IKEA Will Now Buy Your Old Furniture From You

IKEA is set to launch a new Buy Back initiative, which aims to tackle unsustainable consumption, and its impact on climate change. As part of the recently announced scheme, IKEA will encourage customers to sell unwanted furniture back to its UK stores, before putting the second-hand items back up for sale. So, if you're hoping to get rid of any hasty lockdown impulse buys for a profit, now's your chance. Here's how to sell your furniture back to IKEA in the UK.

The initiative launches in IKEAs across the UK on Friday, Nov. 27 (Black Friday), and is already up and running in its Glasgow and Edinburgh stores. To sell back a piece of old IKEA furniture, head to the official IKEA website and submit your items for consideration by completing an online offer request. You will then automatically receive a preliminary offer, and be asked to return your fully-assembled product to the Returns and Exchanges desk at your nearest IKEA — where you'll be given a refund card to spend in store. The card will have no expiry date and the value will vary depending on the condition of the returned furniture.

If a product is returned in a brand-new condition with no scratches, the return voucher will be worth 50% of the item's original price. If unwanted products are returned in a very good condition with minor scratches, you'll receive 40% of the original price. Finally, if returning furniture has been well used with several defects, the return card will be worth 30% of the original price.

Pre-owned items will be sold in the As-Is area of IKEA stores, and any furniture that cannot be resold will instead be recycled. So, what can you return as part of the Buy Back initiative? Quite a lot actually. The official line is: dressers, office drawer cabinets, small structures with drawers, display storage and sideboards, bookcases and shelf units, small tables, multimedia furniture, cabinets, dining tables and desks, chairs and stools without upholstery, chests of drawers, and some children’s products.

"Sustainability is the defining issue of our time and IKEA is committed to being part of the solution to promote sustainable consumption and combat climate change," IKEA UK & Ireland's country retail manager and chief sustainability officer, Peter Jelkeby, said in a statement. "With the launch of Buy Back we are giving a second life to many more IKEA products and creating more easy and affordable solutions to help people live more sustainably. It is an exciting step forward in our journey towards becoming a fully circular and climate positive business by 2030," he continued.

Hege Sæbjørnsen, country sustainability manager at IKEA UK & Ireland, added: "The IKEA vision has always been to create a better everyday life for the many people, which right now means making sustainable living easy and affordable for everyone. Being circular is a good business opportunity as well as a responsibility, and the climate crisis requires us all to radically rethink our consumption habits."