Show HN: IKEA Complexity Index

https://ikea.greg.technology/

by gregsadetsky • 5 days ago

179 88 5 days ago

ikea.greg.technology

joshdavham• 5 days ago

Where did you pull this data from?

mawadev3• 5 days ago

I think its AI sentiment generated data, no way someone needs 6.5h for a bed frame. I needed at best 2h...

Maxion• 5 days ago

The time it takes to assemble Ikea furniture is very dependent on your experience with it, and if you're using an assembly driver or not.

mschuster913• 5 days ago

Apparently there used to be a built in estimator in the checkout process [1]. I member having seen that somewhere as well, but it's been ages since I ordered online from Ikea, I always go in person to stuff myself full of hotdogs and meatballs LOL

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/TaskRabbit/comments/13dm7lu/comment...

tchalla• 5 days ago

I needed 45 min. Should it be 45 mins then?

gregsadetsky6• 5 days ago

It’s rather a very simple math formula based on the number of steps and parts.

I adjusted the formula by researching online what people reported as the time it took them to build some of the items. ie there’s a linear regression “fudge” factor - but it’s still an extremely simplified “model”, if you can call it that.

cisophrene• 5 days ago

LÖNSET Slatted bed base King 302.787.13

3h of fun for a mere $140.

I've seen more expensive hobbies.

kandros• 5 days ago

I have nightmares of these, I’ll gladly pay someone else to do it next time

microtonal• 5 days ago

I hate building IKEA furniture, my wife loves building IKEA furniture. Problem solved :).

Same with shopping at IKEA. I know all the shortcuts in our local IKEA so that I can exit the store as quickly as possible.

ghaff3• 4 days ago

Was having a lot of house stuff redone after a kitchen fire. Not Ikea, but had a mail order bedframe. Just had the contractor's people put it together.

ece• 5 days ago

This is the new version, the old one is called sultan laxeby. Easily 1.5x the amount of time.

PDF for assembly is still up on the website: https://www.ikea.com/nl/nl/assembly_instructions/sultan-laxe...

lancebeet• 5 days ago

If you look at the item number and it begins with an s, it means it's a combination of multiple articles. If you click "what's included" you'll see what articles it consists of. The assembly documents will include the assembly documents for each child article. On the top pax, you can see it actually consists of 20 distinct child articles (some of which require no assembly).

selcuka• 5 days ago

I believe this table needs a column for the disassembly process as well.

I bought and assembled a TUFFING Bunk Bed years ago, and even though the complexity of assembly is reported as 4644 on this web site (which is also suspiciously low), as far as I can tell the only way to disassemble it is to use an angle grinder.

gregsadetsky6• 5 days ago

the comments on ikea's site seem to agree with you - lots of extremely negative ones about the assembly

I did not do sentiment analysis on the comments (to modify my fudge factor mentioned elsewhere - which is the bulk of my complexity rating computation), but that could be a good next step..!

xxs7• 5 days ago

use an angle grinder.

I do use wood glue on all dowel pins, so most stuff is assembly once only. Unless the furniture provides metal inserts for machine screws, I do not consider it disassembly material. It's likely to exhibit the spontaneous disassembly on its right own otherwise (or squeak soon enough)

designerarvid• 4 days ago

Tuffing is “tough guy”, somewhat appropriate

Keyframe• 4 days ago

I had to disassemble some furniture as well recently. It had one and a half million screws and whatnots and since it was going to recycling center anyways I figured out sledgehammer was as good tool as any. Turns out it was better than _any_, ultrafast (take that claude!) and a ton of fun.

doubled112• 4 days ago

I’ve used a reciprocating saw on a couch before.

hdgvhicv• 5 days ago

Tried 4 different items and none are listed.

gregsadetsky6• 5 days ago

Sorry to hear! The products are from the US site, and I’m hiding products where the extraction pipeline couldn’t get all of the information (steps, parts count) reliably.

What are the missing products?

