Should You Shop at Furnitureland South? An Interior Designer's Take
If you love furniture, walking into Furnitureland South can feel a little like walking into Disney World.
Located near High Point, North Carolina, Furnitureland South bills itself as the world's largest furniture store, representing more than 1,000 brands. And when you arrive, the sheer scale of the place is immediately apparent.
Two of the three massive buildings are visible as you approach. Most visitors begin in The Mart, a four-story building easily recognizable by the world's largest highboy mounted on its front facade. Inside, furniture is organized into curated galleries by category and lifestyle, including bedroom, dining, living, luxe, modern, office, outdoor, mattresses, lighting, rugs and leather. Rather than shopping one manufacturer at a time, this is where you can browse a broad mix of brands and styles side by side.
The neighboring Showroom building offers a very different shopping experience. Here, individual manufacturers have their own branded galleries spread across two floors, allowing you to see much larger collections from specific furniture lines. The top floor houses the Design Center, where thousands of fabrics, finishes, leathers and other customization options are on display. At first glance, it feels a bit like walking into a college library, except the shelves are filled with fabric books and finish samples instead of textbooks. There is also a casual bistro on the first floor, which becomes a welcome stop during a long day of shopping.
Finally, tucked around the back of the property is the Outlet, a separate three-story building filled with clearance merchandise, floor samples, discontinued pieces and one-of-a-kind finds.
For someone furnishing an entire home, all of that can sound incredible.
And it can be.
But after experiencing multiple Furnitureland South shopping trips myself over the years, and spending years helping clients make furniture decisions, I do not think it is automatically the best place to shop simply because it offers the most choices.
In fact, for some people, the enormous selection is exactly why I would not recommend it.
The question is not really, "Is Furnitureland South worth visiting?"
The better question is: "Is Furnitureland South the right way for YOU to shop?"
First, Understand What Furnitureland South Actually Carries
Furnitureland South is not a giant collection of every furniture retailer you have ever heard of.
It is primarily a multi-line furniture dealer representing manufacturers that sell their products through independent furniture stores, designers and other authorized retailers.
You will find major furniture manufacturers including:
- Lexington
- Hickory White
- Sherrill Furniture
- Hickory Chair
- Theodore Alexander
- Bernhardt
- Century
- Rowe
- Hooker Furniture
- Barclay Butera
- Stickley
- Baker
You will find these brands, along with hundreds of others. You will find brands from every price point and style, including ornate, luxe furnishings fit for a castle.
But here is an important distinction.
You Will Not Find Many of the Retail Brands Consumers Know Best
Furnitureland South is not where you are going to shop the collections from vertically integrated retailers such as Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn, Serena & Lily, Arhaus, Restoration Hardware or Ethan Allen.
Those companies largely sell through their own retail channels rather than putting their complete furniture lines into independent multi-brand furniture stores.
And that matters.
If you have been saving Serena & Lily rooms on Pinterest for the last six months, love the Arhaus aesthetic, or already know that Ethan Allen is your style, traveling to Furnitureland South is not necessarily going to simplify your shopping experience.
You may actually be better off starting by determining which brands and aesthetics you are naturally drawn to.
That is something I try to establish with clients before we ever start seriously shopping.
More Choices Do Not Necessarily Make Shopping Easier
One of the biggest misconceptions about furnishing a home is that more choices make the process easier.
Usually, they do not.
Give someone three swivel chairs and they can often pick a favorite. Give them ten and the decision becomes harder. Give them 100, or potentially hundreds, and suddenly they are wondering whether they should keep looking because something even better might be in the next showroom.
That is where Furnitureland South becomes difficult.
You are not just choosing between furniture pieces. You are choosing between manufacturers, collections, wood finishes, fabrics, cushion constructions, arm styles, sizes, configurations and thousands upon thousands of individual pieces.
At some point, unlimited options stop feeling exciting and start feeling exhausting.
Good interior design is not about seeing every possible option. It is about knowing which options are not worth considering. That is the value of curation.
You Need a Certain Personality to Shop Furnitureland South Successfully
I think this part gets overlooked.
Furnitureland South works particularly well for someone who can:
- Visualize how an individual piece will look in a finished room
- Make decisions relatively quickly
- Walk past hundreds of alternatives without continually second-guessing
- Understand scale and proportion
- Stay focused on a predetermined design direction
- Make several significant purchasing decisions in a short period of time
If that sounds like you, you may absolutely love it.
If you already have trouble choosing between four dining chairs, Furnitureland South may not suddenly turn you into a decisive shopper. It may do exactly the opposite.
Couples: Proceed With Caution
I am not joking about this one.
Furnitureland South is not where I would recommend a couple go to figure out what their decorating style is.
Before attempting a major shopping trip like this, both spouses need to be reasonably aligned on style, priorities and budget.
If one person loves traditional furniture and the other wants contemporary, if one considers $6,000 reasonable for a sofa and the other thinks a sofa should cost $2,000, if one spouse wants to examine every single possibility while the other is finished shopping after two hours, you have the ingredients for a very long few days.
I have seen couples become frustrated with each other in furniture showrooms that are a tiny fraction of the size of Furnitureland South. I have even seen a few pretty ugly fights. Multiply that experience several times over.
Both people need to be completely dialed into what can become a pretty grueling shopping experience.
And sometimes, quite frankly, shopping together is not the best strategy. In my own client experience, there are couples where one spouse has significantly more interest in the furnishings and a much clearer design vision. Quite often in my client base, that is the wife.
Sometimes the most successful arrangement is for the less-interested spouse to agree on the overall budget and major parameters, and then trust the person who cares about the furniture to make the decisions.
