Now that I said what is the current fashion trend on interior decorating, if you want to save a lot of money you can go out of date and get the dark and medium browns, blacks and dark blue furniture cheap. Getting out of date furniture colors especially in the unwanted medium and dark brown colors can be done super inexpensively by going to 5-10 estate sales in the area. The wood itself is not going to be bad, but when Aunt Esther dies no one wants her ugly brown cabinets or dinner table. So estate sales are the PERFECT place to get a lot of really well built and sturdy cabinets, tables, dressers, etc... for literally pennies on the dollar. I’ve seen ornate and intricately carved teak desks that would go for thousands if bought new go for a $100 or $200 (including one I bought). Unlike the tv shows, estate sales aren’t usually a good place to get jewellery or other quicksale high end items as the family usually takes anything good. But it’s a GREAT place to get ultra cheap furniture, Christmas and Halloween decorations, tools and dining sets.
If you’re industrious, you can strip the old ugly brown furniture down to the bare wood and restain and poly it back up to current standards. So maybe $100-250 per piece from an estate sale plus $50 in stain and poly and five to ten hours of your hard work. If your less industrious but still want to be cheap you can sand off any poly or lacquer and then just paint the furniture as well. I actually enjoy doing it, so I’ve saved a ton over the years by redoing estate sale furniture as well as buying unstained furniture and staining and polying it myself. And of course you can always both cheap out AND laze out and just go with the out of date brown woods as they are.
There’s really only two furniture pieces I do not get from estate sales as I want them new. Couches/puffy chairs and beds. Those I usually buy brand new every five or so years as you don’t want butt imprints in them, sags or droops. Hardwood furniture, I always go estate sales or consignment shops (another great place to get cheaper furniture), but for sofas, puffy chairs and beds I only get new.
So as far as where to get new sofas and puffy chairs cheaply...if you’re going with ugly brown woods unaltered I’d suggest Big Lots...seriously. They have a lot of really nice brand new and cheap couches and chairs made by name brand company’s like Ashley they’re just a couple of years out of date. So you can find all kinds of brown, dark blue and black couches and chairs for just a couple hundos. While most of my Panama City Facility was done in current colors, in the large entertainment lounge where I’ve got three big screen TVs and a bunch of sectional couches along with board game tables, foozeball and indoor shuffleboard table, I went with Big Lots furniture and used the lightest brown sectional they had (ALMOST light enough to be modern) and some dark blue adult sized 6 ft bean bags. It’s not modern but it’s very comfy and very sturdy stuff.
Finally a word of caution on the online furniture sales. There’s a lot of scam sites that pop up prominently on Google and Safari searches like Appliancesconnection, furnitureetc, Colemans, classyhomes and more that have prices that are too low to be believed (and you shouldn’t). It’s a long con scam where they let you check out with the furniture, then a few days later or even weeks say they’re sold out but have something more expensive that’s similar or even just the “new model”. Then try to double their money and if you try to cancel they refuse. I’d stick to safe and reliable companies like Wayfair, Hayneedle, Houzz, Overstock, Amazon, Target, BestBuy and Walmart for appliances, furniture and electronics.
