The trend of personalized customization is becoming increasingly popular, which has freed people's thinking from being limited to purchasing ready-made furniture, and more and more people prefer tailor-made furniture. Although custom furniture is good, not all furniture needs to be customized. For novice decorators, they blindly pursue the unconventional effect of custom furniture while ignoring issues such as practical application and subsequent maintenance. Today, we are going to talk about the misunderstandings people fall into when it comes to custom furniture.
Misconception 1: Custom furniture is great, so let's get all furniture customized!
1. Can all furniture be customized?
Not all furniture can be customized. Customized products are mainly for users who have difficulties in space utilization, have personalized needs for storage, or require sizes different from the standard fixed sizes. A typical example is the wardrobe/walk-in closet. Only custom furniture can better cover beams and columns and make better use of upper space. For furniture that is not sensitive to space dimensions, such as sofas, coffee tables, and chairs, as well as furniture with relatively fixed sizes and little variation, such as beds and tables, ready-made products are a better choice.
Since ready-made furniture are products of the same style, specification and material, factories can produce them in large quantities. In terms of raw material cost, process cost, quality control cost and later installation cost, the relative cost is lower than that of custom furniture. (Relative cost refers to the proportion of these links in the ex-factory price). Custom furniture is split, cut, produced, trial-assembled and installed on an order-by-order basis. Each order is different, so mass production on an assembly line is impossible. Therefore, custom furniture is more expensive in terms of price. To give a simple example, in the market, the custom cost of an ordinary 1.5-meter panel bed will not be lower than 1500 yuan. A 1.5-meter ready-made bed with similar material and style can be bought for 1000 yuan.
2. Can custom furniture be designed any way the customer wants?
Customization does not equal arbitrariness, and it does not mean that it can be made however the owner whimsically wants. Current customization generally refers to that users can freely choose materials, colors, lines, adjust lines, plan space, decorations, hardware, etc. based on the existing processes. If users design new styles by themselves that meet production conditions, that is another story. Even if you have thousands of ideas, you still have to design in accordance with production standards, and the manufacturer can only produce based on that. In fact, custom furniture is similar to building with blocks. For example, when customizing an American solid wood wardrobe, you select the material + select the color + select the door panel shape + select the line shape + select the Roman column shape + select other decorations + select the internal space utilization plan + select the hardware accessories, and basically the entire wardrobe is formed. The product cannot break free from the constraints of the factory's existing processes and existing shapes, unless you have a sufficient budget to pay the manufacturer to develop a new style, which of course will cost a lot.
3. Is integral furniture the same as custom furniture?
They are not equivalent. Integral furniture provides an overall home design plan, supervises the implementation of details during construction, and then provides customized furniture services as needed after the design is completed. Moreover, integral furniture not only includes the simple customization of wardrobes, bookcases and the like, but also includes other ready-made products.
Conclusion:
For those who have high requirements for space utilization and storage, it is recommended to choose custom furniture. For example: owners who need cabinets, wardrobes, walk-in closets, shoe cabinets, entrance cabinets, full-wall bookcases, or cannot buy ready-made furniture with appropriate sizes. For those who have high requirements for design and style, and need furniture with fixed sizes that are not sensitive to space, it is recommended to choose ready-made furniture. For example: sofas, chairs, coffee tables, beds, desks, etc; if you care more about affordable prices and don't care much about space utilization, you can even choose ready-made wardrobes, shoe cabinets and so on.
Misconception 2: The earlier and more custom furniture is planned, the better
1. Confirm custom furniture before decoration?
Generally speaking, designers will advise owners to decide on the choice of custom furniture after most of the decoration is completed. Some users often start customizing products after the rough decoration is completed in order to speed up the process. However, the overall style of the actual finished decoration is very important for the selection of furniture, so it is better to complete the basic overall decoration before ordering custom furniture.
