholstered pieces, mattresses and anything with glass are excluded.

For someone who moves every year or two, that makes flat-pack shelving and desks from IKEA partly recoverable. The sofa and the mattress have no exit price.

Payment plans change the price itself

The FTC notes that buy now, pay later plans can carry fees for each payment and for paying late, and that with some rent-to-own and lease-to-own plans "you might pay twice as much as you would if you paid with cash." Renting and rent-to-own get their own comparison in the article on furniture rental.

Sources

Run by Kaz, an individual. Published 28 September 2026.