The Designers Behind the 40th Anniversary of Ikea’s Stockholm Collection Explain How They Did It

Your earliest familiarity with Ikea may vary, but mine was reading the catalog at my best friend’s house around age 10. I was always impressed with the cool stuff her family had, and when I found out you could order it from a catalog, and not just get it from a store (or pick it off the street, which is how my family found much of our furniture in New York City), the intrigue only continued. I’ll always remember the day I got my treasured first item from the brand—a mosquito netting canopy for my bed, the ultimate in cool for a middle schooler.

It wasn’t until I went to college that I got to fully avail myself of its offerings. Driving to the Chicago suburbs to pick out a coffee table and a desk for my new apartment felt like true adulthood, despite the fact that the car we drove to get there didn’t have power steering, a radio, or air-conditioning. This is the association that might stick in the minds of many Americans when they think of Ikea—the first time you’re able to buy furniture of your own, and it better be cheap, but it’d be nice if it was chic.

This solution they’d created for their audience—being able to buy design-y furniture at an affordable price—was once a problem for Ikea. What would they do when their demographic aged out of their wares? That’s why their Stockholm collection was born in the ’80s, featuring leather sofas and chairs, glass-fronted cabinets, and Nordic birch wooden furniture with hidden fittings. "What could the company offer all those people who had grown out of their low pine sofa, taken down their pop and protest posters, and moved their Ivar shelves into the garage?" the website explains, of the collection’s history. "They were looking for comfort and elegance, and [founder] Ingvar Kamprad came up with the solution: a ‘best of Ikea collection’."

The company did, and still does, pride itself on the "democratization" of design. "The most beautiful Swedish furniture had long been reserved for a few: the rich," a 1985 Ikea brochure reads. "Ordinary folk had to make do with poor copies or nothing at all. This doesn’t sit right with us."

Since then, Stockholm has been released in seven editions, with the goal of providing "modern Scandinavian design of the highest quality, offered at an affordable price." And in February, in an experience that would have awed college student-me, I went to, yes, the city of Stockholm to preview the company’s eighth for its 40th anniversary. The new collection—available to shop Thursday April 10th—is 96 pieces, and was inspired by both the Swedish capital and the immense nature just outside of it. It’s comprised of rich, deep colors with pops of surprising neons, sturdy woods, velvets, leathers, and smooth edges—a fit for the continued ’70s moment we find ourselves in.

During my interviews, I was particularly interested in learning from the designers about how they tailor Ikea’s ethos of price-first—they all start with a price band, and design a piece to match that—to create a higher-end product. In a collection like this, they have the opportunity to use more complex building techniques and more expensive materials, but the design ethos that is used in the least expensive items still informs all their products. (One thing they shared that they don’t have: a master database of all their materials and techniques, because it’s all learned, shared, institutional knowledge.) Because of the company’s scale, they are still able to produce items for low costs that would typically be challenging elsewhere, like the handblown glass vases in this collection, which, when produced at volume, become feasible. Here, in their own words, this year’s Stockholm collection designers describe what they were trying to accomplish in creating five of the collection’s pieces for the masses, ones that manage to feel personal to you.

These interviews have been edited for length and clarity, and all prices have been converted into USD.

Stockholm 2025 Sofa

Ola­ Wihlborg, designer: We can start with the sofa, because the whole collection started with sofas. Because we wanted to find something that sets the tone and that’s also the piece that sets the tone in the living room. It’s a big piece.

So we started the sketch of the sofa—it was [fellow designer] Nike [Karlsson] and I—and the starting point for me was my sofa at home. I have a sofa from a previous Stockholm collection with a lot of cushion inside. We always fluff these cushions and make them in order for the night. And now we have a lot of kids and we have a dog and the cushions are all over the place. So the idea was to do a new sofa that looks the same all the time.

It’s quite tricky to find a shape and a material that also has comfort. It’s easy, it turns out, to be something that is just hard. So I started to find these soft shapes and I sketched the shape in soft materials also. We’ve done the shape in Älmhult [Ikea’s headquarters] in the pattern shop, and when we finalized the shape and we were satisfied, we sent the shapes to the supplier where we made a lot of samples to try out the right comfort.

We have a spring core with the springs inside the center, and then we cover it with a cold molded foam shape. That makes it also very durable. The cold molded foam will keep up the quality over a very long time. You can use the modules separately also, so you do not need to connect them. You can have them like an armchair also.

