IKEA Faucets Review & Rating Updated: 5/27/21
a division of IKEA Holdings U.S., Inc.
420 Alan Wood Road
Conshohocken, PA 19428
(800) 434-4532
Law Requirements
Warranty Footnotes:
1. Ten year limited warranty to the original purchaser "valid for all kitchen faucets at IKEA. This limited warranty covers defects in material and workmanship... [and]....applies to domestic use only." ...."IKEA will pay the costs of repairs, spare parts, labor and travel for repair staff, that IKEA incurs, provided that the product is accessible for repair without special expenditure." IKEA guarantees the availability of spare parts for at least two years after the faucet has been discontinued."2. The warranty is missing quaifying language required by the U.S. Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (15 U.S.C. §2301). However, the missing language does not diminish the rights of the faucet buyer, and in may actually strengthen those rights.
Download/Print the Ikea faucet warranty.
Learn more about faucet warranties.
This Company In Brief
IKEA is an international retailer that, among thousands of other household products, sells sink faucets. The IKEA collection features a wide range of styles. It contains fewer than 50 faucets but there seems to be at least one style for just about every decor. As expected from IKEA, the prices are very reasonable for all brass or stainless faucets with ceramic disk cartridges. As also expected from IKEA, however, customer service is some of the worst in the Western world, so if you buy an IKEA faucet, pray it does not break.
The warranty itself, however, is unusual in that unlike almost all other faucet warranties, it promises to pay for both the parts and the labor required to repair or replace a faucet. The industry standard is to just provide parts, or in extreme cases, a replacement faucet. Only one other faucet company promises to pay for labor.
IKEA is new to selling faucets and has not quite got the hang of it.
It does not manufacture its faucets but buys them from a variety of faucet manufacturers. Most of the faucets sold by IKEA are designed by IKEA and manufactured to IKEA's specifications. IKEA employs a great many industrial designers, and their Scandinavian design approach is evident in some of IKEA's faucets.
The IKEA collection features a wide range of styles. It contains fewer than 30 faucets but there seems to be at least one style for just about every decor. As expected from IKEA, the prices are very reasonable for all brass or stainless faucets with ceramic disk cartridges.
Most of the faucets include a Hungarian cartridge made by Kerox, Kft., generally considered to be one of the better European cartridges made. Faucets made in China, include a Chinese cartridge which we believe is made by Sedal SA. Sedal is a European corporation, headquartered in Barcelona, Spain but manufacturing in its three plants in China. We cannot be certain about the Sedal cartridge. There are dozens of cartridge manufacturers in China. The cartridges rarely show a maker's mark, and they are all very similar in appearance.
There are a number of excellent faucet manufacturers in Scandinavia including Ostnor of Sweden that manufactures the Mora Armature, FM Mattsson and Damiza faucet brands and Oras of Finland that sells its stylish and unique faucets throughout Europe. None of these brands is yet represented in the U.S. IKEA, however, for whatever reason, chose to ignore its homegrown faucets when casting about for faucet manufacturers. None of IKEA's faucets are, so far as we can tell, manufactured in Sweden or even in Scandinavia. IKEA's known faucet manufacturers are:
- NSK Armatür AS is a Turkish manufacturer that sells its own brand of highly successful NSK faucets in its stores in Turkey, and exports to Europe, Australia, North Africa, and the Middle East. It supplies the majority of IKEA's faucets.
- Roddex Bath Hardware Co., Ltd. of Shanghai, China, is supplying an increasing number of IKEA faucets but has not yet caught up to NSK. We are starting to see several faucet models that are made by both companies, which could indicate a gradual shift away from manufacturing in Turkey and toward more manufacturing in China.
- Paini S.p.A. , an Italian firm, is expanding in the U.S. and Canada with its own La Toscana and Fortis lines of Italian faucets.
These are almost certainly not IKEA's only faucet manufacturers, just the ones we can positively identify as having made IKEA faucets over the past five years. IKEA changes suppliers frequently, so a faucet made one year by one company may be made by a different manufacturer in a completely different country a year or two later. Many of the faucets now manufactured by Roddex, for example, were formerly made by the giant Chinese manufacturer, . IKEA began to shift manufacturing around 2013. Today Globe Union supplies none of these faucets.
