6 Ikea Kitchen Products To Avoid Buying, According To Reddit

Many of us get lured into Ikea with a promise of flatpacks and Swedish meatballs and end up leaving with kitchenware we didn't know we needed. As it turns out, some of those items are better to avoid buying. All those model kitchen displays give you the illusion that, if you just have these accessories, your kitchen will be complete. And so the stacks of cheap kitchen goods beckon.

While there are plenty of great products at Ikea that you'll be happy having in your kitchen (including Ikea kitchen cabinets), there are other items that you'll wish you had left behind. We went to Reddit to find out exactly which ones have the most complaints from customers. The problems range from mild and fixable issues, to products that may fail completely or ruin your other kitchenwares. Plus, there are a few items that may not work for the purpose you intend, as well as a couple of products that have changed for the worse over the years.

So, if you see a favorite standby here and think Redditors don't know what they're talking about, you might want to read a bit to find out what might have changed. For the most part, we think you'll be happy with the items you get for your kitchen from Ikea, but these six products have problems that are difficult to ignore — and might make you decide on a different kitchen solution altogether.

Ikea's Färgklar dinnerware is reasonably priced and comes in a variety of eye-pleasing colors, but there are quite a few people on Reddit with the same complaint. This dinnerware collection consists of plates, saucers, and various sizes and shapes of bowls, as well as mugs. They're all stoneware, with a glaze that makes them look a bit rustic. However, their wear tendencies make them perhaps too rustic for some.

Ikea's stoneware dinnerware, like the Fägklar line, is easily scratched and tends to get black marks on it. These scratches and marks happen from using utensils with them. And of course, it's normal to use spoons, forks, and knives with your dishes. Some people on social media say that the bottoms of their older dishes are completely covered in a whole blanket of scratches, with several noticing that it's most prevalent in the bowls they use to scramble eggs. The good news is that customers have found that the black marks and scratches come off with a little help from a cleaner like Bon Ami or Barkeeper's Friend. Even baking soda can work.

However, if you don't relish the idea of needing to scour your plates, a solution one customer found was to simply avoid Färgklar and switch to another line of Ikea plates, like Oftast. Oftast is made from tempered opal glass and doesn't get scratched surfaces even with years of usage, just like Corelle, which is a vintage brand you might remember from your grandma's kitchen.

Look. We're going to be straight with you. If you buy cheap knives from Ikea, you should expect them to behave like cheap knives. While you can get a kitchen knife or a small kitchen knife set from Ikea for under $5, that doesn't necessarily mean you should.

One person on Reddit who has tried many of Ikea's knives and ranked them indicates that the more expensive ones are better, which is really not a surprise. For example, they find Briljera to be the best, which goes as high as around $70 for the chef's or vegetable knife. The next step down would be the Ikea 365+ and Vardagen knives, which are around $20-$25 for the most expensive ones. The Redditor says that Vörda is decent, but not as good as the others, and it tops out at around $20, too. However, those on social media discussing Ikea knives indicate that anything less expensive requires constant sharpening and may break or rust easily.

While a $3 knife seems like a great deal, it's really not. If you aren't sharpening your cheap Ikea knives constantly, you'll end up with a dull knife that is both annoying and dangerous to use. The more force you have to use for cutting with a dull knife, the bigger the chance of cutting yourself badly. Instead, splurge and get a more expensive one. Even better, save up and invest in a good knife brand that you can use for years to come.

Some of the best-selling cutting boards at Ikea are bamboo ones, but that doesn't mean that they're the best choice. Bamboo cutting boards do have some things going for them, like being cheap and anti-microbial, as well as being durable and not easily succumbing to water damage. However, the fact that bamboo is very strong and hard with a high amount of silica means that it easily damages knives. You might as well be using a ceramic or glass cutting board for the amount of damage the hard surface will do to your knife. Pair a cheap $5 Ikea knife with one of these bad boys, and you're on the road to dullsville.

Quite a few Redditors have noticed their knives dulling quickly when using bamboo cutting boards from Ikea. In fact, they seem to dull them faster than even plastic cutting boards do. Others mentioned that they had to oil their bamboo boards because they tended to splinter otherwise, and nobody wants to find splinters in their food.

The good news is that not all of Ikea's cutting boards are bamboo. There are also ones made of plastic, acacia, oak, and beech. The best cutting boards are ones made of hardwood and aren't porous, which are more likely to trap bacteria. Acacia and beech are good hardwood choices, but oak is too porous and best avoided. Plastic is also a good option for being dishwasher safe, but it tends to dull knives.