Karin Gustavsson, creative leader: We knew from the beginning we wanted a velvet.

Wihlborg: We started with velvet because we wanted the soft feeling.

Gustavsson: The colors pop much more in the velvet. And then the velvet is, I think it’s like 90 percent recycled polypropylene. And it’s a really good quality, high-quality velvet. We have a full textile team who develops the fabrics for us and they are so tested—they need to last a long time. And also not to be too much for dust. It’s antistatic. And the blue one came because we said we need a pop color—we need something to pop.

Everyone thought it was crazy. And then we did a brown one and everyone said, "Brown? Gray and black." Because I love brown. And now it’s so trendy. And then we made the beige ones. Everyone’s so grayish otherwise. 

Wihlborg: The cover is removable so you can wash it. And the bouclé came up when we made the armchair. For that one, it’s more tricky to find the fabric that we can cover this shape with. And that’s why we started with the bouclé and then when we saw the armchair, we said we need to have the same on the sofa.

Gustavsson: It’s so Scandinavian, it’s a little bit like this snow feeling. And it’s not too bouclé—it’s quite a dry fabric.

Wihlborg: We always have the price in mind when we start, not the exact price [but a range]. When you have that, you can see immediately, oh, we can’t go too big, we can’t go with that material. And you have a certain amount of money to spend. Of course sometimes you need to step out from that. But then you also have to explain why.

Gustavsson: We knew that Nike’s sofa was going to be, for us, a bit expensive. It’s $1,899.

Wihlborg: It’s more expensive than this one.

Gustavsson: We thought, for us, it was a bit expensive. And here you start at $1,299.

Wihlborg: For two.

Gustavsson: So you could say you get this one for $1,299 and then you add a mid-seat for $400. So it’s a quite good price for this one. Even to make a four seater, which you often cannot afford. The thing is also with this one, in a normal flat in London or Tokyo, you cannot bring a big sofa into the house because of the elevators. And you’re on the 12th floor, you cannot have someone carry [it up]. This one you can easily take piece by piece in the elevator. It’s also convenient for moving. We even did home visits just to see.

Stockholm 2025 Sofa

Nike Karlsson, designer: This sofa was really hard to make because I had so many different directions, but we ended up designing what we wanted to have. Then we met the supplier and we started to discuss: How should we build up the construction? How should we build the comfort? I said that maybe when we do this high-end product, could we also maybe try to reduce the amount of foam? Because foam is hard to recycle. And then the supplier came up with the idea of coconut fiber. They had it in other products—not for Ikea—but I thought it was something that we had in the ’50s or something that didn’t exist anymore. So that is what we have on the armrest, in between the frame and the fabric, is coconut fiber. And then in the seat portion we have this pocket spring. And then on top of that, they have, instead of foam, latex [from trees]. And that is super durable. When it comes to sit on it, it keeps the shape. So now we can offer this sofa with a 25-year warranty, because it is so durable.

The fabric, that was the trickiest one, because I was so worried that we couldn’t develop a new fabric for this sofa in the quality that I really wanted to have.

Paulin Machado, designer: You’re picky. 

Karlsson: It’s so important what kind of fabric you can offer on the sofa. And then we also worked with the small pillows, how to make comfort without bird feather down or something like that. That is so nice. But you can’t do that, because of the animals and also people are allergic. These cushions are built in three layers. We have this block in the center with latex. And then we have fiber on that. And then we started to get a really nice feeling when you touch it, but it still, there was something wrong, because it didn’t sound right. So then they asked, ‘What is it that sounds on a feather pillow?’ It’s the cotton fabric that you have that is woven really, really tight. The pen crunch, it’s the crunch [of the feathers]. Could we add that fabric to get the right noise?

Stockholm 2025 Pendant lamp

Gustavsson: [Nike is] a carpenter. He lives on this remote island. He’s very stubborn. I said, "Nike, you need to do the lighting project." He was like, "I’m not doing this one. I’m not doing crystal chandeliers." I said, "You have to." And then he came back with wooden lamps. I don’t want wood!

