What is the best place to buy a 40cm wide oven or cooker?

Is a microwave more energy efficient than a conventional oven?

Furniture Ferret: The short answer is yes. You can save a real amount of money on your energy bill by using your microwave oven more than the big one. This is because microwaves are extremely energy efficient: the electromagnetic waves they generate only heat up the food (or, more specifically, the water molecules in your food), with only a small amount of the heat and energy lost to the room. But a conventional oven heats up itself and everything in it before it can heat up the food, losing a lot of the heat to the outside in the process. David Watsky at CNET estimates that using the microwave costs half of using a gas oven, and 40% of using an electric oven.

Questions and answers

What is the best colour for an oven or cooker?

The colour scheme in your room can be a bit accidental, but it has a great effect on the feelings you get from your space. The two things to consider for everything colour is balance and associations. Balance means that the colours in one's room should be coordinated in some way, so that the room looks like a unit. This can be achieved by using a colour wheel, and choosing colours that are either quite close to each other (colours that are only different in lightness or intensity do go together, but small variations in hue can also work), or quite far, for example on opposite sides of the wheel (giving you complementary colours like red and green). Associations with and emotions connected to colours are also important, and there is no shortage of guides for these from those by 19th-century Impressionist painters to modern interior design guides. It is quite probable that these emotions are cultural and learnt, which means that they can be quite different for different individuals. Blue is often connected to productivity, but also calmness, stability and even sadness. Green is clearly the colour of nature, and is said to be connected to safety, luck and envy (though in other cultures this latter is yellow). White can be connected to peacefulness, innocence, cleanliness and emptiness, and, for example, mourning in India. Red is thought of as the colour of friendship, energy, leadership, desire and revenge, which is a very wide range of emotions. But it is clear that in nature, it means danger or importance, so you probably need to put it next to a neutral colour to allow the brain to rest. These associations are so different that these guidelines all seem to boil down to just one piece of advice: pause and consider what the colour means for you.

How do I use the search on Furniture Ferret?

Searching on Furniture Ferret is easy. Tap on the search button at the right of the header, then type any keywords you would like to search for, for example, "table", "TV stand" or "yellow sofa". Drag the two handles on the sliders to enter the highest and lowest possible values for the width, height and depth (length) and the price you are interested in. Click on "Go!" to get the results.

How to measure the space to fit an oven or cooker in?

Measure both the width and the depth of the floor area where you'd like to place an oven or cooker. The most accurate way is to use a measuring tape. Hold the beginning of the tape down at the edge of the area, and let it run to the other edge. If the distance is larger than what you can stretch to, ask someone else to help, or split what you need to measure into multiple parts. You can do this by either holding the tape down halfway and continuing running it while letting the first end go, or by marking how far you have measured on the floor or wall, and reposition the tape to complete the measurement. If you want to avoid drawing on your floor, try putting down a pointy object like a screwdriver there instead. Make sure to avoid dead places where the piece of furniture won't be able to go like decorative strips. Also don't forget to measure the height of the space wherever the ceiling is uneven.

Our philosophy

We aim to allow every one of us to live comfortably even if they only own a small area they call home. We scour the Internet to search among thousands of desks, cabinets, shelves, shoe cabinets, beds, armchairs and so on by size and colour, to find just the right one for you to go under the stairs to finally get some closet space, or to find that extra long sofa that is still narrow enough to squeeze through the door. From the kitchen to the bathroom, don't live around furniture - choose furniture that lives with you.