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Habitat is a store that you go to when you're a very cool and trendy couple who want some marvellously sparse black and white ornaments for your chic newly wed pad in the country. It's a sort of air conditioned IKEA store for Little Englanders everywhere and like IKEA it shares that very ... Read review
Advantages: Some good stuff Disadvantages: All style, no substance
...getting bored....)
Habitat is a store that you go to when you're a very cool and trendy couple who want some marvellously sparse black and white ornaments for your chic newly wed pad in the country. It's a sort of air conditioned IKEA store for Little Englanders everywhere and like IKEA it shares that very cheap and nasty, irrelevant feell. Things are very snazzy and impressive on the surface, but do you really need a picture frame ... .../>
Now, undoubtedly, Habitat do have a lot of good things on offer and if you're on the look out for furniture and trinkets and ornaments and gadgets then it's as good or bad as any of the others, all pretty nasty compact disc storage units and office furniture covered in those very, very unlifelike faux computers to attract in the big boys amongst you who just have to check whether they're real or not.
How to be a cool middle class couple in one very easy lesson....
Anonymous, asexual, androgynous, assymetrical, angular, antiseptic, artistic, aspidistra (sorry, but I was getting bored....)
Habitat is a store that you go to when you're a very cool and trendy couple who want some marvellously sparse black and white ornaments for your chic newly wed pad in the country. It's a sort of air conditioned IKEA store for Little Englanders everywhere and like IKEA it shares that very cheap and nasty, irrelevant feell. Things are very snazzy and impressive on the surface, but do you really need a picture frame with a picture of a hedgehog on it - what on earth for, you loser?
It's all extremely middle class and coffee table, style without the substance, the most horrible way imaginable to spend a hot Bank Holiday afternoon, all woolen throws to hurl across your leather suite to make things look very Bohemian and swish.
And around every corner there's one of those very sickly customer service assistants, eagerly trying to get you to take up their credit card offer, so they can high pressure sales pitch you to death and get you to enter their very up market world. Pah! Humbug, etc...
Those hateful people are the only bit of feeling and passion that you'll encounter in the entire place and you need to be prepared to blend in with the faceless hordes. 'Tain't my cup of decaff, Im afraid...
Now, undoubtedly, Habitat do have a lot of good things on offer and if you're on the look out for furniture and trinkets and ornaments and gadgets then it's as good or bad as any of the others, all pretty nasty compact disc storage units and office furniture covered in those very, very unlifelike faux computers to attract in the big boys amongst you who just have to check whether they're real or not.
When me and Mrs D moved back from London to a brand new house in Stafford in 1988, we spent an awful lot of weekends to the branch of Habitat that you can find (could find?) near Birmingham, just off Junction 10 of the M6, so unfortunately I have got lots and lots of experience of wearing out shoes in Habitat stores and it’s not a pleasant thought I can tell you.
Just for the moment, my dears, however, let’s suspend all disbelief and cynicism and let me tell you the tale of Habitat, a jolly, hard working place where all sorts of magical things can happen, where an old pixie by the name of Terence Conran set about trying to make his fortune as an entrepreneur. Way back in May 1964 in the midst of swinging London, Conran formed the Habitat organisation and opened his first store in the Fulham Road in London, with the intention ‘of selling well designed contemporary housewares and home furnishings’, i.e. trendy junk.
Old Conran had set his sights on nothing less than bringing a whole new approach to homeware design and thought he could revolutionise our lives forever and apparently he ‘believed that people would buy well designed objects if they were offered them at a price they could afford.’ He also sought to introduce all sorts of stuff from foreign cultures to the UK and has the dubious honour of bringing the duvet to our shores – eiderdowns are so passe, my dear.
Conran was recently quoted in The Observer, thus: “It wasn't until the end of the 50s that the economy expanded sufficiently and young people had money to spend. You begin to see the effects of the Festival of Britain in the early 60s when I opened Habitat. Young people were offered things they hadn't seen before and they were able to indulge in something different from their parents. “I'm sure the Festival was the beginning of a great revolution in this country where we are perceived as the most creative nation in the world. We're thought of as the great happening place in the world, and the Festival of Britain lit that touchpaper.”
Thinks a lot of himself, don’t he?
Now Conran has long since moved on to pastures new and Habitat went public in 1981. It merged with Mothercare and Storehouse but things went badly and in the early 1990s, IKEA stepped in to buy up the chain and make it into a mirror image of that other trendy waste of a Bank Holiday.
So, if you go down to the woods today, be sure to go in disguise, because every designer that ever there was is out to get you.
Give it a miss – Habitat, a Seventies phenomenon that is past its sell by date…
Advantages: Modern Furniture built for todays home life Disadvantages: Expensive
...Dining Table from our local Habitat store in Chester and at the time we were moving homes. We had moved out of our old house and living with my parents and we had stressed that they were required by the 23rd of April 1999.
