IKEA Archives | Moss and Fog

Furniture

IKEA Figured Out the Inflatable Chair. It Only Took 20 Prototypes and a Tractor Tire.

April 23, 2026 Furniture

There is something quietly radical about a chair made of air. Actual air, pumped in with a foot pump, held inside a carbon steel frame and wrapped in deep emerald green fabric.

A modern green armchair with a cushioned seat and rounded backrest, supported by a sleek metal frame.

IKEA’s new PS 2026 Easy Chair is the brand’s first serious return to inflatable furniture since the a.i.r range quietly disappeared in the late 1990s. The concept was always good. Air is free, lightweight, and flat-packs beautifully.

A man carrying a modern green sofa with cylindrical cushions and metal legs, wearing a blue jacket and casual attire against a plain white background.

The problem was execution. Earlier versions slid across the floor, squeaked, and sagged. Designer Mikael Axelsson’s answer was to stop fighting the physics.

Blow up a balloon. Trap it inside a metal frame. Let the structure do the work.

A woman with glasses wearing a striped t-shirt and an orange skirt, confidently lifting a green upholstered chair over her shoulder.

Twenty prototypes later, including one involving a tractor tire, he landed on two adjustable air chambers held within a tubular chrome frame. It ships flat with a foot pump.

It has passed every durability test IKEA runs on its armchairs. And it looks like something you would actually want in your living room.

A person seated on a green armchair, wearing a red sweater and brown trousers, blowing a large pink bubble.

The Easy Chair anchors the IKEA PS 2026 collection, the tenth edition of the experimental line running since 1995. Also shown at Milan Design Week: a solid pine rocking bench and a three-directional floor lamp that shifts the mood of a room depending on which way you point it.

A person wearing a blue jacket is lifting a modern green chair with cylindrical cushions.

Three different objects, one shared instinct. The things we live with should be a little more alive.

The full collection goes on sale May 14.

A modern green upholstered chair with a chrome frame and rounded armrests.

Advertising

IKEA’s Latest Ad Showcases Affordably Breakable Objects

March 27, 2024 Advertising

Not that breaking a dish or a cup or a vase is fun. But when it happens, it’s nice to know you’ve not just broken a precious heirloom.

IKEA’s latest ad focuses on affordably breakable objects, especially those our furry friends tend to knock off a countertop, or rip to shreds.

With the tagline “Don’t worry, you can afford it”, they showcase pets in all manner of breakage.

Design

IKEA’s Air Filtration Furniture Portends a Polluted Future

August 5, 2021 Design

We applaud the ingenuity of IKEA’s new STARKVIND line, which cleverly adds air filtration to furniture like side tables. However we feel it points to a future (or present) where air pollution and climate-fueled threats are the norm, which is in itself depressing.

The side tables house a relatively discreet air filtration system under their tabletop, making a formerly single-use device into something dual purpose and less obtrusive. There is side mounted system as well, not quite as useful, but certainly more streamlined than a lot of air purifiers might be.

In the wake of massive forest fires and rising greenhouse gasses, it seems increasingly likely that tools like air purifiers might become standard issue for most households in the future.

Via Yanko Design:

“Clean indoor air is an important factor for health. We know that there is no single solution to solve indoor air pollution. We work long term for positive change, to enable people to purify the air in their home.”

Animals

Explore Some Vibrant Scandinavian Classics in These Vintage IKEA Catalogs

January 11, 2021 Animals

The first IKEA in the US didn’t open until 1985, but the company had been cranking out colorful, modern designs for years prior.

We appreciate the simple, unpretentious styles on display in their early work. It’s clear the designers were having fun, and up until then, there were limited options for these styles of furniture.

Check out some of these the capsule images below, and see what the Swedish giant was cooking up. Via GQ:

While some vintage Ikea pieces might be full-blown showstoppers—plastic Memphis-style lamps in primary colors! safari chairs!—they all share the relatable ethos that made the company famous. Thatop familiarity makes these classic archival pieces a natural progression for people moved by the current design trends of eccentric, organic shapes and bold colors.

Craft

This Gingerbread Höme Kit from IKEA Looks To Be About as Sturdy as Their Furniture

December 22, 2020 Craft

We love the idea behind this DIY Gingerbread Höme (note the umlaut) collection from IKEA, but it got us thinking. The lopsided, glued together aesthetic is ironically about as solid looking as their actual furniture. If you’ve put together as many of their dressers, chairs, or cabinets as we have, you know the feeling.

Regardless, it’s a cute idea, recreating some of their well known pieces out of gingerbread and icing, with official IKEA cookie cutter shapes. Just don’t be surprised if one of your chair legs is shorter than the other, or the icing glue comes apart. 😆

General

IKEA’s Iconic Meatballs Are Going Vegan

July 21, 2020 General

If you’re a shopper at IKEA, the Swedish meatballs in their cafeteria are as iconic as their cheap furniture. Indeed, they sell over a billion meatballs a year.