ItsYan• 5 days ago

I don't believe this. The sundvik series feels way more complex than brimnes but wardrobes have the same complexity score.

gregsadetsky6• 5 days ago

Feel free to give me some real assembly time values - happy to adjust my very simple formula of steps x number of parts x fudge factor :)

xxs7• 4 days ago

Just for reference IKEA tend NOT to include wall fasteners (or anything alike, e.g. nylon inserts) that alone is a way more involved process (incl. leveling that I mentioned in a top post) than connecting a mdf-board plate (parts) with dowel pins (many parts) and metal screw(s) (even more parts).

Hinges need more time in general as well.

baq• 5 days ago

I’ve paid for putting twin PAXes with doors together. Two pros came in at 9 am and I was wrapping up vacuuming by 10:30. Best money spent ever

xxs7• 5 days ago

What's the assembly time based on?

IKEA in general is piss easy to assemble except for leveling stuff where you'd need a laser and often times another person. Some of provided tools (the famous L 6mm hex key made of cheese) and hardware (nails) tend to be very poor... and sometimes it'd need a visit to buy extra hardware - e.g. low-profile head, non-counter sunk screws to attach to the wall.

Repairing furniture or addressing mistakes tend to be fixable by a mix of wood shavings/dust and epoxy in most cases.

So the assembly would depend on previous experience, available tools, and free space.

bartread4• 4 days ago

piss easy to assemble

Sure, it’s not hard, but if there are a lot of steps it’s still going to take longer.

A fully specced up pax double wardrobe with drawers, sliding doors, and lighting is made up of hundreds of parts, so does take a good amount of time to put together even though it’s not difficult per se.

It’s also made up of many different SKUs so you get dozens of boxes turn up and it takes a little while to figure out what everything is and get organised. Again, it’s not difficult, but it takes a little time.

xxs7• 4 days ago

it’s still going to take longer.

I never said otherwise, and the rest of my post tells it could be time consuming. The criticism is to the random time quote based off solely on parts count.

bjelkeman-again2• 4 days ago

The Pax with sliding doors took me a really long time to put together. Long enough that when my brother in law (who doesn’t like assembling stuff) asked if I recommend them, it was a solid No.

juujian• 4 days ago

Time estimate is way off for the Smastad loft bed, that thing was such a pain.

djoldman• 4 days ago

Love this.

Whoever made this, please make a "proportion" column somehow!

I would like to know which has the most complexity per total volume or weight (it's less surprising that huge items have high complexity).

netniuq• 4 days ago

MCP where? /s

blixt• 4 days ago

Fun data sheet! I was curious about most steps per part and it seems to be TROTTEN[1] at 1.07 steps per part (excluding some other products like a toilet brush with 1 part but the steps are actually for a separate add-on to attach it to the wall).

[1] https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/trotten-cabinet-with-doors-whit...

jstummbillig2• 4 days ago

Cool! I had codex have a go at calculating "effective price" on a few items, that prices in the assembly labor, and then also calculates the delta between price and effective price. Obviously very depended on how you value your time, but here are some items at $30/hour:

BRIMNES storage bed + headboard, Queen $549 + 320 min labor = $709 (delta: +$160 / +29%)

HEMNES 8-drawer dresser $380 + 236 min labor = $498 (delta: +$118 / +31%)

STORKLINTA 6-drawer dresser $250 + 224 min labor = $362 (delta: +$112 / +45%)

SLÄKT storage bed, Twin $450 + 212 min labor = $556 (delta: +$106 / +24%)

BRIMNES 3-door wardrobe $250 + 189 min labor = $344.50 (delta: +$94.50 / +38%)

ALEX drawer unit: $95 + 96 min labor = $143 (delta: +$48 / +51%)

BRIMNES cabinet with doors: $99 + 75 min labor = $136.50 (delta: +$37.50 / +38%)

KALLAX 2x4 shelf unit: $65 + 39 min labor = $84.50 (delta: +$19.50 / +30%)

Formula: effective price = sticker price + (estimated assembly minutes / 60 * hourly value of time).

