How to Buy the Best Furniture for Cheap

Need new furniture but don't have a lot of money to spend? With a few simple tips, you can learn how to use Craigslist to find the best furniture for cheap.

Learn which furniture brands offer the best value, comfort and durability, the same knowledge designers use every day to create beautiful, functional homes for their clients.

Then use that knowledge to scour Craigslist for quality furniture for your home at just cents on the retail dollar.

I'll share photos of the furniture in my current home, all of which, with just a few exceptions, I found and purchased on Craigslist.

In the end, you'll have everything you need to know how to use Craigslist to find designer furniture for your home!

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Have you (or someone you know) ever bought furniture (on Craigslist or anywhere else) only to get it home and realize it's the wrong size for the space? That's because most people have difficulty visualizing how furniture will actually look in their home.

So, before you buy any furniture on Craigslist, take time to use this handy planner, with its 1/4" scale room outline and many furniture sizes and styles, to determine what size furniture will fit in your room.

It's much easier to pick up and move the little repositionable furniture pieces than pushing and shoving around full-size sofas and chairs!

Have you successfully used Craigslist to buy furniture?

If you don't use Craigslist to shop for furniture, why not?

Swaim uses kiln-dried hardwood frames that have been doweled, glued and screwed together, with corner support blocks added for further frame reinforcement.

These features keep the frame intact and tight, so there's no creaking, sagging or shifting.

The cushions are supported with eight-way hand-tied springs, which ensure a comfortable 'sit'. The single seat cushion is prevented from popping up or shifting out of place by means of clips sewn securely into either end of the cushion's bottom and snapped into place through corresponding rings sewn into the sofa decking.

This Swaim sofa would retail for $5000-$6000, depending on fabric and length. Better sofas often come in various lengths or can be made to a custom length.

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Swaim offers many wood finishes to accent and complement their upholstered furniture, including more than a dozen types of leaf finishes: gold leaf, silver leaf, topaz leaf, bronze leaf, to name just a few.

Swaim is one of the few remaining furniture manufacturers who do handcrafted leaf finishes, which is another of the many reasons why their furniture is so sought after by designers for their clients.

Swaim's quality and attention to detail to each piece of upholstered or case goods furniture starts from the inside frame and is carried through to the finish applied to the outer trim.

Each piece of Swaim furniture is an original work of art!

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When shopping for leather furniture, be sure you're buying a full-grain or top grain leather, not bonded leather.

Full grain leather refers to hides that have not be sanded or buffed to remove imperfections. The grain is breathable and acquires a desirable 'patina' over time. High quality leather furniture is made with full grain leather hides. Full grain leather is the best leather quality.

Top grain leather has been 'split' to produce a thinner, more pliable result, which is less breathable than full grain leather. Top grain leather is the second best leather quality.

Bonded leather is made by shredding scraps of leftover leather, then bonding them back together with polyurethane binders attached to a fiber sheet. The fiber sheet is often nothing more than a thin layer of flexible foam. Much less expensive that full grain or top grain leather, bonded leather's durability varies, depending on how much or how little actual leather is used in the process, which can be anywhere from 10% to 90%. A common complaint of bonded leather is that it can 'delaminate' or break off the fiber sheet in small bits and pieces, revealing the foam backing.

Lexington all-leather ottomans retail from $800-$1200, depending on the leather and decorative detailing.

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My Swaim sofa and pair of chairs were the first three pieces of Craigslist furniture I bought for our current condo.

They came from the formal living room of a Gulf-front home in SW Florida, where they were rarely used. The owners were downsizing and planned to use their less formal family room furniture for their new home and had no room for their Swaim pieces.

Their loss, my gain.

The Swaim sofa came in at 95" long, a bit longer than I was looking for, but fine for our situation, as our condo's living room is quite large and can accommodate it and the chairs, while still leaving room for a dining set.

My Swaim sofa has a straight front, not the serpentine (curvy) front shown above. The sofa's straight front is more to my taste and I know I'll enjoy it for years to come.

The model of my Swaim chairs has been discontinued, but I feel the chairs still feel fresh and stylish to me; that's what good design is all about.

The sofa and chairs are all upholstered in a neutral, nubby texture, and the wood feet and trim on the chairs are an antiqued silver leaf - GORGEOUS!

We paid $1300 for the sofa and two chairs, an 85% discount from their original combined $8800 retail price!

The Lexington ottoman we found on Craigslist features a creamy ivory leather and is 48" long X 24" deep, perfect for the long sofa.

We paid $80 for the ottoman, a 90% discount from retail!

After I had all the LR furniture, artwork and accessories in place, I realized I needed something to fill the corner between the sofa and chair. I went back to Craigslist and found a potted faux palm for $25.

Perfect.

Image by KateHon

There's no metal center support bar in American Leather's 5" thick mattress, so you get a wonderful night's sleep!

Choose from American Leather's standard firm foam mattress, or upgrade to their gel or Tempurpedic mattress.