In a push to become more sustainable, the company has rolled out a vegan version of the meatball, calling them plant balls.

Created out of yellow pea protein, oats, potatoes, onions, and apples, the recipe tastes similar to their traditional pork and beef meatballs. Judging by the slew of pea protein foods we’ve seen lately, we can imagine they taste pretty good. And they have just 4% of the carbon footprint of their meat versions, which is a huge improvement.

And although food sales are just a small portion of the company’s offerings, it’s a positive and creative step to a greener future. Look for the vegan meatballs next month in Europe, and this fall in North America. Via FastCompany:

Making the snack from plants shrinks its carbon footprint to just 4% of the original meatball.

It’s one part of Ikea’s larger ambition to be “climate positive” by 2030, meaning that it will reduce more greenhouse gas emissions than it emits.

-FastCompany

Furniture

IKEA Releases 6 Furniture Fort Plans for Quarantine Fun

May 14, 2020 Furniture

Using their own recognizable instruction format, IKEA has released plans for six different designs for furniture forts.

Meant to entertain your children (or yourself) during our coronavirus quarantine, it’s a charming and fun set of projects. And while the plans call for using their decidedly Swedish-named furniture, we imagine most of these forts can be made with just about anything you have in your home.

Let us know how they turn out!

Art

IKEA Recreates Famous Show Living Rooms Using Their Furniture

May 31, 2019 Art

In a clever little marketing ploy and nostalgia trip, IKEA recreates famous living rooms form TV shows, using their line of furniture. From The Simpson’s to Friends to Stranger Things, the sets are familiar, though each of the chairs, couches, and lamps have product callouts. Via DesignBoom:

Architecture

IKEA’s SolarVille Demonstrates The Power of Distributed Solar Energy

March 11, 2019 Architecture

Leave it to furniture giant IKEA to create a demonstration that showcases the power and flexibility of solar energy.

Their research lab Space10 has a fun and approachable experiment called SolarVille, which is built to a 1:50th scale, and equips each of the houses with a small photovoltaic panel. Utilizing a large overhead lamp, they mimic the passing sun, and measure the stored energy and output of the entire village.

We love the concept, and the way this technical undertaking is made approachable and friendly with the use of a miniature wooden city.

We’d love to see IKEA create this type of system as a buyable product, to help push the ideas of renewable energy to a new and younger audience.

Read more about the project on Dezeen:

Art

Cookbook for the Visually Minded

April 30, 2013 Art

Via FastCo Design, a cookbook that utilizes infographics in lieu of long, wordy explanations. Could it be great? We’ll see when it goes on sale later this year.

From the author:

“One of my goals for this book is to encourage people to just let go of rigid kitchen rules and be loose and free about cooking. The charm of the illustrations is great for its own sake, but it’s also performing a real function in helping make cooking feel easy, lighthearted, and do-able,” Shelly writes. “So what if you mess up? Once things get too serious, the drawings stop being inviting and start seeming intimidating. Like how people feel so oppressed by Ikea diagrams.”

Design

Design Couple: Carl and Evelina Kleiner

May 10, 2012 Design

Photographer Carl Kleiner and his partner Evelina are known for some of their highly-designed photography for IKEA. Carl works as photographer and Evelina as the stylist. Together, their projects are beautiful and fun, showing a great sense of pattern and color. Here is a collection of some of their more well-known work, plus some you may not have seen before.

Architecture

Transforming Table

February 24, 2012 Architecture

Via Architizer:

Designer Robert van Embricqs‘s “Rising Table” is the work of an illusionist. As its name implies, the table can be coaxed out of its original flat state to form a self-standing table–a stylish one at that–like some magical apparatus from a past era, handled by the gifted showman who impossibly suspends the material laws of nature with verve and gestural flourishes alone. It’s a great vanishing act, with the designer expertly manipulating the very thin wood into a latticework of supporting legs, creating a work with the veneer of tectonics whose very physical adroitness seemingly betrays the same tectonic logic. The trick’s aura is further substantiated by Van Embricq’s own explanatory diagram which recalls old patent and working drawings (with the unresolved lines and lack of detail) as if it had been ripped out of an antique log book filled with the secret unrealized contraptions of a master magician. You can’t forget the final part of the act, of course–the table can be made flat just as easily as it had sprouted legs, always ready for the next performance.

Design

Food Photography

October 31, 2010 Design

Via TheDesignerPad:

You have to give it up for IKEA for coming up with new and innovative things for their customers. They utilize cool design and clever solutions in everything they do. But their new cookbook titled Hembakat är Bäst —which means “Homemade is Best”— has taken the art of cooking to a new high. The exquisite photography was shot by Carl Kleiner and deliciously styled by Evelina Bratell. The ingredient images for all thirty recipes are truly pieces of art. From the playful compositions to the color schemes, all images are simply eye candy. They’re like design mood boards for cooking. Any one of them can easily translate into themes for decorating a room, or at least they could make any kitchen wall sing by just framing them. BTW, you can definitely judge this book by its creative cover.