I was surprised by how similar the % diff is across the board.

folkrav• 4 days ago

If an ALEX drawer unit takes them over an hour and a half to build, IMHO they're doing something wrong. Many others on that list seem suspiciously high (the BRIMNES comes to mind). Curious how it came up with those values.

tgv• 4 days ago

Sloppily. I doubt there's much information on the web that says "mounting a BRIMNES takes five hours, twenty minutes." So what's an LLM to do? Produce any number in the semantic vicinity of the sequence "mounting"+ "BRIMNES" + "takes". So that can be anything that says "building an IKEA closet cost me" or "climbing mount Bayimes takes on average" or perhaps even "building a mountain bayke [spelling error] can take". And then from all sentences that get close to that point, it takes the next likely token. So 320 minutes it is.

jstummbillig2• 4 days ago

Codex inferred Assembly minutes = round(0.44 * steps + 0.70 * parts) from the data.

adverbly• 4 days ago

To be fair, a lot of these items are cannot really be purchased without assembly being required.

Or purchasing them in their assembled state can require even more logistical transportation overhead such as specialized vehicle rentals.

Your point stands though that furniture has a higher cost than the sticker implies.

TacticalCoder• 4 days ago

Obviously very depended on how you value your time ...

More like how you approach life.

Assembling furnitures is a very fun and zen thing to do IMO. I know a least one surgeon who would gladly bill more $$$ but there are simply hours when the hospital is closed: assembling a furniture with your kid after a day's work is a cool and relaxing thing to do.

Friends of mine, about a year ago, asked me to help with some technical stuff on the first day they moved their startup in their new office. When I arrived, the desks hadn't even been assembled yet (they were late on schedule).

I helped them assemble the desks: I find that highly relaxing, gratifying and relaxing to do.

Many moons ago I did that too in southern california: physically building the desks, unpacking the PCs and monitors, hooking up everything (back when there were still, btw, people plugging the VGA cable instead of the HDMI one for monitors that came with both), running the ethernet cables, configuring the PCs, configuring the Linux server.

Doing it all. Then configuring the Linux servers.

It's like painting a place you move in's walls: it's got nothing to do with "how you value time".

I lived in four countries. We'll certainly move to a fifth one one day. I'm excited at the idea of going to the hardware store, buying paint and screws and nuts and bolts and whatnots and preparing the place.

And assembling furnitures.

dagurp• 4 days ago

I once bought a paper basket that was made out of two pieces and I managed to assemble it the wrong way. I guess I should multiply those estimates by pi.

bhdn• 4 days ago

Same for me. It's not linear. Instructions may be more likely to be ignored when the product appears to be very simple.

gregsadetsky6• 4 days ago

(OP) thanks for this insight, truly - I took another look and ikea.com reviews actually include a whole dedicated "ease of assembly" value! some very easy-looking products do actually rate quite badly on the assembly

adding that column now, should be live in the next 10-20 mins cheers!

Mawr• 4 days ago

Creating accurate assembly instructions is surprisingly difficult.

To be able to create them, you have to know how to assemble the product, BUT that also means you've been blessed by the curse of knowledge — now you have to perfectly serialize your knowledge into instructions WITHOUT omitting any implicit "obvious" steps that you may have taken due to already being familiar with the product.

Very few assembly manuals get this right. In the case of furniture, the orientation of items is often omitted, after all isn't it obvious that this side goes up? This is how I ended up with some exposed non-laminated wooden board parts in my bed. Sigh :)

QA testing is the key here — write the first draft, have someone try to assemble the thing as naively and true to instructions as possible, fix mistakes, repeat.

bob1029• 4 days ago

This is a fantastic way to quantify just how bad a consumer experience this is. Flat pack furniture tends to be very awful compared to alternatives that are also often cheaper and without assembly requirements.

Everything that has come in box from a store like IKEA (or assembled in the back from a box and presented as non-flat-pack) has lasted me less than a decade. I've got a bedroom set that was built out of proper materials and it's almost a century old.

