IKEA -Belfast

Love IKEA… Took my 7 year old daughter here for a treat and yes she loves Ikea. She wanted ice cream and a hot dog. After our whistle stop tour in which I picked up loads of stuff for my terrarium and saw the hydroponics it was off to the bistro. My daughter wanted frozen yoghurt instead of ice cream. So we had a hot dog each and she was chuffed with her yoghurt and I was over the moon about my terrarium!!!

I think everyone already has their own ikea experience, good or bad. I go here, like everyone, for cheap furnature and assorted things for the home, mostly to do with shoe storage (if anyone has any good shoe storage tips i would love to hear them!) I would highly recommend avoiding ikea at the weekends, as it is mega busy and very hard to get round. There are little shortcut doors that make maze life easier, they do say staff only, but ive never been caught!

Love this place, great for a walk around but not so great for the wallet, always come away with all sorts of stuff I never knew unreal needed and how did I live with out them???
Always try the meat balls and gravy an absolute must.

The novelty I think has worn off, at least for me anyway. I no longer trek around upstairs I go to the market hall get want I want and I am away. Quick and painless. I find if you dawdle you pick up things you don’t really need. Everyone knows what you get when you go to ikea, easy to assemble flat pack furniture. Sometimes I like to go here to hide from the world for an hour as I get no phone signal

IKEA’s great value for money and has a massive selection of household furniture and items. It is a bit of a pain that it’s all mainly flat pack stuff but they do offer both delivery and assembly services which are super. I enjoy an occasional wander around this giant store and really like the simple Swedish design of the furniture.
IKEA overall has relatively good environmental credentials with all stores being energy efficient and products produced as sustainably as can be. I have some IKEA shelving I’ve had for years and plan to keep forever as it’s strong and sturdy. The IKEA café is also economical and offers some good vegetarian options.

Ikea is amazingly epic by all standards from the basics right up to the posh… Everytime you go you always see someone lost as if they were in the Amazon… And the restaurant you assume it’s gonna be boring bland and minging when infact it’s actually not bad and pretty tasty and we’ll priced. All the staff are very pleasant and surprisingly helpful… Ps lingonberry is amazing! — Chris

I absolutely love Ikea one of my favourite places to go. They do a extensive range of home ware. Ikea also sell kitchens, you can design your own kitchen in store.
There are set up living rooms and kitchens also bedrooms to give you ideas of what your rooms could look like, there’s also a regular catalogue of all the range of products that Ikea sell.
There is a children’s playroom inside called smaland where you can leave your children into while you shop.
Ikea have a large café with a large number of seats, they have 2 serving queues, selling desserts, tea, coffee, chips and Swedish meatballs, soup and salads. They also sell children’s meals. You can get free coffee refills Monday to Friday for ikea family card members. Prices are very reasonable too. The café windows have great views of Belfast city airport runways where you can do a bit of plane spotting. The café also has disposable baby bibs and a baby food heating area and a bottle warmer.
The café is a self tidy café.
There are toilets and lifts available in store also a atm machine. The ladies toilet has a baby nappy dispenser machine which is 10p for a cardboard tube which has a nappy, baby wipe and a nappy bag inside which is very handy if you run of out nappies for your baby.
If you forget your ikea family member card you can print off a temporary card in the machines located on the same floor where the café is.
There’s a small food market area near the exit of the store selling frozen food, chocolate, pick and mix sweeties, crisps and other Swedish food, next to that theres a hot food counter selling hotdogs, fries, doughnuts and ice cream with a small seating area.
There is a massive car park with free parking and a children’s playground area at the entrance of ikea.
Ikea sometimes hold events instore and have offers on various items for Ikea family card members
Great big store with an ever expanding selection.

It’s the first time ive been to an ikea store and the store I visited today in Belfast was a great experience. So much stock, so much choice & all at great prices. Its a little difficult in the beginning to find your way around and I feel that much better signage would make a big difference to this store. Check out is pretty quick and hassle free though, despite a lot of people at the checkouts. The restaurant on the first floor was excellent and the Champ with meatballs was just perfect, the best Champ ive ever had in fact. A lovely meal, dessert and a glass of milk was just £6.40, really good value and nice quality food. I’ll definitely be returning and I’ve no doubt I’ll be a regular customer.

