When you’re on the hunt for new furniture, you’re usually faced with the choice to either rent or buy. While purchasing your furniture might seem like the reasonable thing to do, you may be surprised to learn that it isn’t the best option for everyone. Renting furniture gives you far more freedom and flexibility than is possible when you’re bogged down by ownership. Read on to discover how renting stacks up against buying.

Furniture Quality

A 2013 study by Mississippi State University found that quality is the most important factor that people consider when buying furniture. This is because quality furniture is perceived to look better and last longer than cheaper alternatives. While almost everyone would like to have high-quality furniture in their homes, its cost and sustainability can play a big factor.

Price Points

While it’s almost always preferred, purchasing high-quality furniture often comes with a hefty price tag. If you need to buy several pieces for your home, that’s a considerable upfront cost. While customers want durable furniture that’s built to last, it can be cost-prohibitive for buyers. As a contrast, furniture rental gives shoppers the chance to get high-quality furniture without shelling out a lot of money upfront.

Sustainability

Quality isn’t just in the type of furniture you get - it’s also reflected in how sustainable that furniture is. While it is possible to purchase sustainable furniture, it’s often more difficult to match the eco-friendly benefits of renting furniture. Furniture rental is, by its very nature, sustainable.

CORT’s practice of buying new, durable furniture manufactured to CORT’s specifications, and renting the pieces several times over creates a sustainable model that’s hard to match. Because the furniture is of the highest quality and regularly maintained, renting it gives you the benefit of top-level, sustainable furniture without the high price tag.

Shopping Experience

Shopping for furniture can be a stressful and nerve-wracking experience, especially if you are trying to furnish an entire room at once. If you’re purchasing, you’re forced to make final and expensive decisions, taking into account the space you have as well as style and design. Once you purchase furniture, you can’t change your mind if the piece doesn’t function as you had hoped or if your style changes a year later.

Renting offers an entirely different shopping experience. Furniture rental offers a vast selection of choices and styles. To make things easy, you can opt for a pre-selected package which combines complementary pieces for a cohesive look, or you can choose piece-meal to suit your own style. If you decide you love the furniture you’ve rented, extend your contract for as long as you need. Wish you had chosen another style? With furniture rental, switching out pieces and trying a new look is easy. Knowing that you won’t be stuck with your furniture forever also takes a lot of the stress out of picking the pieces you want.

How Flexible is Your Furniture?

Buying furniture gives you the advantage of owning that furniture outright. While that’s perceived as the best option, it may not always be a good thing. For instance, what happens when you want to remodel or redesign a room? You’re still stuck with the furniture you own, and you may have to purchase new pieces to get the look you want.

Another disadvantage to owning furniture is that you will need to maintain it. Caring for your furniture can be an additional cost of time or money that you didn’t anticipate.

While purchasing furniture falters in these areas, furniture rental shines. While you’re stuck with the pieces you buy forever, furniture rental is flexible. With CORT’s Furniture as a Service model, your furniture is there when you need it and gone with you don’t. You can also swap out pieces if you want to try a new look. Furthermore, furniture rental comes with maintenance and damage protection, which means your pieces will always be well-cared for.

Ease of Relocation

A final point to consider when you’re weighing the option of renting versus buying is how easy it is to relocate. Moving is never an easy task, but the difficulty is considerably compounded when you own a lot of furniture. Most movers quote their price based on the time, difficulty, and distance of the move. Moves with a lot of heavy furniture will drive that rate up. In many cases, furniture needs to be disassembled before it’s moved and then put back together in it’s new home. This can be outsourced (another expense) or you could do it yourself (a hassle). No matter what you choose, it’s a lot of hard work to relocate when you own furniture.

In contrast, furniture rental makes moving as painless as possible. With furniture rental from CORT, there’s no need to disassemble or move the furniture. All of that is taken care of with CORT’s white glove delivery, setup, and pickup service. You focus on getting yourself into your new home, and let CORT worry about delivering and setting up furniture in your new place, switching out what you had before for something different makes it even better too.

If you want high-quality furniture that’s sustainable, comes in a wide variety of options, is easy to swap out and maintain, and comes with white-glove service, CORT Furniture Rental checks all the boxes. With CORT, discover furniture for the whole home that’s flexible enough to fit your lifestyle.