The thing that pushes consumers toward ikea is the consistency and convenience. Most things you can load and cart home by yourself same day. Moving around furniture built by the Amish is a serious logistical challenge by comparison. Maybe you could solo it with a hand truck and some experience, but it's genuinely dangerous to move some things without help. If you aren't moving frequently, the appeal of disposable furniture begins to fade quickly.

vladvasiliu• 4 days ago

Flat pack furniture tends to be very awful compared to alternatives that are also often cheaper and without assembly requirements.

I don't particularly like my ikea furniture. But one big reason why I bought this instead of alternatives that come fully assembled is the price: it's much cheaper.

Then again, I live in France, there aren't many Amish around AFAIK.

ghaff3• 4 days ago

I did assemble some Ikea cube-type storage after a lot of my house interior was redone. It was a bit of a pain but it's now very satisfactory storage in a couple of closets. And it wasn't that expensive even with delivery. (The nearest Ikea is far enough it would have ended up being a full-day trip.)

mft_• 4 days ago

Same here, in Germany.

Some categories are especially exaggerated: when needing a number of new wardrobes a few years ago, we struggled to find anything that was remotely similar in price or value to IKEA. The big retail park furniture stores were 2-4x the price for similarish quality (i.e. chipboard; modular construction). Smaller higher quality stores (e.g. plywood/real wood rather than cardboard or chipboard) were roughly 4-8x more expensive. And one really nice local option was roughly 10x more expensive. [0] (We didn't even explore bespoke/handcrafted for obvious reasons.)

Wardrobes, in particular, are begging for disruption - essentially a relatively modular approach, higher quality materials than IKEA, (much) lower cost than Moormann.

[0] https://www.moormann.de/de/schrankone.html

bartread4• 4 days ago

It’s also practicality and ergonomics: old furniture is nice to look at but it’s often awkward to use (e.g., squeaky wooden drawer runners that require periodic waxing to keep them running smoothly and quietly, lack of sliding doors, dark corners at the back of wardrobes, etc.), and wastes lots of internal space.

Drawers with wheels and bearings and soft closers on their runners are simply a lot nicer to use on a day to day basis, particularly when they’re used frequently.

I do have quite a strong preference for older furniture from an aesthetic perspective, and we certainly have some older pieces as a result. But it’s often functionally deficient, and so we don’t tend to use older furniture more complex than a table where the functionality is frequently used. In particular, any kind of heavily accessed storage means ergonomics and usability win every time, tending to steer us toward modern options.

ghaff3• 4 days ago

I don't love my Ikea dresser and my recollection was that it was a PITA to assemble. But it works pretty well and it would have been thousands of dollars more to get the equivalent new hardwood dresser. As you say, something from an antique store would almost certainly have been less satisfactory on a day to day basis and would have come with its own set of transportation etc. hassles.

bluebarbet• 4 days ago

In most places (certainly here in Europe) the alternatives to flat-pack furniture are not cheaper, quite the opposite. Unless we're talking second-hand, which is obviously the most sustainable option.

On quality, I have an apartment rented to students and the Ikea furniture in it is still going strong after years. I make sure to tighten the screws and bolts periodically, but otherwise it's as good as new. I would not have bought "disposable" furniture, no matter how cheap. Conversely, my experience of furniture (and lighting and other fittings) from department stores and hardware stores is that it's three times as expensive as Ikea, three times heavier, and yet obviously poorer quality.

My theory is that if you want quality you are better buying from Ikea. That's simply because any given product will have been bought by millions of other people. By definition, a lot of thought has gone into it and design flaws will likely have been eliminated long ago.

countWSS• 4 days ago

IKEA beds are underestimated: these flimsy POS planks and their insertion is entire artform that was likely engineered to cause pain. The idea here is they are huge, finicky and depend on precise positioning in multiple areas, there is no "easy shortcut" for their structural integrity, everything has to be perfectly assembled.

dcj4• 4 days ago

The real lesson here is how unbelievably inept the hacker news audience seems to be with any practical task. The idea someone would spend hours assembling any piece of Ikea furniture is absurd. Anything on this list can be build in minutes. I did so even as an inexperienced teenager myself with no help. If it takes you 10 hours to assemble a wardrobe you should have a disability badge.

