Dezeen picks the eight most covetable products from IKEA's latest PS collection

For the first time in nearly 10 years, IKEA has unveiled a new edition of its experimental PS collection, known for letting "designers go a bit more wild". Here, Dezeen spotlights eight standout pieces from the range, most of which cost under £100.

IKEA's first PS collection was launched at the Milan furniture fair in 1995 with the aim of making cutting-edge Scandinavian design accessible to the general public at an affordable price point.

Its name comes from the idea that the range is meant to be a kind of postscript or addendum to the furnituremaker's standard catalogue.

"IKEA PS is where we really want to let our designers go a bit more wild and be a bit more free in their creativity than we might otherwise," IKEA creative leader Maria O'Brian told Dezeen.

"The everyday product range has more constraints, which is fine, because that's how you make things for everyone. But in PS, we get to ask 'what if?' a bit more and allow ourselves to push the limits just a bit further than we otherwise might dare."

Since it was launched, IKEA has released a new update to the collection at least every three or four years until the most recent edition in 2017.

Now, the collection has returned for the first time in close to a decade, with 30 different pieces from 12 designers under the theme of playful functionality.

"We wanted to show that simplicity and simple design don't have to be boring," O'Brian explained.

"The challenge was finding that balance between excitement and simplicity by stripping things back until what remained was more exciting, not less, and that's really a lot harder than it sounds."

Among the most successful takes on the theme are a blow-up armchair, a rocking bench and a height-adjustable stool with a low-tech mechanism that begs to be used.

Read on to find out more about these and our other favourite products from the collection.

PS 2026 bench by Marta Krupińska

The genius of this rocking bench by Polish designer Marta Krupińska is twofold. Firstly, it inherently encourages conversation, since taking a seat on one side of this adult seesaw will inevitably affect whoever is sitting on the other.

And secondly, its all-wood construction is only possible through a clever engineering trick that involves splitting a beam of wood and glueing it back together with the grain reversed on itself.

The opposing grains effectively work to reinforce each other, making the final bench even stronger than an early prototype that was backed with metal.

PS 2026 floor uplighter by Lex Pott

After we previewed it exclusively on Dezeen a couple of weeks ago, this simple but expressive floor lamp from Dutch designer Lex Pott ended up becoming our most-read design story of the whole month – and it's easy to see why.

With its characterful trumpet silhouette and spot-on colour selection, it could make even a plain white room look interesting.

Plus, a newly developed 45-degree hinge allows the lamp to turn from an uplight into a reading or spotlight with a simple flick of the wrist.

PS 2026 easy chair by Ellen Hallström

All-timber armchairs with generous surfaces unobstructed by upholstery have become a low-key Scandinavian design staple in recent years, seen everywhere from Frame and Takt to the work of emerging Stockholm studio Contem.

Here, IKEA offers an affordable version made from trusty birch plywood, which delivers the tactility of the solid wood without the usual price tag. The final chair retails for £50, which is so cheap it's almost worrying.

PS 2026 stool by Mikael Axelsson

A bright-blue latch invites interaction and hints at the functionality of this height-adjustable stool, standing out against its pale birch frame.

The low-tech mechanism, completed with two interlocking sawtoothed stems, creates an instantly iconic silhouette that plays with the modernist form-follows-function ideal without taking itself too seriously.

PS 2026 easy chair by Mikael Axelsson

Given the well-publicised failure of IKEA's previous venture into inflatable furniture, the launch of this blow-up armchair at Milan design week was a bold move.

The design captures the irreverence of 1990s blow-up seats but turns them into functional grown-up furniture by enclosing the inflatable elements in a Corbusier-inflected tubular metal frame.

PS 2026 folding chair by Ellen Hallström

Designers seem to have a real thing for hanging their chairs these days. Just look at Soft Baroque's compact Ghost Kitchen show in Milan.

Here, Ellen Hallström has gone one step further and rendered her lightweight foldable seat in deliciously contrasting blocks of red, black and powder-blue.

With a palette straight out of a Mondrian painting, the hope was that the final outcome would resemble a piece of cubist art once suspended on a wall.

Wide shelf in solid wood by Friso Wiersma

Unless you're shopping second-hand, there's basically no such thing as affordable solid-wood shelving. But Dutch designer Friso Wiersma is hoping to change that.

As part of the PS collection, the trained boat builder has created a version of IKEA's cult 1970s Guide shelf entirely in pine. Carefully considered joints, accentuated with red-painted ends, give this design a subtle sophistication that belies its price tag.

PS 2026 LED portable lamp by Lex Pott

Lex Pott is known for his immaculate colour combinations. So it was perhaps only a matter of time until he lent his chromatic genius to the kind of multihued portable lamps that have proven popular in recent years, à la Hay's Turn On and Sowden's PL1.

Pott's version is topped with a blown-glass sphere and comes in three variations, ranging from entry-level – oxblood-red and raspberry – to advanced: blue, green, and baby pink.

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