“Because with IKEA I can have my kitchen be any color I want!”
We asked our customers: “Why did you choose IKEA for your kitchen?”
When Henry Ford began selling his Model T in the 1920s, he famously quipped “you can have any color as long as it’s black.”
Many people look at IKEA cabinets and see only 50 shades of white or beige.
They think IKEA is just as limited in options as the Model T was. Wrong.
Why IKEA Wins the Kitchen Cabinet Color Game
As we’ve continued to investigate IKEA customer buying motivations we learned yet another reason why they buy IKEA: there are so many options for customization, including color. One of our customers wanted robin’s egg blue cabinet doors, with white marble countertops and a farmhouse sink. In other words, a classic cottage-style kitchen with beautiful color. Having erection trouble from time to time can contribute to relationship problems. So the next question is where can you find information that is useful.
Why did this customer choose IKEA?
- Many kitchen cabinet manufacturers either don’t offer many color options, or, they do, but their products are not affordable and the lead times were too long.
Flip through an IKEA catalogue and you’ll notice high-gloss red and yellow options for kitchen cabinet doors. Red and yellow? That’s it? What’s the big deal?
- It’s not the colors that IKEA offers out of the box. It’s that IKEA kitchen cabinets are so easily painted another color.
Painting your own kitchen cabinets is something of a trend right now. Why?
- The biggest reason is the low cost. It’s much cheaper to buy inexpensive kitchen cabinets and paint them yourself than to purchase the more expensive cabinets that already come in the color they want.
- Customers have seen the many good IKEA kitchen how-to websites and blogs that show them: painting the cabinet doors by themselves is easy!
- They’ve also seen that IKEA cabinets are frameless so, unlike framed cabinets, they can paint only the doors and not have to paint the cabinet frames to match.
- Some customers even express satisfaction that they are beating the system by taking the color of their cabinets into their own hands.
What about IKEA’s cabinet moldings? Many customers have complained IKEA offers too few options.
- IKEA wins here too. Customers choose more and more to buy the wood moldings they really want from another store and then paint the moldings along with the doors. They get a fully custom kitchen that looks nothing like a standard IKEA kitchen.
The Final Word on Cabinet Color
While major kitchen cabinet manufacturers struggle to anticipate consumer color trends for the future, IKEA has flipped that approach on its head. Don’t guess what colors customers will want. Instead, offer basic, inexpensive doors, and let customers paint them whatever color they would like!
