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by porphyra 28 days ago
I mean, you can say that about any luxury good right? It just looks nice and makes you feel good.

IKEA doesn't actually make any modular wall shelves like that anymore, after discontinuing the SVALNÄS. For a wall mounted shelf on a budget you could go for the Elfa system or the Fasttrack one.
2 comments
PunchyHamster 28 days ago
But those don't even look good. Like, I thought it was some IKEA series that I didn't knew, just raw aluminum profiles + some uninteresting shelving
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mattlondon 28 days ago
Well precisely - shelves feels especially like a solved problem where basically the cheapest tat you can buy (IKEA) is totally fine and solid and long lasting. Need something more hardcore? Then you're probably not in the "shelves on my living room" context, but probably need something more suited for an industrial setting.

It was a genuine question about what makes these any better (...or not). Like do they have some amazing non-obvious feature? Something that no other shelf has? Something that IKEA shelves fail to do?

Of course it could be a performative thing (as I was suggesting) in the same way that someone pays $150 for a t-shirt because it has a logo on it and they want people to know. There is a sucker born every minute as they say.

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koralatov 28 days ago
A big downside of IKEA’s modular shelving is that they periodically release a new range and discontinue the old one. This happened to me with their ALGOT shelving system about 10 years ago. I bought mine not long before it was discontinued and replaced by BOAXEL which is not compatible.

That’s fine if you buy exactly what you want and need and know your needs will never change, but if you later want to expand, you’re out of luck. At best, you might get lucky and find parts of Facebook Marketplace or Gumtree, but you’re usually just stuck. (I’d kill for some more 200cm wall rails but I doubt I’ll ever find any.)

The 606 Vitsoe system is heinously overpriced but has the advantage of having been around for 50+ years and is so established you’ll likely always be able to buy more parts if you want to expand it.

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