The flatpack fans riding for a fall

Almost half of people living with home-assembled flatpack furniture are in danger of falling out of bed or collapsing when they sit on a chair, according to a survey.

Haste and over-confidence have turned the relatively simple system into one of the biggest potential sources of home accidents, says a report on the £1.1bn sector.



"Bravado shoulders aside logic, especially among men," says the survey, which finds that 67% of male flatpack buyers fail to read the instructions. Women are far more cautious, spending an average of 12 minutes preparing, but none the less, 47% of all jobs are never properly finished. Sliding doors are high on the list of failures in the data, collected from 2,000 homeowners by the online trades directory RatedPeople.com. Just over 2% of flatpack buyers are so intimidated that their planks and bags of screws are never even unwrapped.

"Even so, the seemingly simple self-assembly bed was named as the biggest problem overall at 22%," said Andrew Skipwith of Rated People, which promotes the alternative to DIY of GSI - Getting Someone In. The survey also checked out regional variations in failure to read instructions, finding Manchester the runaway hotspot with 69% not bothering.