For my money (and my budget!), IKEA Belfast is pretty darn great. I always enjoy coming here and having a browse, stopping for a snack (or more substantial fare) in the café and picking up bargains as often as I can. I was here today with my mom and aunt. My aunt has a disabled parking badge for her car. As you can imagine, she’s not in a position to be hauling heavy flat-​packed furniture into her car. Once we’d checked out, she needed someone to load a desk into her car. A female staff member originally told us to go over to the home delivery desk and ask for assistance there. When I mentioned my aunt was parked in disabled parking, the staff member immediately radioed for another IKEA staffer to meet my aunt at her car and have the desk loaded in. The IKEA team couldn’t have been more considerate or helpful in assisting her. I was very pleased with each aspect of my visit today, and I can’t say enough good things about this IKEA location.

Massive and cavernous as all IKEAS are. Staff are generally not the most helpful, but the food is nice and they furniture is as you’d expect. Tales over an hour to go around and you will be knackered by the end of it!

Ikea is great for picking up all sorts of furniture, whether it’s a small, cheap coffee table, or something bigger. Furniture is flat packed so if you don’t like building furniture you probably won’t like shopping in Ikea! It also sells accessories like lamps, mop buckets, cushions and all sorts like that. You can buy some food items too like sweets or chocolates and there are often deals on them. Ikea is even good for a dander around even if you don’t need anything, the showroom style floor allows you to see all sorts of rooms decorated with Ikea furniture so it’s even nice for a nosy. You can also visit the café there — the Swedish meatballs are lovely, we had them with mash recently and it was a really tasty meal!

What can you say about IKEA that hasn’t already been said? Value for money, handy flat pack furniture and a general overall good customer experience. It can be a great wee cheap day out too. Bring the kids and check them into the play area, go for a browse on the display floor, grab what you want on the warehouse floor and treat everyone to a nice bit of tasty, value for money grub. (I’m not sure if they still do it but where else do you know does or has done a 99p fry… Seriously!)

When this store first came to Northern Ireland there was a massive hype about the excellent prices and fantastic selection it would offer, as well as the fact it was Swedish and could possibly get us in touch with Abba and see if they would consider a comeback tour which played solely in Belfast and entirely for me.
I have tried to avoid this place for as long as possible because anything that comes flat-​packed is destined to cause an argument between me and my girlfriend about why we’ve got 4 screws left over when the tables built and that despite the fact the instructions tell us that the screws belong at the front, I have managed to fit them perfectly into the middle of the table.
However, due to a student budget and moving into a house with relatively little furniture I had to bite the bullet and in fairness to the furniture Vikings I’m so glad I did. This place had everything I needed and more to the point during September and October students get 10% discount. I was unaware of this until I visited so WOWSA!
There is also a late night opening on Thursday and Friday and combined with a huge free car park, this place is guaranteed to have absolutely anything you need to kit out your house at half the price you’d normally expect to pay.
Definitely worth a shout!
Still no Abba though.

So everyone has explained their feelings about Ikea and to be honest everyone knows what they are getting with Ikea, cheap flat pack furniture that will make your house as sleek and sophisticated as Sven Goran Eriksson, ok maybe he isn’t too sleek but I couldn’t think of anyone else Swedish.
But being that Ikea is reasonably new in Northern Ireland I thought I better pitch in and look at it from a different aspect.
Ikea is located between Holywood and Belfast at the aptly named Holywood Exchange making it extremely accessible by car or rail. As you would expect parking is excellent, it has been built for «our» convenience.
The other notable thing about Ikea is that it is situated right next to George Best Belfast City Airport
Making its café popular with plane enthusiasts, as it looks over the runway. What better way to look for a 747 than to have a lint remover in one hand and a fork full of Swedish meatballs in the other?

IKEA is an experience not for the faint hearted. I have been on a few runs up here from down South to get some good value stuff for an ex boyfriend’s flat.
The booking system can be pretty stressful. We had ordered a couch and then went and bought some other stuff (the thing about IKEA is you’ll come out with a load of shiny crap you don’t need) but by the time we had gotten to the gates of hell aka the cash registers, the couch had been sold. Which led to a huge rigmarole.
There was also a bookshelf bought in the wrong colour and the wrong sized mattress. Looking back, maybe it was just the boyfriend who was a pain in the ass, not IKEA. I digress!
The store is absolutely great for young singles/​couples looking to get the essentials for their homes. You will get great value on literally everything you need for a house, throws, cushions, cutlery, rugs, crockery anything and everything.
There are some really stylish things in IKEA but the experience is intense. There are huge arrows on the floor which make you follow them like a rat in a puzzle. I discovered (by using independent thought) that by using the doors you can cut through the sections without taking the long route.
The food here really is basic and not great at all, so avoid of you can. Just be careful you don’t get caught up in it all and end up like Edward Norton in Fight Club.

