Thirty years after a hair dryer, a leaky valve, and some very unglamorous sounds ended IKEA’s first big inflatable experiment, the Swedish giant is trying again. This time, it might actually have nailed it.
When IKEA announced that its beloved PS collection is returning for a tenth edition, plenty of things caught the eye: a rocking bench that looks more like a balance board, a head-turning floor lamp.
But for anyone who remembers the cautionary tale of INNERLIG and ROLIG — the inflatable sofas that deflated both literally and figuratively in the early 2000s — one piece stands above the rest.
An inflatable easy chair. Back. And apparently, this time it works.
A Brief History of IKEA and Air
To understand why this matters, a little backstory helps.
In the mid-1990s, Swedish designer Jan Dranger walked into IKEA with what sounded like a furniture lover’s dream: sofas and chairs made of air, packed flat, shipped cheap, inflated at home with a hair dryer.
IKEA, never one to shy away from a bold idea, went all in. The result was the a.i.r collection. It launched with great fanfare in the 2000 catalogue under the headline “Content: Nothing!”
It was, to put it gently, a bumpy ride. Hot air from hair dryers cooled and contracted, leaving sofas deflated by the weekend. Valves leaked. The furniture made unfortunate noises when sat upon. Staff worried about customers jumping on displays. And the pieces ended up costing far more to produce than anyone had planned.
By 2013, IKEA quietly closed the chapter on inflatable furniture altogether.
Enter Mikael Axelsson — And Twenty Prototypes
Fast forward to the run-up to IKEA PS 2026, and designer Mikael Axelsson decided, against the better judgment of most of his team, to give inflatable furniture one more go.
According to IKEA’s announcement, “when Mikael Axelsson decided to give it another try, most of his team shook their heads and left him to the challenge.”
Not exactly a vote of confidence. But Axelsson pressed on, hand-welding 20 prototypes and testing everything he could think of including, wonderfully, a tractor tire.
All in pursuit of a simple question: could air deliver the same comfort as foam?
The answer, it turns out, is yes. The solution came in the form of two separate adjustable air chambers housed within a tubular chrome frame. The frame gives the chair its stability and keeps its profile neat and compact.
The chair arrives flat-packed, comes in a deep emerald green fabric, and includes a foot pump. It has also, crucially, passed every durability test IKEA runs on its armchairs.
No hair dryer required.
No leaky valves mentioned.
No unglamorous sounds — at least not officially.
What’s Actually Different This Time
The original a.i.r chairs were essentially inflatable plastic forms dressed up in fabric covers, fighting a constant battle against the laws of thermodynamics. The new chair takes a different approach: the air chambers are adjustable and enclosed within a proper structural frame, meaning the comfort and the shape are no longer entirely dependent on trapped air staying exactly where you put it.
It is, in other words, a design solution rather than a material compromise, which is perhaps the key distinction between then and now.
The chair has passed every durability test IKEA runs on its armchairs. That sentence, small as it is, carries a lot of weight after the INNERLIG years.
The Bigger Picture: IKEA PS 2026
The inflatable chair is just one piece of what looks like a genuinely interesting collection.
The new PS edition, the tenth since the collection launched in Milan in 1995, centres on what IKEA calls “playful functionality.” As Creative Leader Maria O’Brian puts it: “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.”
IKEA PS Rocking Bench
The rocking bench from designer Marta Krupińska does exactly what it says: it rocks. Solid pine, curved runners, and the promise of fun.
“Furniture shouldn’t take itself too seriously,” Krupińska says. “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.”
IKEA PS Lamp
Then there’s the floor lamp from Rotterdam-based designer Lex Pott, which might be the cleverest piece of the three. Cut a steel cylinder at 45 degrees, rotate the sections, and you get a lamp that becomes a spotlight, a reading light, or an uplight depending on how you turn it. Same object, three different vibes.
“When you rotate the lamp it doesn’t just change the light, but the atmosphere of the space,” Pott explains.
The lamp comes in chartreuse yellow, deep burgundy, and cobalt blue, and the geometry is patented.
The IKEA PS 2026 Full Reveal
All three pieces, along with the rest of the collection, will be unveiled on 13 May at Democratic Design Days in Älmhult, Sweden, where the designs were developed.
For now, the inflatable easy chair remains the one to watch. Thirty years, one very determined designer, twenty hand-welded prototypes, and at least one tractor tire later, IKEA might finally have done it.