We then found out that are house move in date had been moved to the 26th of April 1999 and so Habitat had an extra couple of days unknown to them to get the furniture to us.
At 8am on the 23rd of April the furniture arrived at ... ...every day for the last two years and with it being right in front of a patio door, it has done well with not losing too much colour etc.
I would definately look to buy further pieces of furniture at Habitat although some items are very expensive but modern. ...
sharondyer 07.03.2001
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Habitat (Shop)
Advantages: Very nice, modern products Disadvantages: Poor customer service
...a poor student!
Yet Habitat came to the rescue when I needed picture frames. I decided that I would be better off buying picture frames to save my newly decorated walls from the relentless torture of sticking up and ripping down posters. Habitat had just the ones… 70x100cm Frameless Frames. The only problem was that I needed three – and this turned into a gigantic problem!
I purchased the first frame when I saw it and it was perfect ... ...cannot specifically order them – Habitat will hold them for a few days.
So I rang them up every so often and was lucky one day. I reserved it, brought it home, and opened it up and A BIG CRACK DOWN THE CORNER. So I took it back up again and got my money back and then the process started again. But I was in luck – the very next week they had one. So up I went (remember, 30 miles) and it WAS THE SAME ONE I HAD RETURNED THE PREVIOUS WEEK!
...
paulruegg 09.04.2001
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Habitat (Shop)
Advantages: If you like it, it is nice Disadvantages: Approximate construction, VERY difficult to assemble. Wrong cuts.
We recently bought a couple of items from the Aspen range: shelving unit and sideboard - for the non-negligible cost of GBP 1747, incl. delivery. Very positively impressed by helpful staff and swift delivery (4 working days from order). Disaster stroke as we had to assemble our flat-packed furniture. Right ... it's not Ikea, but you still need to assemble it, ok ... and you paid more ... so it must be better ... mmmmh The cuts are very approximate. ... ...which I substituted with a pencil I cut myself. The various components are extremely heavy - you need 3 people to make them fall where they should. Some bolts have to be hammered into the shelf, but there is materially no gap for the bolt to get into. In summary. It is a disaster. Stay away. ...
teoteoteo 28.03.2009
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of Habitat (Shop)
Advantages: Great range of stuff Disadvantages: Easy to over do it on the plastic!
...your home by either visiting Habitat or by looking through the Habitat catalogue. Habitat provide cool stuff for cool people. It is not cheap. But it is still good value for money.
"How can that be so?" I hear someone ask. Because although a Rolls Royce has a high price tag, there's not many people who would decry a Rolls Royce because it did not cost the same as a Mini.
Habitat do have everything you could ever possibly need. Luxurious sofas, ... ...endless, certainly fills up the Habitat catalogue.
We have some Habitat furniture (a sofa, a glass-topped dining table and a glass-topped coffee table, and a really great easy chair that is sometimes fought over! My favourite Habitat item? A set of glossy black glazed coffee mugs. I don't know why it is, but their style and functionality really do impress me immensely.
Habitat retails art through their art on demand service. The Habitat website ...
Martinscholes 22.09.2005
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of Habitat (Shop)
Advantages: Let me think ...... Disadvantages: Dark Dingy Dated
I used to love Habitat style and always used to pick up the catalogues
when they were available from the news stands. However, over th last
few years gthey have really gone down.
Can't put my finger on whether it's the products themselves or the
store which is the most local to me; Leeds. Let's just say that
Habitat is not one of the shops I dash to when I'm in town any more.
I do find Habitat style a litle dated now I suppose, if I am honest,
... ...dark and dingy -
strange really seeing as their style is quite minimalist and sleek. I
feel really depressed when I've been in ?!?!?! Must say it's quite a
few years since I actually purchased anything from Habitat although
I'm sure there are still fans of their type of style. ...
gailmill 26.08.2000
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: somewhat helpful Review of Habitat (Shop)
Wide range/choice of pr...
Helpfulness of Staff
Delivery time
Repair/Replacement Serv...
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bar or sweet they don't sell, and all at reasonable prices, plus the famous pic n mix, though I think it's a little over-priced myself.
Their homeware department is also pretty good- people might do Woolworths down but when I needed some glassware the other day, Woolworths was genuinely the only shop in Birmingham city centre I could find that sold a simple glass jug for water- I tried Habitat, BHS, Marks and Spencer- nowhere had just a simple glass pouring jug- the closest I found was a pyrex measuring jug at BHS! Perhaps some stores overlook the simpler requirements in their quest to be cool, and Woolies aren't too proud to sell what you really need! They also had a lot of reasonably priced and attractive crockery and glassware- the odd tacky design still remained that I might have expected of Woolworths, but generally I was impressed ...
