Smorgasbord Decoratatus: Where to Shop for Furniture for Your Home

Whether you need to fully furnish a new home or apartment or whether you need a final accent for the corner of your living room, you probably have a pretty good idea of what you want and almost no idea about the best place to go to find it. Indeed, the options can be overwhelming. Plus, even if you can find the furniture you want, you also need to be able to afford it and be able to get the furniture to your home, no small feat for many. Here's your guide to furniture shopping:

Cyberspacious Internetius: Craigslist, Amazon, and other Online Resources
Craigslist has become a phenomenon from finding a house or apartment to rent to selling any number of household items. Furniture is one such example, and certainly you can find some great deals. There are, however, limitations to finding furniture online. You shouldn't buy furniture over the Internet just because it's suddenly chic to do so. With craigslist, you're going to need patience, a keen eye, and your own mode of transportation. With Amazon.com or ordering furniture directly through the manufacturer, you do gain an incredible amount of convenience for the extra cost of shipping, but you also need to buy furniture on nothing more than a picture.

Bargainous Maximus: Flea Markets, Goodwill, and the Salvation Army
The relative wisdom of seeking out these bargain-furniture venues has to due with your financial resources and your personality. You can still find quality furniture, but you may need to spend quite a bit of time hunting for the right deal. Some people relish this hunt; others do it out of necessity. Either way, flea markets and secondhand stores do mean that any homeowner can create a fluid and stunning decorating style for his or her home.

Here's the key to finding furniture at secondhand stores like the Salvation Army: Go early and go often. I talked to an employee who worked for a Salvation Army in Dallas, TX. Her job was to research and price items of furniture at approximately 60-75% of its market value (including out-pricing homeowners on craigslist) to create a high turnover rate. This means the most coveted pieces of furniture would also sell within minutes of the store opening for the day.

• Decorator's Tip from Barbara Schumacher of Arranged Interiors (Seattle, WA): "Put your budget into comfortable seating and build around that with your bargain purchases."

Anabaptist Crafticus: Because Nobody Makes a Chair like the Amish
In fact, I'm sitting on an Amish-made chair as I write this sentence. Of course, depending on where you live, you may need to make quite the trek to reach Amish country. If you're unfamiliar with Amish furniture, you may underestimate the conventional business sense that Amish furniture makers possess. Just like a typical manufacturer, items of furniture will be priced high when they're first displayed and gradually put on sale until they're sold. You can go to an Amish furniture sale and splurge on the latest items or you can seek out and rummage through the clearance section. My oak swivel chair, for example, was originally listed as $335 and, subsequently, marked down to $100. What can't be denied is the unqualified craftsmanship of Amish furniture makers.

Another option for unmatched quality is to find a custom furniture maker. Like the Amish, these specialized artisans will build you furniture to last a life, but will build pieces to your exact specifications, including atypical designs, using any number of interesting and visually stunning materials, and with an artistic flair. Of course, the price tag will also reflect this level of customization.

Conventionelle Practicum: Retail Stores
Maybe you have a Sears in your neighborhood, maybe you live near a city with an IKEA, maybe you're a Pottery Barn fanatic, but almost everybody lives within a short drive of some type of retail furniture store. Somewhere between the old-fashioned craftsmanship of custom furniture makers and the new trend of online shopping, this conventional method of furniture shopping has a few clear advantages and a few equally clear disadvantages. Retail stores are convenient, offer you the ability to carefully consider the look and feel of the furniture, and generally allow for easy transportation. The disadvantages are you'll typically need to assemble the furniture yourself, and you may pay more than is necessary. You may also end up inadvertently creating a cookie-cutter, just-like-everybody-else's-home effect.

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