I recently visited the Design Store in Wairau Park looking for some stylish pieces to spruce up the…read moreliving area. This fabulous contemporary furniture and accessories store has really top quality furniture and items that make your home look a million dollars. If you can spare a bit of change the items at the Design Store do not come cheap, it's the price you pay for elegance and character. Stunning mirrors, paintings, leather couches, ottomans, coffee tables. You name it; they can spruce up any home or office. Sometimes, like me you're just looking for that signature piece to place on a table and emphasize colour, I found exactly what I was looking for in the form of a lime green bamboo place mat! Just perfect and matched up with the colour theme throughout the house. The staff are very approachable, which is wonderful as sometimes in expensive stores you can feel a bit ignored. They will give you tips and choices if you explain exactly what you're after. If just browsing however, you can do so with leisure.

I very often pop in here for a wander. There is a shitload of stuff to look at and it can take a…read morewhile to make your way around the entire store to take in all the cool stuff in it's entirety. Because of this I'm very thankful that the staff aren't the kind to be breathing down your neck and constantly asking if you need a hand! There's a wide range of home decor things in here. mirrors, candles, kitchen things, furniture. A bit of everything really. If you're buying you mother or your grandmother or your aunt a present pop in here and there will almost certainly be something appropriate. Some things can be a bit pricey but there are other smaller things to take away too. Pretty much something to please whoever I'd say.

I love Freedom Furniture, becouse I feel like it is the closet I will ever get to IKEA and its…read moreofferings and prices. Auckland has a lot of furniture stores around, and many are great but Freedom Furniture is perfect for several reasons. They have great products in general which is awesome, but they also have a lot of make it yourself products which I love so much. They have a great selection of items in this store as well, due to its massive floor space. You can move from looking at kitchen items to bedroom items and so forth, it is awesome. The prices are also what helps in liking this space. We were there just yesterday, and were able to look at a few furniture stores which offered very similar products, and Freedom Furniture had by far the best price range overall.

My home is decorated in what can best be described as a collision between old farmhouse and modern…read more I love antique Kauri tables, Yellowwood bookshelves and oak chests. I love pop art on the walls and display cases to show off items I've acquired from my world travels. What I don't like is mass-produced boring furniture. With my eclectic style, you would not really see me as being a regular Freedom Furniture shopper, and you would be correct. It's not that they sell bad stuff, or items sans style - it is just that they don't come with a story. For my office however, I needed a place for people to sit, a place where they could see presentations, and a place that will put them at ease. I needed a place filled with Freedom Furniture's furniture. The staff was helpful and the furniture just what I wanted, so while it is not suited for my own home, it was perfect for the office.

I stumbled upon Hunter Furniture when I was on Link Drive one weekend. I'd been looking for a sofa…read morefor a while, and thought I'd pop in to have a look. Really nice big store, with a good display of furniture items and accessories. Not too cluttered and lots of natural light. I was approached by a friendly shop assistant who was very knowledgeable about their products. I was very interested in buying New Zealand made, and many of their products are made here, but not all, depending on the type of materials required. I went back about six weeks later during one of their sales (20-50% off everything in store) and was served by another really knowledgeable sales person. Another nice thing was that I could choose the material and colours for the sofa I was interested in (I don't think this is possible with ALL items). I was really happy with the final price - although you could probably get a cheaper version of a similar styled item elsewhere, I was happy to spend a little more, as I was happy with the quality of the product. Only needed a 20% deposit as well. Some of the styles were not quite to my taste (i'm a bit fussy!) but am really happy with my new sofa!!

I once came in here for a quick look around with my sister and nephew. We wondered around for a bit…read moreand I was thinking all the furniture was very cool but there were no major bargains around so nothing for us to take home. We were about to walk out when my nephew spotted a little chair that he decided he absolutely must have. It was a small, green rocking chair. We asked how much it was and then, after realising it wasn't really in the budget we set off to leave. But we didn't make it out the door... the very friendly shop owner bounced over and knelt down to my nephews level and said "you know what, I think we might have one of those upstairs that's slightly damaged so we can't sell it... if I go up and find it you can take it home". Well I don't need to tell you how obviously happy this made the little boy. He pulled out his best manners and said thank you and we walked away with an awesome rocking chair! The only thing that was wrong with it was a small chip on the bottom - nothing major! Wonderful service and a good little experience here.

If money was no object, Weekend Trader would be my number one stop for furniture and home decor…read more The new location looks like it's come straight of the pages of Architectural Digest. Lots of clean lines, raw metal, marble and rich fabrics. I am particularly taken with their brass anglepoise lamp, which I am saving my pennies for. I'm also a fan of their horse prints, which, dare I say it, are similar to the ones in St Clements. Slowly, as I start to buy pieces for the new house that I plan to cherish for a long time, I predict there trips to Weekend Trader will become more frequent, even if it's only to dream...

I purchased a ceiling fan from this retailer and it developed a fault much sooner than I'd expect…read moreunder normal household use; when I raised this under the Consumer Guarantees Act, they repeatedly refused to take the fan back for inspection or properly investigate whether the issue was a defect or an installation problem, instead relying on the "electrician only" note in the manual to deny any responsibility and insisting I deal with the manufacturer or pay for my own independent report, so I am now taking the matter to the Disputes Tribunal because in my experience they have not stood behind the product or followed a fair, evidence‑based process when something went wrong.

If I could give negative stars, I would do it…read more We ordered two bunk beds and paid extra for rural delivery to the Coromandel area. On November 5, we had a confirmation email that the shipment had left Auckland and on November 7 that they were at a town 20 minutes away. We waited....and waited....no calls from the company or the couriers, no emails.... Suffice to say that after I initiated probably 12 phone conversations and 20 emails back and forth, it is now November 28 and we still don't have the beds. Finally we have managed to locate them (by driving to the delivery depot in a DIFFERENT town than we were told) and WE will be paying a private courier to finally get them to our house, MAYBE by next week. Urban Sales says they'll only refund the rural excess, but I'm not holding my breath. For those who may think we live way off somewhere crazy, we don't... barely 10 minutes off SH 25 and since it's new construction we've been having trucks up and down the road with large deliveries for months. Urban Sales - if your whole business is based on packaging up IKEA products and delivering them to NZ, but you can't actually deliver, what is the point?!?