IKEA PS is back!

Thirty-one years after IKEA PS made its global debut in Milan alongside the concept of Democratic Design, the collection returns with a first look at three pieces from its upcoming tenth edition – an inflatable easy chair decades in the making, a rocking bench, and a three-directional floor lamp.

“PS is about embracing simplicity and finding the excitement in that — objects with a clear function, elevated by expressive details that are a little mischievous, inviting you to touch, discover and play,” says Maria O’Brian, Creative Leader at IKEA of Sweden.

Since 1995, PS has been the collection where IKEA’s most experimental design takes shape, with nine editions that have explored the future of Scandinavian design and produced some of IKEA’s most loved and enduring designs. This tenth edition centres on playful functionality — useful, functional designs that do their job in the home, with an unexpected element of playfulness that you can’t help but engage with.

Ahead of its full global reveal on 13 May, the first look features an air-filled easy chair and a rocking bench from in-house designers Mikael Axelsson and Marta Krupińska, and a three-directional lamp from Rotterdam-based designer Lex Pott. After decades of trying to crack the code on designing air-filled furniture, the inflatable easy chair finally finds its place at IKEA with PS 2026. It has been an obsession at IKEA since the 1990s, but attempt after attempt fell short. When Mikael Axelsson decided to give it another try, most of his team shook their heads and left him to the challenge. Driven by the question whether air as a material could deliver the same comfort as foam, he hand-welded 20 prototypes - trying everything, including a tractor tire - before landing on a solution: two separate adjustable air chambers held within a tubular chrome frame, giving the chair stability and a compact silhouette. The chair arrives flat-packed in a deep emerald green fabric with a foot pump, and has passed every durability test IKEA runs on its armchairs. The result is a level of comfort you don’t expect from something made of air.

Dutch designer Lex Pott wondered what happens when you cut a steel cylinder at 45 degrees and start rotating the pieces. Two angled intersections turned a floor lamp into something more versatile – rotate it one way and it becomes a spotlight, another and it’s a reading light, a third creates an uplight, each creating a different atmosphere within the same space. The function lives entirely in the geometry, and the playful gesture of rotating it transforms the object each time. The patented design features a trumpet-form shade and slim metal stem rising from a wide cone-shaped base, available in chartreuse, deep burgundy and cobalt blue.

“When you rotate the lamp it doesn’t just change the light, but the atmosphere of the space. We reduced the design to its clearest possible form, and the function doesn’t reveal itself at first glance — but that’s where the joy and playfulness live. There are layers that reveal themselves slowly, and an emotional bond that grows the more you live with it,” says Lex Pott.

The rocking bench is playful functionality in its purest form. It does exactly what it looks like it should do: rocks you gently from side to side, but also works perfectly well as a bench. Sit still if you want, but the curved runners have other ideas. Built from solid pine with all its natural character intact, true to the signature mark of Scandinavian design, the sturdy rockers handle the stress and pressure of repeated use.

“From the first prototype, I noticed people couldn’t help themselves,” says Marta Krupińska. “They’d sit down, start rocking, then call someone over to try it. Furniture shouldn’t take itself too seriously. That instinctive childlike impulse to just play is something we rarely express as adults, but it’s so important to have objects that invite that side to come out.”

The collection will be revealed in full on 13 May at Democratic Design Days, in Älmhult, Sweden where all the pieces were designed and developed.