Wayfair just announced its Way Day 2024 shopping event. The annual sale will take place May 4 through May 6, giving shoppers three days to find furniture, rugs, home décor, lighting, kitchen appliances, and more at deeper discounts than usual.
Launched in April 2018, Way Day started as Wayfair’s answer to Amazon Prime Day. The retailer offers larger-than-usual discounts on almost everything it sells during the event, making it a great time to shop and save. The experts at Consumer Reports will be combing through the sale to help you find the best prices on items that have scored well in our lab tests and performed well in our homes.
To get the products you want and maximize your savings, you may want to be strategic when shopping the sale. This is especially important when buying furniture and décor online, where you can’t see items in person. Take the time to read reviews and compare prices at other retailers.
What's on Sale?
Wayfair says almost everything on the site will be on sale during Way Day, with discounts of up to 80 percent and prices that the retailer claims are the lowest of the year. Shipping on all Way Day orders is always free as well. It’s important to know that the size of the discounts is based on the original retail price that Wayfair lists, though most products are already labeled as discounted, so the actual savings may be closer to 5 to 20 percent off what you see regularly. Read more about how this affects you as a shopper in the next section.
While Wayfair may be best known for selling furniture and home décor—especially from its own brands AllModern,Birch Lane, andJoss & Main—the online marketplace tends to have a broader selection of products. This means Way Day is also a great time to score discounts on large appliances, grills, small kitchen tools, coffee makers, mattresses, vacuums, and more. There are typically deals in almost every category, including on popular brands like KitchenAid, Cuisinart, Dyson, and Sealy.
A majority of Way Day discounts should last the duration of the event. In addition to these price cuts, Wayfair will also have flash deals that last anywhere from a few hours to a full day, with new offers cropping up every hour. These sales tend to represent the best savings compared with everyday prices.
How to Get a Good Deal on Way Day
It can be hard to tell whether a Way Day price is lower than the usual Wayfair price because many of the site’s products always appear to be discounted (which basically means those “sale” prices are just the regular price). But there are two easy ways to find out how good a deal really is: Research Wayfair’s prices ahead of time and compare prices with other retailers.
More on Shopping
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Best Deals on Small Kitchen Appliances
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Once Wayfair’s sale is underway, you won’t be able to see what the items actually cost before it began. Look to see what other retailers are charging for the same or similar items. This doubles as a handy trick to see how much you’re really saving once the sale starts.
When it comes to products other than furniture and décor, such as large appliances, you’re likely to find them for sale at multiple retailers. Take into account other factors like shipping costs and times, as well as return policies, to get a better idea of the best place to buy. You may find that Wayfair has the best offer, or it may be more viable to shop at a store like Best Buy, where you may be able to get a shorter shipping time or even same-day pickup at a walk-in store.
If you’re researching furniture, it can be a little trickier to find other places where the same items are sold. To start, research the product and brand name online to see if you can find any matches. Retailers often have the same items listed under different brand names when it comes to furniture and décor, so if that search is a dead end, try a reverse image search.
To do that, open up Google in your browser. Click on the word “Images” in the top right corner and a new search bar will appear. Then click on the camera icon on the right-hand side of the search bar and it will prompt you to upload a photo or paste an image URL. The search results will show you similar images.
When you spot a photo of the same product, you can navigate to the page where that image lives. In many cases, this will lead you to different retailers, where you can compare prices and shipping options with Wayfair.
How to Avoid Low-Quality Items
Shopping online, especially for furniture and décor, can be tough because you can’t see the items in person. And while it’s nice to save on, say, a new couch, returning a large, bulky item can be a real hassle. So it’s especially important to do your research first to avoid buyer’s remorse.
Though Consumer Reports doesn’t test individual pieces of furniture, you can check our ratings of 17 online furniture stores based on CR member feedback about their experiences shopping online. Wayfair ranks toward the middle of the ratings, earning a good score for quality and showing up strong for on-time delivery and returns.
You may be able to find professional reviews of Wayfair brands, if not the specific pieces you’re considering. Customer reviews can be useful as well. They may help you get a better idea of quality, ease of assembly, potential shipping issues, and even the accuracy of colors listed on the site, especially if they include a photo of the item in the review.
Because reviews from individual shoppers are subjective, read as many as you can and look for similarities. If only one or two people mention that their new chair arrived damaged, it may be a rare problem. But if a dozen reviews indicate the same issue, it may be a sign to keep searching for a higher-quality item.
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Samantha B. Gordon
Samantha B. Gordon is the deals editor at Consumer Reports. She has been covering the online marketplace for CR since 2019, helping readers save money and find the best prices on high-quality products. Previously, Samantha was the managing editor of the e-commerce team at Reviewed. In her free time, Samantha can be found crafting and playing her guitar. Follow her on Twitter @sam_the_editor.