The IKEA faucet ten-year warranty is below par for the North American market for the length of coverage, but much above average for the scope of the remedies provided. The standard faucet warranty in North America is a lifetime warranty on all parts of the faucet, a warranty pioneered by Plumber labor is often the more expensive part of repairing or replacing a defective faucet.
IKEA promises to stock parts for faucets in its current inventory, and for two years after discontinuing a model. It does but the process of getting parts or making a warranty claim is, at best, time-consuming and a major annoyance.
The company should have learned from the early teething problems of and figured out a reliable replacement parts system before it began selling faucets. It didn't. A defective faucet will be cheerfully replaced by IKEA stores — if there is a store near you, and if the faucet is still being made, and if it is in stock, and if you bought it from a store and not over the internet.
Otherwise, you will have to go the warranty claims route. Unfortunately, this route takes you to IKEA's customer service, a trip you do not want to take if you don't have to.
IKEA, by reputation, has some of the absolute worst customer service in the world. (Only has a warranty claims process nearly as bad.) Our experience confirms it — long, long waits to talk to a representative, up to three weeks to respond to an e-mail request. We rate IKEA customer service as "extremely deficient".
Customer service agents are very polite, although obviously stressed, and do their best to help but they have had no training on faucets and just don't have the slightest idea what to do with a technical faucet problem, except to pass it off. You will probably be transferred at least once before getting a part — with a long initial wait to talk to a customer service agent, and an equally long wait at every transfer — up to 65 minutes — and many times the transfer fails. Your call is just lost in IKEA's electronic wilderness and never heard from again. Meanwhile, you will be regaled with unending recorded messages touting IKEA's latest product and service offerings, without respite, over and over and over. It's like Chinese water torture.
The problem is clearly systemic, too few agents to handle far too many calls, and blame should be placed with IKEA management, where it belongs, not with the agents where it doesn't. Either management did not anticipate the problem or failed to react to the situation quickly and effectively.
One hint: If you need help with faucet parts, immediately ask for a supervisor. Evidently, only supervisors have any notion of how to order parts. Second hint: Allow a full morning or afternoon for the process, and then you may have to try again tomorrow.
IKEA promotes itself as the "Life improvement store" but we can guarantee you that encounters with IKEA customer service will not improve your life one bit. If anything, the reverse is true. To understand the difference between first-class and worst-class customer service, check out customer support and compare it to the service offered by IKEA. Like night and day.
Once you get to the right person, however, the process is quick and efficient. We received the part for our test faucet in just one week — all the way from Almhult, Sweden — even though the package was incorrectly addressed.
Be aware that IKEA faucets are usually set to the European water flow maximum of 1.5 gallons per minute (gpm). In the U.S. and Canada, the maximum water flow rate in most localities for sink faucets is 2.2 gpm. You may notice the difference and conclude there is something amiss with the faucet. The faucet is fine. The slower water flow is an intentional water-saving feature of the faucet line, and one recommended by the EPA's WaterSense® program (IKEA lavatory faucets are all WaterSense® listed — See more below). The lower flow is required in many localities. California and a growing list of other jurisdictions require an even lower flow for bathroom faucets of 1.2 gpm.
Faucets at about the same quality as IKEA faucets but often featuring longer but not necessarily stronger warranties and almost certainly better after-sale warranty support, include
Despite the company's problems with warranty support, we believe the faucets to be a good value. The ten-year warranty could be easily extended to a lifetime warranty without much impact on the company. Most mechanical or workmanship defects show up in the first ten years (most show up in the first year, as a matter of fact). After that, most problems are due to wear and tear or improper maintenance. So, we don't penalize the company too much for the lack of a lifetime warranty.
We are continuing to research the company. If you have experience with IKEA faucets, good, bad, or indifferent, we would like to hear about it, so please contact us or post a comment below.