I actually like this place and have bought a few things here. Overall customer service is quite good and sales staff helpful with questions. Don't get a sense of any bitchiness from the sales people (male or female), unlike other home furnishings stores in DC.

Apartment Zero sells goods that most of us who read Apartment Therapy are probably already familiar with: Blu Dot, Kartell, Artifort, Vitra/Herman Miller, etc.

I scored a ridiculous deal at this store one year - $25 for a Noguchi prismatic stool. I thought it was mismarked, but it was a floor sample they just wanted to get rid of.

BTW: one of the owners of the store, Dennis Ralston, was on a couple episodes of HGTV's Curb Appeal as the landscape designer/architect in 2007. I recall 2 episodes in which he did amazing makeovers with the homeowners' front yards. The store offers interior design services for a fairly reasonable fee. Unfortunately, it does not offer landscape design services, which is what I really need desperately right now.

we LOVE this place....just last month, we attended one of their design events at the Embassy of Australia...what a blast...later, we purchased a Fink jug from the store that we saw at the embassy and since then., have never seen it offered anywhere else.

oh! we also purchased the Vitra Polder sofa from them in red....it ROCKS! i fall asleep on it every night eating ice cream...

one of the few stores where the staff is actually really friendly and down-to-earth

I agree with previous commenters. This is a great store with a really friendly, down-to-earth staff. Readers, take note: they do wedding registries here! Wanting to support a local store, my husband and I registered for some really beautiful, harder-to-find, pieces. It is not as convenient as some of the bigger chain stores, but the staff did their best to provide really great personal service.

I saw Apartment Zero's owner, Douglas Burton, give an incredible talk at the Phillips Collection. He really understands objects; his broad knowledge of what’s new, what’s up-and-coming and what’s being designed is unfathomed. No wonder his store has such a collection, it reflects his far-reaching design knowledge. My partner and I registered at his store for our wedding because we wanted unique gifts that are not mass-produced. The staff was incredibly polite and friendly.

I had a terrible experience with Apartment Zero. The piece I bought was clearly defective, and it took several calls and letters over several months for the store to even try to rectify the situation. Strongly recommend against buying from that store.