vlan121• 4 days ago

IKEA was cool years ago. Unfortunately the quality reduced enormously and the price raised over it. Yesterday I saw an ad for a table and chairs for the balcony: 70€ (80$ after tax). I bought this model years ago and paid 15€ (17.60$ after tax) for the whole set.

gcanyon• 4 days ago

(in my experience) if this table included other flat-pack vendors the difference would be stark. Wayfair and the like are far more complex to assemble.

akerl_• 4 days ago

Agreed. Whenever we end up getting non-IKEA furniture I preemptively cringe as I open the instructions.

The only time I’ve had a mistake building IKEA furniture was after opening both pieces of a combo shelf at once: there was a subtle but relevant distinction between the crossbars that was not obvious from the instructions, because ordinarily you wouldn’t have pieces from another shelf to confuse with each other.

dgerken• 4 days ago

Good idea. Wish I had this before I made a few purchases!

lozenge• 4 days ago

A lot of these pdfs contain steps which are optional or only apply in certain situations. Does that decrease the complexity because there are less steps to do? Or does it increase.. the cyclomatic complexity!

gregsadetsky6• 4 days ago

My parser is unfortunately not fancy enough to detect optional steps - but it's a great point!

RetroTechie• 4 days ago

A lot of these pdfs contain steps which are optional or only apply in certain situations.

Participants in Ikea speed-assembly competitions would like to know more.

gitowiec• 4 days ago

IKEA once was selling good quality items. Now it's an example of enshitification. All furniture is made of cardboard instead of plywood or other type of board. That's less for more money

montroser• 4 days ago

One time I hired two different random guys on craigslist to assemble three IKEA bureaus. They didn't know each other beforehand, and I hired them separately to work together.

They started by jockeying to see which one was going to be in charge, arguing about how to proceed, throwing shade, making claims of superiority. One guy wanted to follow the instructions, and the other guy just wanted to go on intuition. They couldn't agree and asked me which one should be in charge, and I said, I don't know just work together, follow the instructions, and get this stuff built.

The instructions guy assumed the lead, and then they settled into a rhythm. Three hours later, they couldn't stop gushing about each other, and a most beautiful bromance was born. They exchanged telephone numbers and made plans to hang out on the weekend.

an0malous• 4 days ago

I feel like there’s a takeaway here for the male loneliness epidemic but I’m not sure what

antisthenes• 4 days ago

The takeaway is the same that's been there for thousands of years - do stuff together, in real life.

Bonus points if the stuff you're doing is challenging.

nicbou• 4 days ago

Tinder for assembling ikea furniture. The service pays for itself by selling assembly services.

hdjrudni• 3 days ago

I hired a guy to assemble a desk...he did a shit job. Won't be doing that again.

throwaway2037• 4 days ago

Wherever I have lived and shopped at IKEA, there is an option to pay ~20% extra to have your item assembled by professionals at your home. It is a steal! Unless you are genuinely interested to assemble a piece of furniture, save yourself the headache and pay for professional assembly.

otterpro• 3 days ago

I'm just an average guy, and I love assembling Ikea furniture. It feels like an adult Lego. But sometimes, I wonder if this is like an IQ test, as I need to sometimes figure out what the illustration is asking me to do. My feeling is that those who have higher IQ will do better. Anyway, now these days, it feels like Lego costs more than Ikea furniture.

ndsovate• 3 days ago

I think a QT code attached to a product which can visually demonstrate one video would be useful complementary to this great idea you have posted.

_nickwhite• 3 days ago

My first thought was "Pax is definitely #1 in complexity" and I was right. Those who have built one (or a whole system) will understand how humbling of an experience assembly is. I can build servers, networks, and most of a data center, but Pax got the best of me.

nijuashi• 22 hours ago

Yeah, I was completely exhausted after the build. Glad that this confirms my suspicions.

Show HN: IKEA Complexity Index

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