IKEA Shows Inflatable Chair
- IKEA publicly showed an inflatable chair concept at Milan Design Week that Mikael Axelsson first sketched in 2014. - The concept waited 12 years to appear, and IKEA also previewed playful pieces from its ‘Ikea PS 2026’ collection. - Milan coverage emphasized furniture that overlaps with fashion and hospitality, suggesting playful, experimental home pieces are trending ( ).
IKEA used Milan Design Week to debut an inflatable easy chair that designer Mikael Axelsson first sketched in 2014 and kept refining for more than a decade. (ikea.com) The chair is part of IKEA PS 2026, the tenth edition of the company’s experimental PS line, and IKEA said the full collection will be revealed globally on May 13, 2026. (ikea.com) IKEA showed the piece during its “Food For Thought” installation at Spazio Maiocchi in Milan, which runs from April 21 to April 26 and pairs product previews with chefs, tastings and design programming. (ingka.com) The inflatable chair is not a novelty item in IKEA’s telling. The company said it had been trying to make air-filled furniture work since the 1990s, but earlier attempts did not meet its practical standards. (ikea.com) That long development cycle puts the launch in a wider Milan trend: brands used this year’s fair to blur furniture with fashion, hospitality and event design instead of treating products as stand-alone showroom objects. (wallpaper.com) Wallpaper’s Milan coverage described IKEA’s presentation as a food-and-design environment, while IKEA itself framed the exhibition around “evolving food rituals” and everyday domestic life rather than a single hero product. (wallpaper.com, ingka.com) IKEA’s first preview of PS 2026 also included a rocking bench by Axelsson and Marta Krupińska and a three-directional floor lamp by Rotterdam designer Lex Pott. (ikea.com) Design press coverage cast the chair as a return to the inflatable aesthetics of the late 1990s, but with a more structured silhouette and a visible frame that makes it read more like a lounge chair than a pool toy. (dezeen.com, yankodesign.com) IKEA also installed an oversized version of the chair in Piazza XXIV Maggio on the Navigli, turning the product into a street-scale teaser for visitors heading to the fair. (ikea.com) For now, the chair is a preview, not a store launch. IKEA’s next date is May 13, when the company says it will show the full IKEA PS 2026 collection after this Milan test run. (ikea.com)