Ikea 365+ glasses are fairly inexpensive and look thick and sturdy, but many people on social media have had bad luck with them. They're made from tempered glass, which is heat-treated to make it stronger than ordinary glass and more resistant to temperature changes and dishwasher safe. Another feature of tempered glass is that it breaks into small pieces instead of large shards. Unfortunately, it's the breaking part that people don't like about these glasses. Getting a little chip in tempered glass makes it more likely for the whole glass to shatter, which isn't true for some other types of glass.

Several people on Reddit have mentioned a really disturbing phenomenon with their Ikea 365+ glasses. Basically, their glasses explode with no provocation. One person had 13 of the 18 glasses they bought randomly explode over time. And the fact that they shatter rather than simply break like other glasses means they leave a huge mess to clean up, with minuscule shards stuck between floorboard cracks for days, even after multiple sweepings, moppings, and vacuumings.

Interestingly, a Redditor who works in a glass factory that once made Ikea glasses said this happens when glasses aren't properly tempered, especially with quick temperature changes. They said Ikea switched to using a cheaper glass factory around 2018.

Ikea has a variety of Korken jars, but they just don't work for every storage situation. These are clamp-top jars that have a glass top, a rubber seal, and are secured with a wire that hinges and clasps the lid tightly to the jar. The images that Ikea uses to advertise these jars on its website, as well as its web copy, insinuate that they're a great choice for preserving and pickling food. However, the experience that many people on Reddit have had suggests that they may not work as well as you'd hope. They're fairly cheap at only $2-$5 per jar, but sometimes cheap is cheap at Ikea.

Redditors have found that they don't get a consistent seal with these jars and that the pressure from the canning process often causes leaks. As such, they don't feel comfortable relying on them for canning purposes. People trying to use the Korken bottles meant for liquid drinks had inconsistent results using them for liquids like kombucha, finding that the bottles weren't maintaining a consistent carbonation level. It seems like the gaskets that come with these jars just aren't that great, but some people have had luck replacing them with better-quality ones.

However, even major hinged-lid jar companies like Le Parfait suggest not using these types of jars for shelf-stable canning because of USDA recommendations. These jars are best for storing dried goods in a cupboard or storing something like canning refrigerator bread and butter pickles, not for pressurized shelf-stable canning.

Lastly on our list are Ikea's nice-looking resealable bags. While most companies are happy to give you clear bags with a single-colored line at the top, Ikea has several styles of resealable bags that come in a variety of prints and colors. You're probably more likely to wash and reuse such bags rather than tossing them, which is a bonus. However, many Redditors feel like the quality has gone downhill.

So, here's what customers on Reddit have noticed. First of all, they leak and don't stay closed as well as they used to, especially if something inside is exerting pressure on the top of the bag. Interestingly enough, Ikea acknowledges this shortcoming in its web copy, saying that the bags aren't meant to seal completely. So, it's no wonder they leak. Customers also say they used to be thicker and sturdier, but now they tear easily, especially where the bag seals. Something else that customers have noticed is that the bag sizes have changed. So, the ones people bought, assuming would accommodate their normal purposes, did not. Ikea markets its resealable bags as being reusable if you wash them by hand, but it's impossible to want to reuse them if they fail the first time around.

Ikea isn't the only place Redditors have complained about resealable bags decreasing in quality. Aldi customers have started to avoid buying products that come in resealable plastic bags there, and Redditors complain about finding lower-quality bags at other chain grocery stores, too.

When trying to determine which Ikea kitchen products to avoid, we went to Reddit to find out what everyday people are experiencing with the kitchen products there. Reddit has a whole Ikea subreddit, which is full of plenty of people gushing over Ikea products. However, it also uncovers product shortcomings.

The six products that made our list are ones where enough people had the same problem with the product that they seemed worthy of a little extra scrutiny. Sometimes, a little background knowledge about these products can help, too, especially when it comes to how you plan to use the product. So, if you go into Ikea and start perusing the kitchen products, you might think twice about picking some of these up, even if the price is right.

We found at least 10 Ikea kitchen products where just one or two people had complaints. Maybe someone's dish broke in the microwave or their pan warped, but it just seemed to be a one-off, where they just happened to get a lemon of a product or weren't using it the right way. It happens. Perhaps there were real problems with some of these products, too, but not enough people had bothered to go to Reddit to find others with the same complaint.