He’s so stubborn. And then suddenly he realized, maybe you should try. And then he tried, and he came with his solution and he worked with the product developer from our team. And he came up with all these tubes, this engineering solution, how to get these two rings. You put them on yourself, that’s a little silicon ring inside and you get these cotton gloves in the box. It’s amazing. Doesn’t weigh anything. It is $149.

For me, it was so Swedish, this crystal chandelier. You can see from the old days, there were these big ones. I thought it was time for the ’70s look, vintage. We would see them in every hotel or small cafes.

Wihlborg: The knockdown solution was in from the beginning. He had the idea of the tubes that hang on the frame and make it flat pack from the beginning. So we always need to have that. The last step, the knockdown, you need to start with the knockdown.

Stockholm 2025 Table lamp

Machado: With light you start very quickly with function. What do you want the light to look like? Where is this going to be placed? What type of atmosphere would it give to a certain room? Because of course it’s highly functional, if it’s like a reading lamp or something else. So we knew we wanted to do a more atmospheric light and something a little bit smaller that you can place easily anywhere. And I’m a textile designer, so that’s how I initially think—through textiles—no matter what I do. I really wanted to have a nice quality. And then of course when you put a pattern or a color like this, the light output would look very different. But I think it still has a very rich and cozy atmosphere to it. And we also know that it’s not a piece that can cost awfully much because it’s a smaller piece and we need to be affordable there. So this is also of course a collaboration, but smart engineering. It all comes in a very small packed way where you stretch the textile through the little metal wires. It looks like a bigger piece and then it comes in a very small nicely packed piece.

That pattern itself comes from my own nature walks. And we started this collection in the autumn, so it was like early fall. I take a lot of pictures when I’m out also and I zoom in and I zoom out. And then I really got inspired by what I had close to myself, which is picking mushrooms and beautiful little mosses and that type of mini world.

I just dove in and I started sketching by hand and then slowly it evolved into something more, into a print or a texture. [Other designers get involved] very early. And that’s painful sometimes, especially when, you see, it was time-tedious to do it. This black-and-white color [the other colorway the pattern comes in] I was not particularly fond of in the beginning. I revisited it many times and built on it. We also have a big prototype shop in our studio and even if I do paintings by hand, yes I can show that, but then when I make it on the computer, of course I can also scale it up or put it down and I can print it out and we put it up. But you have instant feedback like that.

[I thought] I would love to put it on linen, which we have. We have 100 percent linen and also for the cushions, it’s 100 percent. Because there’s few other qualities where you get that dryness, and it’s just so nice I think.

Stockholm 2025 Table

Karlsson: That construction is super old at Ikea. I think it comes from the ’50s, I think it was door makers. You can create something that is very form-stable. You can make something that is really light. It’s like making beams for house construction. You need the top and the bottom and that thing between doesn’t need to keep the distance in between the two surfaces. For decades we called it bored frame, bored styles. We have different kinds of techniques to do that. So it’s so natural for us to use. We don’t think about it.

Johan Ejdemo, global design manager: It’s also just a way of not being wasteful with resources and not doing thick boards without adding so much weight to it. You can transport things easily also. 

If you’re building a long table like that and you don’t want to have an underframe, then this technique comes in very, very handy to create this stable construction. All the four legs should kind of hit the floor at the same level. And so you need that stability. What’s a little bit special with this one is obviously the shape. We normally don’t do that soft kind of shape for a frame, it’s quite a production process. So that is adding a next level of detail to that.

Wihlborg: I started with a long table because that one has the special shape of rounded ends. I have explored that shape in my home, because it’s really good for facing more than one on the side. Instead of just doing a complete round, you have a longer round. It works really good for two people on the sides. And then I also wanted to have a super stable tabletop so you can avoid this underframe. All the construction of the strength is inside the tabletop, so you can sit with your legs up to the tabletop.

Gustavsson: It’s so heavy as well.

Wihlborg: I have made similar tables now for the ordinary range, but they have straight cuts.

Gustavsson: You had to know exactly how many centimeters to fit on the pallet. We have long pallets and also for shipping, we do know exactly. Otherwise they destroy the table in the corners when they’re filling the trucks.

Wihlborg: Sometimes you want it to be a couple of centimeters bigger to just become the best function, but then you need to shrink it down to fit the pallet.

Gustavsson: And it’s also for you to take it home in the car as a customer. You cannot do as big as we want to sometimes.

Top photo courtesy Ikea

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