Buying furniture has changed forever

Fifteen years ago you went to IKEA, bought a Karlstad, and lived with it for ten years. That wasn't better — that was easier. Fewer choices, lower expectations. Ten years ago Wehkamp started selling furniture online. For the first time you could actually shop across twenty webshops without leaving the couch. Better — but harder, too. Because now you had choice. And choice, as Barry Schwartz taught us, is a quiet murderer of happiness. Today, in 2026, 73% of Dutch consumers buy furniture online. And 41% of those same people say choosing furniture has become more stressful than ten years ago. Not despite the increase in choice. Because of it. Something is fundamentally broken in the way we buy furniture.

Three things that don't work anymore

Product photos don't work. A sofa in a white showroom on a grey rug tells you nothing about how it looks in your room. You don't have a white showroom. You have a corner with a radiator and a wifi router. Reviews don't work. Someone says "great seat, colour as shown" and you think that helps. But the colour is right in their house, not yours. The seat is fine for their 5'4", not your 6'3". Comparison sites don't work. Top 10s based on price and stars tell you nothing about what fits in your room, suits your style, or works with what you already own. These are all ways to deliver information about a product. But furniture is not a product decision. It's a space decision. Tools that start with products will never solve it for you.

A new generation of tools

That's why a new category has emerged — and Veyra is part of it. Tools that don't start with the product. They start with the space. Your space. Tools that take what you have, how you want it to feel, and only show products that fit. It's like walking into IKEA, but the entire store has been curated to only contain things that work in your living room.

What this means for you

Three things you no longer have to do: 1. Stop having 30 tabs open. 2. Stop guessing on colour. 3. Stop making disconnected choices that don't work together later.

Three things you'll start doing instead: 1. Decide based on how something looks at your place. 2. Get suggestions that work together, because they're designed together.

3. Be done sooner. Much sooner.

Not just Veyra

We're not the only ones working on this. More tools are emerging. Some are better, some have smaller catalogues, some are locked to a single retailer. But the bigger point is this: buying furniture has changed forever. The question isn't if you make the switch. Only when.