The latest trend of renting furniture means you could be the proud owner of a designer chair or posh desk at a fraction of what they cost… for a couple months or so.
But it’s not just a fad that allows you fill your home with expensive pieces, it can also be incredibly practical.
Stress-free, more sustainable, and low-cost, furniture rental is a great option for people who are looking to spruce up their home on a budget.
We spoke to some people who have already made the switch to rental furniture to see just how well their temporary furnishings have worked for them.
‘I can be flamboyant, without committing’
Charlotte Drummond-Dunn fell in love with a flamboyant floor lamp replete with ostrich feathers in the Harth catalogue when she was looking for something to jazz up the Islington flat she shares with a couple.
‘It’s in our living area, so I had to check they’d be OK with it,’ explains the actress.
Understandably, perhaps, given that the feathers are candy-floss pink. ‘It’s an extravagant statement piece I fell in love with, but I wanted to test out living with it before I committed to spending £3,100.”
Now the minimum three-month rental period is up, Charlotte has handed back the lamp, for which she was paying £200 a month — ‘I didn’t have quite the right place for it, but I loved that it became a talking point for visitors’ — and has hired a coffee table from Harth for £30 instead.
‘I need to see if the wood is too light before committing, but I love that if I don’t buy it I can just give it a home for a while, then someone else can enjoy it. It fits with my ethos of living sustainably.”
‘Renting has been top drawer’
A stylish desk was a must for Simon Sansome when he started furnishing an office for his disability charity: ‘We were determined things should not look shabby or worn, so getting a fashionable-looking Scandinavian desk for £7 a month was a big plus.’
He liked the fact the blue desk with a single drawer was assembled by the delivery men. ‘That was important to me because I’m disabled myself. And I also like the fact I can return the desk if we decide we don’t like it.’
Also useful was the John Lewis tie-up with Fat Llama through their Flex system, which rents out tech items.
‘We’re now looking at computers, for which we can pay £30 per month rather than buying and also renting chairs to replace the borrowed ones we’re managing with at the moment. It started as a test, but we can already see that rental is the way to go.’
‘For working from home, it’s just the business’
Aron Polos, a data analyst whose office hours are 9am-7pm, was seriously challenged when forced to work from home last year.
‘My desk is fine, but I found a few weeks in that my black leather gaming chair didn’t work, so when we were given budget to set up a home office I picked out a chair from John Lewis.
‘I had wanted a really high quality office chair since my uni days, but was not keen to invest £700 without trying one out for a while. The choice was not great, and the chair I picked had fewer adjustment options than the one in my office, but is so much more comfortable, as I discovered when I went back into my office recently and got back in the old one!’
Now his 12-month contract is coming up for renewal, Aron has decided to keep the chair: ‘It’s on the basis that in I’ll keep paying the £31 per month rental fee and in two years I will own it.’
‘We furnished our whole flat’
For Mark Stobbs and Andrew Lock, a single month’s rental of stylish furniture was all it took for them to achieve the best price for the unfurnished flat they returned to from Dubai in December and decided to put on the market.
‘We paid Harth £1,300 to furnish our two-bedroom flat with two double beds, a sofa, coffee-table, dining-room furniture, side tables, chairs, and rugs.
‘We wanted the property to look as stylish and appealing as possible, and loved the fact Harth set everything up for us when they delivered it.’
Although the flat sold so quickly it is now under exchange, the couple only had to pay for one month’s rental, with a small exception. ‘We fell in love with the vintage mid-century chest of drawers we rented, so we bought and kept it when we sent everything back.’
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source https://metro.co.uk/2021/07/20/why-weve-stopped-buying-furniture-and-started-renting-it-instead-14955469/
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