Remember when inflatable chairs felt like the future? It was a brief moment in the 1990s, when they appeared in translucent plastics and bright colours. They promised a new kind of living: lightweight, portable, and just unconventional enough to feel ahead of their time when in reality, one small puncture was enough to render them useless. Even at their best, they never quite escaped the sense that they were temporary. And yet, for IKEA at least, the belief in their potential never quite disappeared.
For decades, the Swedish furniture giant has been working on inflatable furniture behind the scenes. Now, with the release of its latest PS collection, the company has returned to the concept with a level of resolve that earlier attempts lacked and an air of virality that feels current — pardon the pun.
Introduced during Milan Design Week, the PS 2026 Easy Chair doesn’t read as novel at first glance. It sits low and compact, upholstered in a deep emerald fabric, held within a polished tubular frame. It looks solid, even conventional. Only when lifted, or closely examined, does its defining feature become apparent. The structure is formed not by foam, but by air.
IKEA has spent years trying to get right. The company’s earlier attempts, most notably in the late 1990s, were ambitious but flawed. Inflatable sofas and armchairs promised radical efficiency (less material, easier transport, lower costs) but struggled in practice. They deflated, shifted, and, at times, behaved more like objects of curiosity than pieces of furniture designed for everyday use. The concept was eventually set aside, but never entirely abandoned.
IKEA designer Mikael Axelsson can be credited for solving the issues that once defined inflatable seating through a hybrid construction. Two air-filled chambers are contained within a rigid chrome frame, stabilising the form while allowing the material to perform as intended. The addition of a textile cover further refines the experience, softening both sound and surface, and aligning the piece visually with more traditional upholstered furniture. “My initial idea was to create a metal frame with a balloon trapped inside,” Axelsson explains. “It not only makes it firmer and sturdier, but also gives it a more playful expression, like a balloon bulging out.”
As a result, the chair retains the lightness and efficiency that makes inflatable furniture so appealing. Internally, the air chambers are engineered to provide support and stability, eliminating sagging and imbalance. Externally, the chair presents sturdy and, more importantly, permanent.
Beyond novelty, the project makes a statement about the democratic nature of air as a material in its own right. It is, after all, “free and available to everyone,” as IKEA notes in its press release, requiring no extraction or processing in the conventional sense. For a company long invested in the idea of democratic design, the appeal is obvious. The same logic extends to the way the chair is distributed. Like much of IKEA’s furniture, it arrives flat-packed—but not through the reduction of parts. Instead, it occupies minimal space because its primary material is, quite literally, invisible. A manual foot pump replaces the need for electric components, keeping both cost and waste to a minimum.
The chair forms part of the tenth edition of the IKEA PS collection, a series first introduced in 1995 as a platform for the company’s more experimental work. Over the years, it has been used to test ideas that sit slightly outside the mainstream: "PS is about embracing simplicity and finding the excitement in that,” says Maria O'Brian, Creative Leader at IKEA of Sweden. “Objects with a clear function, elevated by expressive details that are a little mischievous, inviting you to touch, discover and play.”
Presented at Spazio Maiocchi under the exhibition Food for Thought, the PS 2026 collection explores the relationship between design and daily life through a series of sensory installations. Alongside a transformable lamp and a rocking bench, the inflatable chair emerges as the defining piece, not only because it carries the weight of a long-unresolved idea, which makes for a satisfyingly poetic sell, but because something as retro as inflatable furniture is inherently nostalgic, too. And somehow, that always comes with a heavy dose of optimism.
The full IKEA PS 2026 collection will be revealed on 13 May at Democratic Design Days in Älmhult, Sweden, where all the pieces were designed and developed.
