Why you might be renting not buying your next couch

On Jan 22, 2022

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Before eventually moving to California, the grandson of one of interior designer Phyllis Harbinger’s wealthy clients who had just graduated from college opted to rent furniture rather than buy it for an apartment he and his girlfriend had found in the New York area.

“They said, ‘We don’t know what we want to do. We don’t want to be married to anything and we want to be sustainable,'” said Harbinger, who is the assistant chairperson of the Interior Design Department at Fashion Institute of Technology. “This generation is very much into that reuse, repurchase mentality to save the planet for them and their kids.”

Renting office furniture has a long history, but demand for renting home furnishings has been growing — particularly among younger consumers who favor a more mobile lifestyle than was common for older generations.

Online furniture start-ups such as Feather and Fernish offer customers the ability to rent furniture for as little as three months at a time, with the option to swap pieces during or at the end of a contract period if they’re in the mood for something different.

Appealing to a young, mobile customer

Feather and Fernish are “responding to the need of people who have plenty of money but no time to go shop for furniture and perhaps also no desire to commit to ownership of large, bulky furniture because they expect to be moving again — and that’s a younger demographic,” says Susan Inglis, executive director of the Sustainable Furniture Council.

The rent-to-buy option that these start-ups offer also appeals to people who don’t have enough money to buy immediately but would like good quality pieces that they can start living with immediately, she said.

Feather’s customers tend to be in their 20s and 30s, living and working in cities. The service is well-suited to people who have just moved or are about to move, live with roommates and move every six months to a year, Ilyse Kaplan, the company’s president and chief operating officer, wrote in an email.

It’s also more affordable for people moving to a new state, which can cost between $4,300 and $4,800, or even moving down the street in most cities, which averages $1,250, Kaplan said. Feather customers “can get set up in a basic studio apartment for as little as $105 a month, or a basic 1-bedroom apartment for $150 a month.”

Feather cited “significant growth” in new residential leases since the start of Covid-19 and the onset of remote and hybrid work, greater financial uncertainty and the need for more flexible living arrangements. “As living conditions have changed in response to the pandemic, we have seen dining room items decrease in exchange for more functional home-office pieces,” Kaplan said.

Renting furniture to be more sustainable

Brick-and-mortar furniture brands like IKEA are also exploring leasing models. For the Swedish retailer, experimenting with renting is part of a grander plan to transition to a circular business model by 2030, with the…