It may now be a multi-​national chain which rakes in a fortune annually, it may be a place which has now guaranteed the stigma of married couples the world wide and has brought the limited cuisine of Sweden right in the forefront of our psyche, but still…
Myself and my girlfriend headed to this acre upon acre of floorspace, located just outside Belfast (right beside, and I mean right beside the city airport runway) a few days ago to get a few items for the apartment.
Now, after finding the gaping entrance following a prolonged search of of one side of the building we made our way up the stairs, dazzled by the things on offer.
First of all, I hadn’t eaten all day. It was early afternoon and I thought it may be time to fill my stomach with something to keep me going during the long stretch around this Nordic behemoth.
After sustaining ourselves on stereotypical meatballs we headed towards the showroom area of the store. Endless reams of rooms, filled with things I want to make my apartment look nicer.
We ended up choosing a few things, headed to the market area, chose a few more places then headed to the Death Star hanger to collect the tables and other large items we’d decided on.
It’s all very orderly and very well established. We spent just under a hundred squid but got an awful lot for the cash. A fantastic little journey.

Now a trip to the IKEA café normally comes out of necessity rather than choice. With the store itself stuck on the outskirts of town, food options are few and far between. After a lengthy browse round the store it was up to the first floor to see what was on offer.
The canteen style set-​up looked pretty well organised but due to a lack of serving staff it took ages to get served. Add a particularly fussy customer in front of us (is it really necessary to ask for a taste of each sauce to see if it’s ‘too spicy’?) by the time we got to the counter patience was growing short. We opted for the World Cup special of meatballs in Chaklala sauce (3 chilli spiciness!) one with chips and one with rice. It was the special of the day so for £1.98 we got a 50p soft drink thrown in as well, a pretty good deal considering.
Seating area was clean and spacious and there was a nice selection of condiments after the check out. There were a few free tables over by the windows with a pleasant view over the city airports landing strip so idea for boys and girls with an eye for aviation.
Ultimately not the most glam of locations but would be churlish to complain when the price and portions are so reasonable
Pros: Good portions, attentive staff, free coffee with IKEA loyalty card, unlimited refills
Cons: Limited menu, noisy, no alcohol
M Mck

Everyone knows what IKEA sells and how they sell it so when the time comes, as it does for literally everyone in the western world, that you need some storage stuff, shelving stuff, or any other kind of IKEA stuff, then you’re in for a good experience in the Belfast store.
These guys have thought it all through and come out the outer side to deliver loads of parking, an outdoor play area for the kids, a crèche, a café and of course a huge warehouse selling stuff stuff and more stuff.
I am a little (OK a lot) uptight about laving my kids in crèches but have no qualms about doing so at IKEA. What appeals to me is that numbers are strictly limited so there’s no chance of my little darlings being squished in a huge crowd of kids. The last time they went, I had to force my two to leave by doing my scary ‘mummy is cross now’ face.
What makes Belfast IKEA a particularly good store to browse in and the have a break in the café is that the seating area looks right over the runways of Belfast City Airport so children will be totally wowed by watching planes take off and land pretty close by. You may even get to finish your sentence, your cake, or who knows, maybe even both!
If I had to make a criticism it would be based on my most recent visit to return some shelves for which I had lost the receipt. Even though their policy claims they will offer a store credit voucher when you’ve lost your receipt, the young guy serving me made me feel like I was trying to commit a major fraud by grilling me on when I had bought the shelves, where I had bought them (there only is one IKEA in Northern Ireland so go figure) and why I had no receipt. I almost cracked and admitted to stealing them so I could get £8 to spend in store… as if.

I just have to admit it, these guys have just about got it spot on when it comes to pleasing the customer, ample parking, a sign that you can see from space, well laid out and easy to get round.
We had lunch here the other day before a shopping extravaganza, cheap and tasty, and fresh as you would get in most places, tasty tray bakes and free refills for your tea and coffee. A real winner!
You could literally stay here all day.
The one negative I would have to say would be please put on more check out staff! We were there on a non bank holiday mid week and still had to stand in line a good 25 minutes to get checked out, I would not like to be there on a Sunday!
All in all a good experience, I wouldn’t expect to see some of the furniture last for 100 years but it is cheap and very cheerful, and the class and dinner ware not to mention lighting is great value.

I hate going to Ikea because it’s sooo huge and once you go in you HAVE to walk round the whole store. The layout is confusing and it’s very easy to get lost.
The size of the place is very annoying if you just need to buy one thing. Not a fan of the car park either, it feels like it’s miles away, especially in bad weather.
Like the café though, card holders get free tea/​coffee Monday-​Friday and food prices are very good.