IKEA PS collection returns for its 10th edition with playful functionality
The Scandinavian brand brings together 12 designers to create a new collection of “talking” objects. An invitation not to take things too seriously and to rediscover the playful side of design, where functionality and lightness coexist – filling the home with joy.
For IKEA, design has always brought together joy and meaning: quality, functionality, and prices that challenge the idea that design should be a privilege for the few. With IKEA PS 2026 – the tenth edition of a long-standing collection – this commitment takes on a new dimension: playfulness. These are objects that are useful yet engaging, capable of raising a smile even on the dullest days, each with a story to tell.
Launched in 1995 in response to an identity crisis and as a return to the roots of Scandinavian simplicity, the PS collection – an acronym for post scriptum, an addition outside the standard catalogue – has evolved into a recurring laboratory for innovative, accessible design. Now, in its tenth iteration, the theme is stated without hesitation: functionality meets joy.
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Leading the project is Maria O’Brian, the collection’s creative leader, who invited twelve designers – David Wahl, Lex Pott, Maria Vinka, Lukas Bazle, Ola Wihlborg, Ellen Hallström, Marta Krupińska, Mikael Axelsson, Henrik Preutz, Friso Wiersma, Matilda Lindstam Nilsson, Michelle Armas – with a deliberately open and radical brief: “I briefed them extremely openly. I believe that playfulness and breathing space are what we need right now. If we look around in the world, there are few things we need more than a little breathing room.” The guiding thread of this edition can be distilled into a mantra as simple as it is provocative: simplify without being boring.
As O’Brian explains: “Simplicity is not something that has to make it boring. That’s something we really wanted to challenge – that simplicity done right can be super intriguing and interesting, if you add an element of surprise, an unexpected pop of something, a twinkle in the eye.”
IKEA PS 2026 – The 10th edition:
Playful functionality designed for compact living
But playfulness does not mean superficiality. The collection revolves around two precise words – playful functionality – and their combination is far from accidental. “The minute you put functionality in there, you know you have other values and criteria that you have to fulfil,” O’Brian notes. A creative tension that designers have translated into objects conceived especially for small spaces, where every centimetre must justify its presence. As Ellen Hallström, points out: “My starting point was the theme of small space living. If you make products that are only fun, they will also be incredibly annoying. When you live small, you cannot afford to just have fun things – they also need to be functional.”
The idea of playful functionality emerges – perhaps most clearly – in the product names themselves: descriptive, almost narrative names that evoke everyday gestures and situations. IKEA PS 2026, ultimately, “does things”: it folds, clicks, peeks, hides, flips, climbs, follows you, dozes, inflates, colours, changes direction, crosses its legs, listens, rocks, moves, observes.
Rocking benches, folding lamps, and objects that invite interaction
This spirit finds a vivid expression in Marta Krupińska, designer of the rocking bench. “Someone once called me an ambassador of fun,” she says. “Not taking everything too seriously… that’s what makes life easier and more enjoyable.” Her idea takes shape through a process that embraces obstacles: “I’m never afraid if someone tells me my project won’t work. For me, problems are truly an opportunity to do better.” She also designed the hiding solution – a handwoven footstool that doubles as seating and storage – and the peeking clock, inspired by a periscope.
A similar balance between play and function informs the work of Lex Pott, designer of the folding lamp. “When a product focuses only on being fun, it risks feeling artificial… but if you manage to combine joy and functionality, then you get an interesting design.” The lamp –both a floor light and a spotlight – originates from a simple gesture: cutting a cylinder at a 45-degree angle. From there, multiple recomposition possibilities invite users to reshape it. “The magic lies in the making.”
Pott also designed a light-blue rolling trolley that follows you around the home, a wheeled “little friend” created to carry objects that usually get left wherever they are, along with observing decorations in recycled paper that resemble playful characters. Another highlight is the portable lamp that accompanies you, designed by drawing on simple geometric forms and made of glass and metal to convey a sense of solidity and quality. Rechargeable and easy to move, it comes in three different colours, extending its use across different domestic settings.
Inflatable seating, woven cabinets, and material experimentation
If Pott works with geometry, Mikael Axelsson turns to an even more radical material: air. His inflatable armchair revisits 1990s aesthetics with contemporary rigour. “Air is the perfect material… it’s free and accessible to everyone.” Yet designing with air requires a completely different approach: Axelsson developed prototype after prototype until achieving comfort and durability comparable to a traditional armchair. Completing his contribution is the climbing stool, featuring a ratchet structure inspired by woodworking tools.
Wood, by contrast, is the language of Friso Wiersma, a cabinetmaker and boat builder. “PS is like a marriage and a celebration between craftsmanship and industrial production”. The sinuously moving cabinet, with its handwoven, untreated solid pine doors, makes the gesture of making visible. “In the weaving, you can immediately perceive the movement of the hand.” The same sensitivity carries through to the collecting shelves, a reinterpretation of an IKEA bookcase from the 1980s. “I wanted to honour a mentor and father figure for me in design at IKEA — Nils Gammelgaard. He was an in-house designer in the eighties. The open shelving with the red painted ends is a nod to Nils, to his work and style, but in my material: wood.“
Foldable tables, directional chairs, and adaptable domestic furniture
Among the most prolific contributors, Ola Wihlborg creates a constellation of strongly defined objects. The colouring table introduces a bold green into the space; the table that crosses its legs combines solidity with foldability; the sofa that loves to doze prioritises comfort with a mattress-like structure. Alongside these, the perspective-flipping bedside table, inspired by a birdhouse, and the communicating table, with a drawer accessible from both sides, translate Scandinavian simplicity into intelligent everyday solutions.
Henrik Preutz, meanwhile, draws from domestic life to design the chair that changes direction, conceived to adapt to the rhythms of a truly lived-in kitchen. “This chair doesn’t decide how you should sit – it invites you to try new positions.”
Asymmetrical mirrors, portable lighting, and transformable objects
Ellen Hallström, who received the collection brief while travelling in China – without internet or social media – developed her ideas in a sketchbook, creating four pieces: the mirror that moves, with its asymmetrical frame; the coat stand that clicks into place, designed to free up floor space; the chair that points upward, which when hung becomes almost a cubist artwork; and the chair that pays tribute, a declaration of love to birch plywood. “I was travelling in China for two weeks when I was briefed. I couldn’t use Instagram, Pinterest, or the internet. I just had a sketchbook and some music I’d downloaded. That was so freeing — I could really sit with myself and come up with things. It was a very good starting point.”
Completing the collection are the glowing lampshade by Lukas Bazle, created by deconstructing a paper sphere; the listening vases by Maria Vinka, in blown glass; the clicking table by David Wahl, with a mechanism refined over more than a year; the foldable armchair by Matilda Lindstam Nilsson; and the blooming textiles by Michelle Armas, made using the blooming ink technique.