2. You need to install cabinets in every space when customizing
Cabinet products are the mainstream of custom furniture, but this trend has gone a bit too far now. Nowadays, not only owners of small apartments, but even customers with large flats over 200 square meters, or even over 300 square meters, will emphasize all kinds of storage, not allowing any blank area in the home, and fill everything with cabinets, cabinets and more cabinets... Having enough storage space is a good thing, after all, you always have a lot of things to put when you live in a home. However, overcrowding and cramped moving lines run counter to the original intention of custom furniture. Imagine a bedroom that should have been simple and fresh, but it is fully filled with cabinets. Even to make room for more cabinets, you have to choose a 1.5-meter bed, which affects the quality of daily life. Secondly, most custom furniture are fixed-installation furniture. Once installed, it is difficult to remove. It is very troublesome if you want to move the position or replace it, and it will cause relatively great damage to the original cabinet. If one day you want to redecorate the house or adjust the function of the room, it will be very painful — and cabinets that are individually designed according to the specific space dimensions will have the problem of not being able to fit or being unsuitable when placed in another space. Lack of flexibility can be regarded as an insurmountable disadvantage of custom furniture.
3. Since it's customized, let's have the same color and style!
When customizing whole-house furniture, many users like to make them in a unified color and style, which is convenient and appears to have a unified style. This is especially preferred by owners who don't know how to match. But in fact, for products like solid wood customization, having the same furniture throughout the whole house is a terrible thing. Furniture planned this way will make the space lose layering and even make people feel depressed.
What owners want is actually very simple, that is the feeling of being integrated. But being integrated does not mean that the same color occupies most of the space. You can ask a designer for help with color matching.
Conclusion:
For custom furniture, enough is enough. Storage and harmony should also be treated rationally. Trust your own vision and the designer's professionalism, and don't go "too overboard".
Misconception 3: For custom furniture, I put forward my requirements, and the designer handles everything!
1. Exhibition hall effect ≠ actual effect
Many users choose custom parameters through exhibition halls or 3D displays. However, there is still a big difference between the display effect in the exhibition hall and the actual effect. The exhibition hall has no restrictions on layout, spacing and floor height, which leads to the difference in effect. You don't have to force the exhibition hall effect in actual construction. What matters is that it fits your own house.
2. For custom furniture, you just need to put forward requirements, and leave everything else alone
At present, custom furniture designers are not yet a very mature and perfect profession. Many of them are transformed from interior designers. To put it bluntly, most of them do not understand ergonomics, nor do they understand the different storage needs of different customers. To save time and improve efficiency, they basically just modify the size of several sets of templates to complete the design.
Everyone's number of items, storage habits, movement patterns are all different, so how can several sets of templates meet everyone's needs? For example, a young couple wants more hanging areas in the wardrobe. They are often in a hurry and pursue efficiency, so the wardrobe needs reasonable and clear partitions; while the elderly are more used to folding clothes and using chests of drawers. Their waists and legs are not as flexible as young people's, so the use should be as easy as possible, reducing the situations of lowering the head, bending over and reaching deep. Another example is kitchen cabinets. If you don't put forward requirements, they will basically design them according to a height of 80 centimeters — but if you are a 1.9-meter-tall person, this will be very inconvenient.
Generally, before officially signing the contract for custom furniture, there will be a meeting with the designer. You can sort out the customization needs of your family in advance: how many clothes, pants, shoes, books and other items you have, what habits you have for placing and accessing them respectively, and you must describe these details to the designer in detail. After that, the designer will make the plan and hand it to you for review. You need to check it carefully at this time and don't miss any details. Put forward all your questions to the designer in time, see how the designer explains, and listen to how the designer incorporates your needs into the plan.
3. Focus on flashy appearance and ignore rationality!
When choosing custom furniture, the increase and decrease of all materials should conform to the design principle. You should refer to the designer's advice and consider support, practicality and function. You cannot show off your personality only by your own will and should pay attention to rationality.
Conclusion:
If you need custom furniture, you should try to participate in the design as much as possible, so as to ensure that the furniture is suitable and practical. Of course, you should also note that not all the needs you put forward are reasonable, and you should also listen to the designer's opinions. In short, in the process of communicating with the designer, you should not only state your aesthetic preferences, but also consider more actual needs.
