For three decades, IKEA's dream of inflatable furniture fell flat. Now, the Swedish flatpack giant believes its long-held obsession is, at long last, taking shape. The PS 2026 easy chair is a steel-framed seat that can be inflated using a foot pump. Designer Mikael Axelsson set out to improve the comfort of conventional foam fillings.
"I wanted to do proper furniture; that was the goal," Axelsson told CNN. "Air is something that is free and available for everyone, so there's something poetic about that, but we can't reduce it to the point where it's not comfortable."
Launched in the summer of 1997, IKEA's a.i.r (Air is a Resource) series included a chair and sofa made of a fully recyclable polyolefin plastic that could be blown up with a hairdryer. Savings were expected to come later from reduced transport and material costs.
Sales ensued, only for many products to soon be returned. When inflating the furniture, many customers forgot to set their hairdryer to cold: with hot air taking up more space, the furniture quickly began deflating as the air cooled. A leaky valve exacerbated the tendency for the products to slump into a formless shape.
The furniture was so light that it skidded around the shop floor. Its plastic texture made it a magnet for moisture and dust. Its inadvertent ability to double up as a whoopee cushion when sat on did not help its case. In 2013, the a.i.r concept was shelved permanently.
Just a year later, Axelsson, less than 12 months into his tenure at the retailer, went to the company's operational headquarters in Älmhult, Sweden, to pitch an air-filled chair. He was greeted by raised eyebrows from colleagues, many of whom had been present during the first inflatable misstep, and his proposal was quashed.
Yet the rebuttal did not totally puncture Axelsson's belief in inflatable furniture. The adjacent company museum has an entire exhibit dedicated to "the idea that fell flat."
"We show the stuff that doesn't work out as well because that is a big thing at IKEA," Axelsson said. "It doesn't matter if you fail. It's actually good to fail, because then it shows that you have tried something new."
Axelsson finally got the green light in 2023. A painstaking development process saw the designer hand-weld the frames for 20 prototypes. Axelsson recalled that early versions that resembled an oversized cushion were so uncomfortable that production almost ended before it had even begun, likening the feeling to sitting on an exercise ball.
Because the seating angle can change dramatically with the sitter's posture, controlling how air moves beneath the sitter is the most critical and trickiest aspect of inflatable furniture. Stumped, Axelsson visited a nearby car dealership and asked to borrow a tractor tire.
Sitting in it gave him the inspiration for two separate adjustable air chambers, held within a tubular chrome frame that allows the air cushion to flex. Both the backrest and seat are adjustable to the user's desired firmness.
Weighing 18 pounds (8 kilograms), the chair is light enough to pick up with one hand but bulky enough to stay grounded. A fiber layer atop the cushion similarly addresses its predecessor's flaws by preventing moisture buildup and unwanted noise. Development included 25 cycles through IKEA's Älmhult test lab and six months in the Axelsson household.
With the chair requiring less packaging and having a lower shipping weight than traditional polyurethane foam furniture, Axelsson believes inflatables could offer a more environmentally friendly alternative, though there is still work to be done. The chair uses a thermoplastic material that, although technically recyclable, typically requires a specialized industrial process to repurpose.
"There is a balance for everything," Axelsson said. "But the exploration of finding replacements for foam is what is interesting and something we continue to improve upon, seeing what alternative materials we can use for our designs in the future."