Many of us are spending more time at home – both working and relaxing – than ever before, it’s no surprise that we’re paying more attention to how our homes look and feel. However, rather than increasing investment in quality, long-lasting pieces, in many cases this seems to have translated into simply buying more.
Retail giants like IKEA aim to make affordable furniture accessible to everyone. But the flipside of the convenience and relatively low cost of mass-produced, flat-pack furniture is that our homes are increasingly merging into one amalgamated aesthetic.
In a flat-pack world, perhaps it’s time to choose something with a past. The antidote is antiques, which can offer character, craftsmanship, and the history and imperfections that make a home feel personal.
Influencer culture is creeping into interiors
Almost half of all consumers (49%) make purchases at least once a month because of influencer posts, according to Sprout Social’s 2024 Influencer Marketing Report. Sadly, this current obsession with influencers has created a culture of identical interiors, whether that’s hotel lobby chic or the ‘Soho House’ aesthetic.
There is nowhere this is more obviously displayed than the luxury property pages, where the same carefully curated art of ‘greige’ – a beige and grey interior – appears again and again. It may look polished, but I feel it lacks personality or warmth, or any sense of the person actually living there.
If there’s one thing I want to highlight, it’s how the uniqueness of antique pieces can be the difference between a room feeling lacklustre or bespoke and characterful. A beautiful antique – where no piece is quite the same as another – can bring a sense of history that mass-produced furniture can never do.
If people are going to invest in their homes, why should they settle for a space that could belong to anyone, rather than creating something one-of-a-kind, personal, and far more interesting?
The ‘supermarketification’ of interiors
At the ‘affordable’ end of the interiors market, IKEA swept all before it. It represents the ‘supermarketification’ of interiors, where you can buy furniture, decorations, kitchenware, appliances and lighting all under one roof.
The countless options available at superstores like this can give the illusion of character. But it’s important to remember that there was an original superstore for genuinely unique items – auctions. A lot of what we need to create an individually styled home can be found there.
The other thing to note is the cost. These days, auction prices can make even interior superstores look expensive in many cases. High street furniture retailers’ margins can be high, compared with much more straightforward costs at auction, where buyers can see what the item sells for and exactly what you’ll pay on top.
Often, buying secondhand can get customers substantially more bang for their buck. As the common saying goes: buy cheap, buy twice.
Reduce waste
Sustainability is an increasingly important consideration for many consumers, but many are still remarkably prone to treating furniture in much the same way as fast fashion; buying more and replacing more as the seasons and fashions change.
It’s a significant problem. WRAP estimates that UK households discard approximately 670,000 tonnes of furniture every year, or roughly 22 million items. Yet much of this furniture waste is still perfectly usable when it is thrown away, with more than half classified as reusable or easily repairable.
We’ve noticed this tension among our clients. Many were delighted to inherit furniture from their parents and grandparents in the mid-century because it saved them money and provided them with pieces that were built to last. Now, as those same clients downsize, their children’s tastes differ, and they prefer not to inherit heirlooms that they see as outdated compared with the ‘minimalist’ aesthetic they are curating.
Luckily, auction houses play a significant role in rescuing much of this furniture, and a large part of the job is bringing often beautiful pieces back into circulation, rather than going to waste.
Why buy at auction?
There’s a number of reasons people might not be considering buying their furniture at auctions. For some, it could be a simple lack of confidence to know what to look for or how much to pay, for others it could be the perception that the auction process is complicated or time-consuming. For some, the idea simply hasn’t occurred to them.
Shops are deliberately simple and convenient: choose what you want, pay for it, take it home. Buying well at auction does require a little more effort, finding the right piece, understanding its condition, placing a bid and arranging collection or shipping. For busy people, that can be enough of a barrier to make the convenience of buying new seem more attractive.
But auctions offer something that mass-produced furniture can’t – the chance to find something genuinely unique. Perhaps that is the biggest reason to look beyond the high street: each piece has its own story, creating interiors that feel collected rather than copied.