Misconception 4: After the custom furniture is designed, you just hand it over to the manufacturer and wait for it to be installed.
1. Leave everything to the manufacturer without any management
This is the practice of many lazy people, and it is also the practice that causes many bad follow-up problems. Users of custom furniture should have such an awareness: respect the professionalism of the manufacturer, but at the same time pay attention to supervision and construction coordination, and follow up and communicate to make adjustments at any time. For example, edges that cannot be closed, openings that cannot be covered, nail holes that cannot be blocked, and lines that cannot be installed flat no matter what. As the saying goes, a small difference can lead to a huge mistake, and all this will show up during installation. For example, if the internal corner is not exactly 90 degrees, the cabinet cannot be installed flat against the wall, and there will definitely be a large gap between the side vertical plate and the wall. Aijia Jiang has encountered a case before: for a 1.7-meter-wide cabinet, the gap between the back panel of the left cabinet and the wall reached 4 centimeters.
Some owners think that the gap doesn't matter, it's just not good-looking, and they can block it with a side panel. But what if it is a wall cabinet installed with expansion screws or hanging codes? A gap means that the expansion nail cannot fit closely, and the stress is very unstable. If something goes wrong, it will fall off and hit people. If the kitchen wall is uneven, it is even more troublesome. The gap is difficult to fill with glass glue, and it is very likely that the cabinet factory/countertop factory needs to send someone to take a sample and modify the product, which will cost a lot more money.
What if the ceiling is uneven? In other spaces with suspended ceilings or flat ceilings, it may be solved by trimming with an internal corner line. But what about the wardrobe in the bedroom? The wardrobe usually has a top line or a closing board. The installer will grind it on site according to the slope of the top surface and then barely install it. The problem is that you can still see it is sloped. There is another problem: if the wardrobe has a paint finish, the paint surface is likely to be damaged and fall off during the grinding process. What can you do then? You have to send it back to the factory to repaint.
There is also the problem of the wall. Nowadays, many homes arrange wall cabinets to get more storage space. The installation of wall cabinets needs to be fixed on the wall, and the common method is to drill and install expansion anchors for fixing. However, when many homes renovate water and electricity, slots are cut on the wall to bury wires and pipes, and there are also pipes pre-buried by the developer, which leaves huge hidden dangers for the installation of wall cabinets. If the electric drill breaks the pipe when drilling for the expansion anchor, it is not a problem that can be easily solved. There are also walls made of hollow bricks, which do not have load-bearing capacity. Even if it is barely installed at the time, it is difficult to ensure that there will be no problems in long-term use in the future. As for light partition walls made of gypsum board or partitions made of blockboard, they look like walls from the outside, but they can only hang a TV at most, and it is impossible to install cabinets on them.
2. Do not carefully check the clauses of the custom contract
After confirming the custom furniture, you must check the contract terms clearly. The content should be as detailed as possible, including the rights and obligations of both parties, payment method, installation process, warranty service promised by the manufacturer, after-sales service, etc. Special attention should be paid to the data related to material thickness, the material used for the product, installation method, delivery time and after-sales service.
3. There are no strict requirements for different types of work
Custom furniture is actually related to all aspects of rough decoration, such as metope, ground, door, skirting line and so on. Various types of work should be strictly required during installation and construction to avoid damaging the original basic decoration and even the safety of the house.
Conclusion:
Don't think that custom furniture is independent. It is just a link in the entire decoration, and it cannot exist independently. It needs to match all projects such as the wall, metope, top surface, ground, skirting line, door, door pocket and so on. Therefore, for the completion and presented quality of the entire decoration, you must strictly require various types of work during the basic decoration, and at least ensure that the lines are straight and the internal and external corners are 90 degrees. In addition, during the water and electricity transformation project, it is better to take photos at any time to record the position, direction and nodes of the pipes and wires. If there is a newly built wall, be sure to confirm the material of the wall. For the original wall, you should consult the developer/property about the structure, material and load-bearing capacity of the wall to ensure that it has sufficient strength to fix wall cabinets, shelves and other items.