Ikea’s new inflatable chair doesn’t look like an inflatable chair | The Verge
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Ikea’s new inflatable chair doesn’t look like an inflatable chair
You still inflate it with a pump, but with an added metal frame this chair won’t bounce around a room like a balloon.
You still inflate it with a pump, but with an added metal frame this chair won’t bounce around a room like a balloon.
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The PS 2026 easy chair is made from two fabric-wrapped air chambers with a steel frame.
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Ikea shared a sneak preview of three pieces from a new experimental collection, set to be fully revealed at an annual company event on May 13th. One of the pieces is an inflatable chair that looks like a far cry from the cheap and lumpy inflatable furniture popularized in the ‘90s.
This isn’t the first time Ikea’s designers have experimented with inflatable furniture. The Ikea Museum website has an entire page dedicated to what it calls an “idea that fell flat.” In 2000 the furniture maker introduced its inflatable Rolig easy chair and Innerlig sofa but they were expensive and suffered from leaky valves, resulting in both pieces slowly deflating over a matter of days. The company followed up with several inflatable pieces for kids that were more successful, but its in-house designer Mikael Axelsson wanted to tackle the idea again for the 2026 additions to Ikea’s experimental PS (post script) collection.
The PS 2026 easy chair uses a wraparound metal frame to increase stability and to help the air chambers keep their shape.
Instead of only relying on a fabric cover around an inflatable airbag to increase firmness and stability, the PS 2026 easy chair features two separate adjustable air chambers wrapped in an emerald green textile cover that’s surrounded with a carbon steel frame. That frame helps prevent the air chambers from bulging when someone sits down, and adds weight so the chair doesn’t bounce around a room like a balloon when bumped. There’s no pricing info yet, but the company says the chair “has passed every durability test Ikea runs on its armchairs.”
Other pieces coming to Ikea’s 2026 PS collection include a wooden bench that can rock back and forth and a lamp with angular sections that can pivot to retarget the lighting.
Alongside the blow-up chair that comes with its own air pump, Ikea teased two other new additions to its PS collection: Marta Krupińska designed a solid pine wooden bench with curved runners underneath so it functions as a sort of two person, side-by-side rocking horse; Designer Lex Pott created a tubular floor lamp with multiple segments that rotate at 45-degree angles to project the light in different directions, including straight down for reading.
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