If you’re shopping for furniture I’ve found Room & Board to be head and shoulders above the rest, in both quality and customer care. No questions asked free returns are a godsend.
Nope. All my Room & Board furniture bought 10 years ago turned out to be duds, as I reviewed on Yelp 3 years ago:
Don't be fooled by the glitzy showrooms and "made in America" promises of quality, this chain sells essentially disposable furniture. When we were expecting our first child 7 years ago, we moved from an apartment to a single-family home. We wanted to also upgrade from IKEA and equivalent to proper furniture. I bought some heirloom pieces from Thos. Moser (a dining table, two end-chairs, a coffee table, a rocking chair and two foot stools) but they are quite expensive, and we got many other pieces from Room and Board: a queen bed, nightstands, two dressers, six Thatcher dining chairs, Pisa leaning bookshelves, side tables and a coffee table with rounded angles). Unfortunately after 7 years the furniture turned out to be much less durable than I expected. The finish on the coffee table is worn and ugly, the bed required extensive work even though we only use a mattress, no boxsprings, and the spokes on the Thatcher chairs are coming unglued. A proper Windsor chair like the Thatcher should have "through-holed and wedged" construction that ensures the spokes don't move. The Moser chairs have that, of course, and in retrospect I deeply regret cheaping out. I could have bought 2 buy-it-for-life Moser chairs for the price of the 6 Thatcher chairs that are now essentially kindling. To add insult to injury, Room and Board refuses to stand by their product and are refusing to repair them. In the Bay Area, we've had good luck with Hoot Judkins furniture, which are better quality for the price (not all though, they have a wide range that goes from meh to Amish-grade).
Yeah, Thos. Moser is lovely and rock-solid stuff, but $$$$ and a very specific aesthetic, which you either like or you don’t (we have some Moser stuff in our bedroom, but not in the rest of the house because it’s not a great fit style-wise).
We have Carl Hansen & Son dining table and chairs, which is a considerably more modern look but still very solid (noticeably more so than most DWR stuff), but again, $$$$ and a special order from Europe that took ~16 weeks.
I did get a dresser from Stuart David Furniture in Sacramento, which was outstanding in quality. There are plenty of small furniture companies in the US that take pride in their craft and make excellent wares at reasonable prices (for the quality), no need to go to a chain like Room & Board.
Agreed, we also have some stuff that was handmade for us by local folks on commission at quite reasonable prices. It’s not quite as posh as Thos. Moser, but still very nice.