That is not going to work for every marriage, obviously. But dragging someone through three enormous furniture buildings who does not want to be there usually is not a recipe for productive decision-making.
Would I Travel There to Furnish an Entire House?
It would depend heavily on the budget.
Personally, I do not think I would recommend the expense and effort of turning Furnitureland South into a several-day destination shopping trip unless someone were spending at least around $100,000 on furniture.
That is not because the furniture is necessarily extraordinarily expensive. It is because you need to consider the entire equation. Travel. Hotels. Meals. Multiple days away. The physical and mental exhaustion of trying to make dozens of decisions in a compressed period. And whether you are actually getting access to products or pricing you could not reasonably get closer to home.
Here in the Bluffton and Hilton Head area, that is an especially important consideration.
Many of the manufacturers I would be interested in sourcing at Furnitureland South (including Lexington, Sherrill, Hickory Chair, Rowe and Barclay Butera) are also available through local furniture stores. And local pricing can be very competitive.
So, if I can source the right sofa locally, see samples locally, work with someone locally and have a local retailer standing behind the delivery, I have to ask: what am I gaining by traveling several hours to purchase it somewhere else?
For a $150,000 or $200,000 whole-house furniture project, the calculation may be completely different. That is when having dozens of manufacturers under one roof becomes much more compelling.
What About the Furnitureland South Outlet?
Furnitureland South's enormous outlet or clearance center gets a lot of attention, and there is certainly the possibility of finding an incredible individual piece.
But I would not recommend going there expecting to furnish an entire coordinated house from clearance.
I jokingly describe huge furniture clearance centers as the "land of misfit toys."
There may be a fabulous dining table. A great swivel chair. An incredible chest. A deeply discounted sofa. But that does not mean those four things belong in the same house.
Clearance shopping works beautifully when you are searching for individual opportunities and you have the ability to recognize a great piece when you see one.
Trying to assemble an entire coordinated design from one-off discounted pieces is another matter entirely. You can easily spend hours hunting for something that works with something else you found three aisles ago, all in the hope of saving a few hundred dollars.
At that point, the savings may not be worth the compromise. A bargain is not a bargain if it is not the right piece for the room.
Do Not Forget About What Happens After You Order
There is another factor I think deserves consideration: customer service.
Furnitureland South undoubtedly serves an enormous number of customers, so online complaints need to be viewed in the context of the company's size.
Still, there is a noticeable pattern in some recent consumer reviews involving delayed deliveries, difficulty getting updates, damaged products and problems obtaining service after the sale.
For example, current BBB complaints are concentrated heavily in service and repair, delivery and product issues, and several recent customer reviews describe long waits or difficulty obtaining follow-up after purchasing. ConsumerAffairs reviews show a similar pattern: shoppers sometimes praise the showroom selection and pricing while criticizing communication or service when something goes wrong after the purchase.
That does not mean every Furnitureland South customer has a bad experience. Plenty clearly do not. But it is something I would consider when comparing a giant destination retailer with a strong local furniture store.
A local retailer lives and dies by its local reputation. When you live in Bluffton and your furniture store is five miles away, there is a different level of accountability than there can be when your order is one of thousands moving through a massive national operation representing hundreds of manufacturers.
There is real value in being able to walk into the store where you bought your furniture when something is not right.
So Who Should Shop at Furnitureland South?
I would say that Furnitureland is not the appropriate source for 90 percent of the clients I work with. However, I think Furnitureland South can be a fantastic option for the right client.
I would especially consider it for someone who:
- Is furnishing a significant portion of a house. The more furniture you need, the more valuable having so many manufacturers in one place becomes.
- Has a substantial furniture budget. For me, a $100,000-plus project makes the travel and time investment much easier to justify.
- Already knows their design direction. This is not the ideal place to arrive saying, "I am not sure what I like."
- Knows which manufacturers they want to explore. Going in with Lexington, Hickory Chair, Sherrill and Theodore Alexander on your list is very different from simply walking through the front door and hoping inspiration strikes.
- Can make decisions confidently. You have to be able to choose something wonderful and then stop shopping for an imaginary option that might be 2 percent better.
- Has a designer or excellent salesperson helping narrow the choices. This may be the single biggest factor in making a massive showroom manageable.
And Who Probably Should Not?
I would think twice if you:
- Have trouble making decorating decisions
- Need to see every option before choosing
- Are hoping Furnitureland South automatically means dramatically lower prices
- Want primarily Pottery Barn, Serena & Lily, Arhaus, Restoration Hardware, Crate & Barrel or Ethan Allen
- Are furnishing only one or two rooms
- Have a spouse who hates furniture shopping
- Are still trying to determine your style
- Have excellent local sources carrying the exact manufacturers you want
My Take
I love seeing furniture. I love fabrics. I love finishes. I love walking through beautifully designed furniture showrooms. It is literally my job.
And even I can appreciate how quickly a place the size of Furnitureland South can become overwhelming.
It is an extraordinary resource. But the world's largest furniture store is not automatically the world's best furniture store for every shopper.
For many people, the better approach is not expanding the number of choices. It is narrowing them.
Figure out your style. Establish your budget. Know your room dimensions. Determine which manufacturers fit the look and quality level you are trying to achieve. Decide which pieces deserve more of your budget and where you are comfortable saving. Then shop.
Because whether you are walking through a small Bluffton showroom or more than a million square feet of furniture in North Carolina, the goal is not to see the most furniture. The goal is to confidently choose the right furniture and create a home where all of those individual pieces actually belong together.
Keep reading: If you are not shopping at the world's largest furniture store, how many stores can you realistically expect to shop from locally? I answer that here: How Many Stores Should You Shop When Furnishing an Entire House?