ᐅ Which living room furniture should I choose?

Hi,

I’m thinking about what living room furniture to buy—I’m generally satisfied with IKEA quality so far.
I have an open-plan living room with a kitchen (VOXTORP in white), oak plank flooring, a brown fabric sofa, and one wall in the room painted brown, the others cream. Overall, everything is modern.

I’m leaning towards white furniture; it shouldn’t look like a child’s room or appear outdated, and I don’t want the room to be overloaded with furniture. Maybe two shelves to put the TV on (what height is practical?) and perhaps a display cabinet.
The furniture should coordinate well with each other.

Is Besta really that low quality?

The new BESTA carcasses are unfortunately quite flimsy. Even though the back panel has a groove that helps with lateral stability, the 128cm (50 inches) carcass tends to lean to the side when it is freestanding and a door is opened. At the bottom, this might be about 0.5 to 1mm (0.02 to 0.04 inches), but at the top along the length, it easily leans about 5 to 6mm (0.2 to 0.24 inches).

For this exact reason, I chose not to get the 192cm (75 inches) carcass and went with the 128cm (50 inches) version instead.

I have one 128cm (50 inches) carcass with two doors in front of it, and next to it are two TV stands, each 38cm (15 inches) high and 120cm (47 inches) wide. I attached the 128cm (50 inches) carcass to the adjacent TV stand using four carcass connectors. As a result, the side leaning no longer occurs, since the TV stands are quite sturdy.

I can’t screw the carcasses to the wall because they stand about 40mm (1.6 inches) away from the wall (for ventilation and due to the cable channel baseboard). Additionally, there is a cable channel from the wall-mounted TV running behind the TV stands.

I also had the same issue with the receiver because of an Ikea sideboard that was too shallow, but I ended up looking for something else, and fortunately, returning it at Ikea was not a problem. I researched an alternative. On [****], you can find furniture from many different stores. You do have to click through a lot because you’re redirected to each shop’s website when you want to take a closer look, but it definitely gives you an overview. It’s also useful for comparing prices across different stores. I find about 90% of my stuff at Ikea, but sometimes the price/performance ratio wasn’t quite right. Where else do you usually shop besides Ikea? For me, it’s mainly online and at flea markets.

Best regards