Depending on the space you have available, American Leather ComfortSleepers are available in cot, double cot, twin, full, queen, queen plus, and king sizes.

American Leather ComfortSleepers do carry a hefty price tag - a full-size ComfortSleeper with a standard firm foam mattress and Ultrasuede upholstery retails right around $3000.

When searching on Craigslist for your American Leather ComfortSleeper Sofa, use the keyword, 'American Leather'. You may have to look for a while, but they do come on the market.

When you see one, contact the seller immediately to arrange to see it. These go quickly and to the swift goes the prize!

I tried and missed twice with other American Leather ComfortSleeper sofas I found on Craigslist, and I almost gave up on ever finding another. Finally, after about three weeks of looking, I found what I was after, at a price I was happy with.

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The picture, above, is the sleeper sofa in my guest room/office.

Our sleeper sofa is a loveseat size, 72" wide by 39" deep, with loose seat cushions and zip-off back cushions. It folds out to a full-size bed, 54" wide and has a sleeping length of 80", just like a regular bed, making it very comfortable.

We slept on this ComfortSleeper, with its firm foam mattress, for the first month after we moved into our current condo, as I was busy painting our Craigslist-found Master BR's king-size bed frame and hunting on Craigslist for a lightly-used, well-priced, king-size Tempurpedic mattress for our bed frame.

This American Leather ComfortSleeper sofa was the second one we owned, both purchased on Craigslist.

We felt we had gotten a great deal when we found our first ComfortSleeper loveseat for $600, since it was in perfect shape. We reluctantly sold it to the buyers of our rental condo, wondering how or if we could ever replace it with another.

Happily, we found our current American Leather ComfortSleeper in the perfect color on Craigslist for only $200, over 94% off retail!

As with our first ComfortSleeper, this loveseat also has an easy-clean Ultrasuede fabric and the condition was even better than our first one, as the back and seat cushions had never been removed, nor had the ComfortSleeper mattress ever been used!

Look for American Leather sofas, loveseats, chairs and sectionals in sleeper and non-sleeper styles, in leather, fabric and Ultrasuede upholstery. They are all excellently made and a true value (and an even better value on Craigslist)!

You can't go wrong with an American Leather product!

Designers everywhere use Pearson as their go-to source for comfortable chairs, especially Pearson's skirted English-arm club chair.

You'll know an English-Arm (or English Roll-Arm) chair (or sofa) when you see low-profile arms set back from the front edge of the chair (or sofa) seat.

Pearson, like all quality furniture manufacturers, uses a kiln-dried hardwood frame, with dowel, block, glue and screw construction. Good support is provided with 8-way, hand-tied springs, and cushions are filled with Dacron-wrapped, foam-core or down-filled inserts, with firmness ranging from very firm to very soft, depending on the customer's taste.

Personally, I prefer my chair seat support to be more firm than soft, but when you buy used furniture on Craigslist, you don't really have a choice, you just have to hope for the best.

I also like my furniture upholstery to be neutral rather than patterned, as I tire of big blocks of pattern quickly. It's easier and less expensive to use decorative pillows to bring pattern into a room than to commit to a large patterned piece of furniture.

The retail price for a skirted English-arm club chair by Pearson runs right around $1500, depending on fabric and trim, if any.

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When I was looking for furniture for our current condo, I wanted a club chair to use in the living room with my Swaim pieces.

I knew Pearson made great club chairs, so I typed in 'Pearson' as my keyword and began my search.

When I saw this Pearson chair on Craigslist, I immediately called the seller, a consignment store, and said we were driving right over and asked them to please not sell it before we got there.

When we arrived, I had my husband sit in it, since I was getting it primarily with him in mind.

As he sat down, the look on his face clearly said, "Yeah, yeah, one chair's just like another, so what's the big deal about this one?"

But when he was seated, that scornful look changed to one of surprise:

"Hey! This is really comfortable. I like it!"

The consignment store was asking $200 for the chair, but we were able to negotiate it down to $150, 90% off retail!

However, when the time came to arrange the LR furniture, it quickly became clear the Pearson chair wouldn't work where I thought it would.

Hunh. Now what?

I shoved it out to the lanai, just to get it out of the way more than anything else, and decided to think about it later.

When later finally came, I realized it would make a great reading chair on the lanai, paired with a side table and lamp, opposite a petite settee.

The chair's neutral fabric is accented with a Suzani-patterned pillow, tying in the settee's blue upholstery.

By repeating the gold tone of the Suzani pillow in the side table's lamp, the settee's pillows and throw, everything in the room became cohesive.

My husband uses the Pearson chair regularly to read the paper, do Sudoku puzzles, or just relax and take in the lovely tropical garden right outside.

It's a great chair, at a really great price!

Images by KateHon

Keep allergy-causing dust mites from making their home in your feather/down pillow insert by placing a dust-mite-proof pillow cover over your pillow insert.